Robber's Roost (1989)

by Grey, Zane

  Late in the afternoon there was a momentary brightening of massed clouds in the west. Dull red and purple gloomed over the dun hills.

  They rode down out of these low gravel hills that had limited their sight, into a long, green, winding valley from the far side of which came a sullen roar. A red river, surely the Dirty Devil, ran, ridged and frothy under a steep wall of earth. As Jim looked an undermined section went sliding down with a hollow crash.

  The remnant of a trail hugged the base of the hills. The valley seemed a forbidding portal to even a harsher country.

  "I can't hang on--longer," faltered Helen, faintly.

  "I'll carry you. Why didn't you tell me sooner?" reproved Jim. He knotted her reins and dropped the loop over the pommel of her saddle. Then he lifted her off her horse onto his. She fitted in the narrow space in front of him, and he supported her with his left arm. "Come on, Gray."

  So Jim rode on, aware that her collapse and the terrible nature of the desert, and another storm at hand, were wearing away even his indomitable spirit. It might well be that he was riding into a trap--on and on up this infernal river to where it boxed in a canyon or widened into a morass of quicksand, either of which would be impassable. If he had to turn back where would it be to? There were foes behind, and anyway Robbers' Roost was unthinkable as a refuge. Still he had faith in that lead pack-horse. They plodded on, and the rain beat in his face. He turned Helen on her side so that her back was toward the storm, and though he spoke she did not answer.

  When he weathered that storm he had traveled some miles and was approaching the head of the valley. Ragged, red bluffs stood up all along his right, with acres of loose rock ready to slide. The base of these narrowed to a bank of earth, cut straight down on the outside, which fronted on a muddy flat now reduced to a width of scarcely a hundred yards by the river.

  The lead pack-horse kept plodding away, apparently not sharing Jim's growing apprehension about the abrupt turn under a huge beetling bluff. The Dirty Devil, however, swung away to the left again and could be seen sliding round a wall miles farther on.

  Night was not far away, being hastened by a sinister black storm.

  They swung in behind the bluff, and then out again to the higher and narrower bank upon which the old trail passed around the corner. But for this lead animal Jim would never have attempted that. He knew when a horse was lost or indifferent. This horse headed for some place with which he was familiar. He disappeared around the corner where the bank was scarcely ten feet wide, slippery and wet, with streams running down from the bluff above and rocks rolling. The second pack-horse, sure of the leader, rounded the point.

  "Whoa, Bay," called Jim, hauling up to wait for the gray. "I don't like this place. Don't look, Helen."

  As she made no reply, Jim leaned back to get a glimpse of her face.

  Asleep! If he had marveled at many aspects of this adventure, what did sight of her thus do to him? For one thing it shot him through and through with a fierce something which excluded further vacillation.

  "Come on, Gray," he called to the horse behind, and to Bay:

  "Steady, old fellow. If that narrows round there you want to step sure."

  It did narrow. Eight feet, six feet--less! Bits of the steep bank were crumbling away. But the pack-horses had gone round. A strange wrestling, lashing sound struck Jim's ears. Water running somehow! He did not look up from the trail, but he sensed a fearful prospect ahead. It would not be safe to try to turn now.

  The drop on his left, over which he hung, was fifty feet or more straight down, and below an oozy flat extended outward from it.

  Suddenly Jim encountered a still narrower point, scarcely five feet wide. The edge had freshly crumbled. It was crumbling now. Jim heard it slop, despite the growing hollow sound farther on.

  Bay stepped carefully, confidently. He knew horses with wide packs had safely passed there. He went on. Jim felt him sink. One hind foot had crushed out a section of earth, letting him down. But with a snort he plunged ahead to wider trail.

  Jim's heart had leaped to his throat. His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. He heard thud of hoofs behind, a heavy, sliddery rumble. Looking back, he saw the gray horse leap from a section of wall, beginning to gap outwards, to solid ground ahead. Next instant six feet of the trail, close up to the bluff, slid down in an avalanche.

  "Close shave for us all!" cried Jim, huskily, and looked up to see what more lay ahead.

  Right at his feet a red torrent rushed with a wrestling, clashing sound from out a deep-walled gorge of splintered, rocking walls.

  And the roar that had confounded Jim came from the leap of a red waterfall from the high rim-wall. Everywhere red water was pouring off the cliffs. Rocks were bounding down the stepped slope right in front of him, to hustle off the bank and plunge below. Slides of gravel, like the screech of pebbles in a tide, were running down.

  This was an intersecting canyon, a tributary, a vicious child of the hideous Dirty Devil. It barred Jim's progress. Thirty paces to the fore, on the widest part of the bank, stood the pack-horses.

  Jim forced his startled gaze to the rear. No rider would ever come or go that way again.

  Chapter 17

  The rain had slackened; otherwise Jim could not have seen far in advance. The girl, stirring in his arms, roused him out of his bewilderment.

  He rode on to a huge section of cliff wall which had fallen from above and now leaned at an angle over the trail. It appeared to be a safe retreat unless the whole cliff slipped in avalanche, and as this consisted half of stone and half of red earth and gravel the possibility of such catastrophe was not remote.

  Jim dismounted carefully with Helen and, stooping as he moved under the leaning rock, he set her down on dry dust.

  "Where are we? What's that awful sound?" she asked, and her voice came to him in a whisper.

  "We're held up by the storm. . . . Let me get this wet slicker off."

  "Is it the end for us?"

  He did not answer. Folding the slicker into a pillow, he laid her head back upon it. She seemed hardly able to sit up without his support. He tried to avoid her eyes, but was not wholly successful. Scrambling up, he removed the saddle from Bay and dropped it under the shelter. Then, leading the horse, he stepped forward to where the gray and the pack-animals had halted. The clatter of rocks, the screech of gravel, the thresh of strange waves in the torrent below, and the roar of the waterfall made an increasing din. If it rained any more this gorge would be a hell- hole compared with which any place on the trail back would seem paradise. But Jim did not waste time to look around.

  The instinct of the horses had guided them to halt behind the only safe spot on the unsafe bank, and this was where several immense boulders had lodged at the widest part. The horses were tired, but not appreciably frightened. Jim removed their packs, leaving the saddles on. He had tied the sack holding the pieces of canvas and the grain so that he might get at it quickly. Without hesitation he poured out all of the grain, about two quarts for each horse.

  Lastly he jammed the packs under the edge of the boulders, and left the horses free to take care of themselves.

  Then he took stock of his surroundings and conditions. A sinister red twilight invested the gorge. It was about a hundred yards wide, with the opposite wall low, and consisted of detached blocks and slides of rock on a background of red earth. Innumerable little streams were twisting, meandering, pouring from the walls.

  About one hundred and fifty yards up, the gorge turned to the left.

  Here the waterfall leaped off from a crack in the high cliff and shot far out to roar down in the rocks. Already it was appreciably fuller. Most fearful, however, was the gigantic slope to the left, of which Jim now had his first clear view. It was very high and rugged, and sloped so far back that he could not see the top.

  Streams above were pouring together into a main torrent, the outlet of which he could not place, though he believed he heard it. This slope was veritably a mountain-side,
unstable and treacherous as quicksand. Everywhere there was motion, not only of water, but gravel, mud, and small rocks of all sizes. In past storms thousands of tons of rock had piled off that slope, most of which jumble had been covered with earth and which formed the bank upon which he stood. This was fifty feet wide at its widest, and several hundred feet long, and the upper end sloped down to the bed of the gully, where evidently the old trail ran. Lastly, this short gorge opened out into the valley of the Dirty Devil, whence came a roar heavy enough to be heard above the nearer din.

  Above this infernal trap a murky sky, partaking of the red hue that dominated the unstable earth, presaged more storm. Low down over the gorge rims, black clouds showed tiny threads of zigzag lightning. But if thunder accompanied them Jim could not hear it.

  He had a growing thunder near at hand.

  "If that storm breaks over the head of this gorge we're lost," soliloquized Jim, in dark solemnity. Had he endured the past weeks, had he made his desperate stand against the raiders and then Hays, had he saved the girl--only to have her drowned or crushed by rock or swallowed by avalanche? But for what had he endured-- fought--saved? The very elements had combined to defeat him.

  Gloomy, weighed down by inscrutable events, he hurried back to the shelving rock.

  He dreaded the coming hours--the night--the--he knew not what. But whatever time intervened between now and death or deliverance would be dreadful to live. He felt that.

  Jim removed his slicker and folded it into a long pad. He was dry, except for his feet. As he crept closer the girl stirred again and spoke. He thought she asked if he were there. Many weary nights Jim had sat up to watch or wait, and he knew what it meant. He placed the slicker in the best available place and covered that with the drier of the two saddle blankets. He pulled the saddle closer. Then he lifted the girl over his lap so that her legs fitted across the saddle. With the dry blanket he covered her.

  Then he leaned back against the stone with her head on his shoulder and his arm supporting her. The sombrero he had removed. It was not only that he wanted to keep her dry and warm: he had to have her in his arms while he waited for the nameless terror he anticipated.

  In the fast darkening gloom he could see her wide eyes, black as holes in white parchment. Her lips moved.

  "I can't hear you," he answered, bending low.

  "You are afraid?"

  "Yes, I guess it's that."

  "For me?"

  "Certainly not for myself."

  "What really has happened?"

  "I followed an old trail. The country is new to me. And so we've gotten stuck in a terrible place. We can't go on or back. You hear the flood--the slides--the rocks. . . . And there's a heavy storm about to break."

  "You fear we've little hope?"

  "One chance in a thousand."

  She was silent a moment, then she raised her head so that she could speak close to his ear. He thought he felt a light hand touch his shoulder.

  "For myself I'm not afraid. . . . But for you I am. You brave-- splendid man! . . . To fight as you did for me--indeed you must have loved me. At Star Ranch I did not believe. . . . God bless you. You did--your best. I'll--pray--for you--with my last-- breath."

  Suddenly the earth under Jim trembled and a terrific boom momentarily drowned the other sounds. An avalanche or a falling rock! But this he had expected. It added not a tithe to his terror. That was not physical.

  Staring out into the gathering darkness, he pondered this thing.

  It had come from her last words. She had no fear at the prospect of death. A curling flame might have licked at the heart of Jim's manhood. Brave and splendid she had called him. Craven and ignoble he called his past. It was what Helen Herrick had said that had wrought this transformation in his feelings--this swelling, flaying reproach, this hate of that which allied him with the robber who had carried her off. Of course he had loved her, though he had not dwelt often or thoughtfully upon that. Up until now love in his crude opinion had been the hunger, the need of a woman, without regard to her mind, her heart, her spirit. But that was not what she had meant. . . . And again she besought God to bless him--and she would pray for him with her last breath.

  A hard pang clutched Jim's breast. It numbed his throat. And for the moment his mind became chaotic. Let that last breath of hers mingle with his last breath, drowned in that thrashing torrent or smothered under tons of crushing rock and earth. . . . It would have been nothing to die for her--that he had risked--but to die with her, to have her locked in his arms--that would be great. . . .

  What had he ever done with his life that he should want to prolong it? . . . A ne'er-do-well, a failure, a rolling stone, a robber, a killer! Could he pray to save it now, to go on being the same kind of hard, wicked, useless man? No, by the God she whispered of--he could not. He would not. . . . And now that she lay helpless, trusting, dependent upon him, the truth of his monstrous past roared in his inward ear mightier than the storm and flood.

  He relaxed his stiff frame against the wall. A shuddering spell or a demon of spirit seemed wrenched out of him and flung to the night. This free and wild life had been part of him, and the whole savageness of it seemed to have cumulated in the fury of the elements, to cast his sin out, to change his whole life was yet left to feel, to understand, to grovel in repentance.

  The God she called upon and the Nature he knew had conspired to defeat him. The former he could only tremble before as One unfamiliar, never recognized until now when it was too late. But Nature he had lived with and now he welcomed her furies.

  Thunder buried all the other earthly sounds and a red flare of lightning showed the appallingly black sky and the ghastly gorge.

  The heavens above appeared to burst and a deluge descended upon that place, so that no sound pierced the continuous, beating roar of rain.

  Jim Wall gathered Helen up in his arms and drew her breast to his.

  He felt her warmth. But she was unconscious or so deep in slumber that she could not awaken. Now let the very firmament fall upon them! Two lost humans, inexplicably hounded into this desert, where fire and water and earth were hollowing a grave for them!

  The terror that Helen's acknowledgment of his heroism and his love had roused, abode within him still, but was losing itself in the defiance he threw into the teeth of this cataclysm.

  This was the climax of the storm that had been gathering for days.

  Out upon the level desert it would have been serious for travelers; here in this gorge it was a maelstrom. Jim did not expect to live to hear it pass away. Yet he did. And then began the aftermath of a flood let loose upon such unstable earth. The waterfall gradually rose to a thundering, continuous crash. It dominated for a while, until the thousand streams from above poured over the rims to deaden all, to completely deafen Jim.

  A sheet of water, sliding over the rock, hid the opaque blackness from Jim's eyes. Any moment now a flood would rise over the bank, and when it did Jim meant to climb higher with the girl, to front the hurtling rocks and slipping slides, and fight till the bitter end.

  But many changes as the hours brought, that flood did not rise above the bank. Jim saw the sheet of water fail, and the black space of gorge again. He heard the avalanches and the great single boulders come down, and the furious backlash of the torrent below, and the lessening roar of the waterfall. The time came to Jim, as if he dreamed, when all sounds changed, lessened, faded away, except the peculiar threshing of the stream below. And he got to listening for the sound, which occurred only occasionally. For a while the sliding rush of heavy water swept on, suddenly to change into a furious contention. At length Jim calculated it was a strong current laden with sand, which at times caused billows to rise and lash their twisting tips back upon themselves. Long he heard these slowly diminishing, gradually separating sounds.

  The streams ceased flowing, the slides ceased slipping, the rocks ceased rolling, and the waterfall failed from a thundering to a hollow roar and from that to a softening s
plash. Nature had audited so much for that storm, and still the mountain-side appeared intact with its fugitive atoms of flesh and spirit.

  Jim imagined he saw dim stars out in a void that seemed to change from black to gray. Was dawn at hand? Had they been spared? The gurgle of the stream below merged into the distant, low ramble of the Dirty Devil. Jim rested there, staring out at the spectral forms on the opposite wall, thinking thoughts never before inhabitants of his confounded brain.

  But the sky was graying, the gorge taking shape in the gloom, and this place which had heard a concatenated din of hideous sounds was silent as a grave.

  At last Jim had to accept a marvelous phenomenon--dawn was at hand.

  Gently he slipped Helen into the hollow of the saddle. She was still asleep. His cramped limbs buckled under him and excruciating pains shot through his bones and muscles.

  In the gray light objects were discernible. He could not see to the head of the gorge, where the waterfall had plunged out from the wall. But silence meant that it had been surface water, a product of the storm, and it was gone. Beneath the bank ran a channel of fine-ribbed sand where not even a puddle showed. On the bank the horses stood patiently, except Bay, and he was nosing around for a blade of grass that did not exist on the sodden earth. The great slope appeared the same and yet not the same. A mute acceptance of ultimate destruction hovered over it.

  Sunrise found Jim Wall topping a rise of rocky ground, miles beyond the scene of his night vigil. Again he followed the lead pack- horse.

  The sky was blue, the sun bright and warm, and on the moment it crowned with gold the top of the purple butte Jim had seen twice before. It appeared close now, rearing a corrugated peak above yellow and brown hills. Jim was carrying Helen in front of him.

  Conscious, but too spent to speak or move, she lay back on his arm and watched him.