The Golden Woman

by Cullum, Ridgwell

  The Padre turned away. It was impossible for him to longer face those earnest young eyes pleading to be allowed to give their life for his liberty. The reckless prodigality of the youngster’s heart filled him with an emotion that would not be denied. He moved over to where Cæsar stood, and smoothed the great creature’s silky quarters with a shaking hand. Buck’s storming he could have withstood, but not—this.

  The other followed his every movement, as a beggar watches for the glance of sympathy. And as the moments passed, and the Padre remained silent, his voice, keyed sharply, further urged him.

  “Wal?”

  But the other was thinking, thinking rapidly of all those things which his conscience, and long years of weary hiding prompted. He was trying to adapt his focus anew. His duty had seemed so plain to him. Then, too, his inclination had been at work. His intention had not seemed a great sacrifice to him. He was weary of it all—these years of avoiding his fellows. These years during which his mind had been thrown back upon the thought of whither all his youthful, headlong follies and—cowardice had driven him. Strong man as he was, something of his strength had been undermined by the weary draining of those years. He no longer had that desire to escape, which, in youth, had urged him. He was almost anxious to face his accusers. And with that thought he knew that he was getting old. Yes, he was getting old—and Buck—Buck was almost his son. He could not see the boy’s young life thrown away for him, a life so full of promise, so full of quiet happiness. He knew that that would happen if he persisted. He knew that every word of Buck’s promise would be carried out to the letter. That was his way. There was no alternative left now but for him to give way. So he turned back and held out his hand.

  “What you say—goes,” he said huskily. “I—I hope what we’re doing is right.”

  Buck caught the strong hand in his, and the other winced under his grip.

  “Right?” he cried, his eyes shining with a great happiness. “Right? You’ll save that old woman the worst crime on earth. You’re savin’ the law from a crime which it’s no right to commit. You’re handin’ little Joan a happiness you can’t even guess at in keepin’ your liberty—an’ me, wal, you’re handin’ me back my life. Say, I ain’t goin’ to thank you, Padre. I don’t guess I know how. That ain’t our way.” He laughed happily. “Guess the score you got agin me is still mountin’ right up. I don’t never seem to git it squared. Wal, we’ll let it go. Maybe it’s almost a pity Bob Richards won’t never have the chance of thanking you for—savin’ his life, too.”

  The delight in his manner, his shining joy were almost sufficient recompense to the Padre. He had given way to this youngster as he always gave way. It had been so from the first. Yes, it was always so, and—he was glad.

  Buck turned toward the door, and, as he did so, his arm affectionately linked into that of his friend.

  “We’ll need that supper, Padre,” he said, more soberly. “There’s a long night, and it ain’t easy to guess what may happen before daylight. Come right along.”

  They passed the doorway, but proceeded no farther. Buck held up his hand, and they stood listening.

  “Wait! Hark!” he cried, and both turned their eyes toward the westward hills.

  As they stood, a low, faint growl of thunder murmured down the distant hillsides, and died away in the long-drawn sigh of a rising wind. The wind swept on, and the rustling trees and suddenly creaking branches of the forest answered that sharp, keen breath.

  “It’s coming—from the northwest,” said the Padre, as though the direction were significant.

  “Yes.” Buck nodded with understanding. “That’s wher’ the other come from.”

  They stood for some moments waiting for a further sign. But nothing came. The night was pitch black. There was no break anywhere in the sky. The lamplight in the house stared out sharp and clear, but the house itself, as with the barns and other outbuildings, the stockade, even the line of the tree tops where they met the sky, was quite lost in the inky night.

  “It’ll come quick,” said the Padre.

  “Sure.”

  They moved on to the house, and in a few minutes were sitting down to one of those silent meals which was so much a part of their habit. Yet each man was alert. Each man was thinking of those things which they knew to be threatening. Each man was ready for what might be forthcoming. Be it tempest or disaster, be it battle or death, each was ready to play his part, each was ready to accept the verdict as it might be given.

  Buck was the first to push back from the table. He rose from his seat and lit his pipe. Then, as the pungent fumes lolled heavily on the superheated air, he passed over to the open window and took his seat upon the sill.

  The Padre was more leisurely. He remained in his seat and raked out the bowl of his pipe with the care of a keen smoker. Then he cut his tobacco carefully from his plug, and rolled it thoughtfully in the palms of his hands.

  “Say, about little Joan,” he said abruptly. “Will she join us on——?”

  His question remained unfinished. At that instant Buck sprang from his seat and leant out of the window. The Padre was at his side in an instant.

  “What——?”

  “Holy Mackinaw! Look!” cried Buck, in an awed tone.

  He was pointing with one arm outstretched in a direction where the ruined stockade had fallen, leaving a great gaping space. The opening was sharply silhouetted against a wide glow of red and yellow light, which, as they watched, seemed to grow brighter with each passing moment.

  Each man was striving to grasp the full significance of what he beheld. It was fire. It needed no second thought to convince them of that. But where—what? It was away across the valley, beyond the further lip which rose in a long, low slope. It was to the left of Devil’s Hill, but very little. For that, too, was dimly silhouetted, even at that distance.

  The Padre was the first to speak.

  “It’s big. But it’s not the camp,” he said. “Maybe it’s the—forest.”

  For a moment Buck made no answer. But a growing look of alarm was in his straining eyes.

  “It’s not a prairie fire,” the Padre went on. “There’s not enough grass that way. Say, d’you think——” A sudden fear had leapt into his eyes, too, and his question remained unfinished.

  Buck stirred. He took a deep breach. The alarm in his eyes had suddenly possessed his whole being. Something seemed to be clutching his heart, so that he was almost stifled.

  “It’s none o’ them things,” he said, striving to keep his voice steady. Then of a sudden he reached out, and clutched the arm of his friend, so that his powerful fingers sank deep into its flesh.

  “It’s the—farm!” he cried, in a tone that rang with a terrible dread. “Come on! The hosses!” And he dashed from the room before the last sound of his voice had died out.

  The Padre was hard on his heels. With danger abroad he was no laggard. Joan—poor little Joan! And there were miles to be covered before her lover could reach her.

  But the dark shadows of disaster were crowding fast. Evil was abroad searching every corner of the mountain world for its prey. Almost in a moment the whole scene was changed, and the dull inertia of past days was swept aside amidst a hurricane of storm and demoniacal tempest.

  A crash of appalling thunder greeted the ears of the speeding men. The earth seemed to shake to its very foundations. Ear-splitting detonations echoed from crag to crag, and down deep into the valleys and canyons, setting the world alive with a sudden chaos. Peal after peal roared over the hills, and the lightning played, hissing and shrieking upon ironstone crowns, like a blinding display of pyrotechnics.

  There was no pause in the sudden storm. There was no mercy for wretched human nerves. The blinding light was one endless chain, sweeping across the heavens as though bent on forever wresting from its path the black shadows that defied it.

  And amidst all this turmoil, amidst all the devastating roar, which shook the earth as though bent on wrecking the very mountai
ns themselves, amidst all the blinding, hellish light, so fierce, so intense, that the last secrets of the remotest forest depths must be yielded up, two horsemen dashed down the trail from the fur fort as fast as sharp spurs could drive their eager beasts.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  THE EYES OF THE HILLS

  The thunder roared without intermission. It rose and fell, that was all. From a truculent piano it leapt to a titanic crescendo only to find relief again in a fierce growling dissatisfaction. It seemed less of an elemental war than a physical attack upon a shuddering earth. The electric fires rifting the darkness of this out-world night were beyond compare in their terror. The radiance of sunlight might well have been less than the blaze of a rush candle before the staggering brilliancy. It was wild, wild and fearsome. It was vicious and utterly terrifying.

  Below the quaking earth was in little better case. Only was the scene here in closer touch with human understanding. Here the terror was of earth, here disaster was of human making. Here the rack of heart was in destruction by wanton fire. Shrieking, hissing, crackling, only insignificant by comparison with the war of the greater elements, flames licked up and devoured with ravening appetites the tinder-like structures of Joan’s farm.

  The girl was standing in the open. A confined enough open space almost completely surrounded by fire. Before her were the blazing farm buildings, behind her was the raging furnace that once had been her home. And on one side of her the flames commingled so as to be impassable. Her head was bowed and her eyes were closed, her hands were pressed tight over her ears in a vain attempt to shut out cognizance of the terror that reigned about and above her. She stood thus despairing. She was afraid, terribly afraid.

  Beside her was her aunt, that strange creature whose brain had always risen superior to the sufferings of the human body. Now she was crushed to earth in mute submission to the powers which overwhelmed her. She lay huddled upon the ground utterly lost to all consciousness. Terror had mercifully saved her from a contemplation of those things which had inspired it.

  These two were alone. The other woman had gone, fled at the first coming of that dreaded fiend—fire. And those others, those wretched, besotted creatures whose mischief had brought about this wanton destruction, they too had fled. But their flight was in answer to the wrathful voice of the heavens which they feared and dreaded above all things in the wild world to which they belonged.

  Alone, helpless, almost nerveless, Joan waited that end which she felt could not long be delayed. She did not know, she could not understand. On every hand was a threat so terrible that in her weakness she believed that life could not long last. The din in the heavens, the torturing heat so fierce and painful. The glare of light which penetrated even her closed eyelids, the choking gasps of smoke-laden, scorching air with which she struggled. Death itself must come, nor could it be far from her now.

  The wind rushed madly down from the hilltops. It swept over forest and plain, it howled through canyon and crevasse in its eager haste to reach the centre of the battle of elements. It pounced upon the blinding smoke-cloud and swept it from its path and plunged to the heart of the conflagration with a shriek and roar of cruel delight. One breath, like the breath of a tornado, and its boisterous lungs had sent its mischief broadcast in the flash of an eye. With a howl of delight it tore out the blazing roof of the house, and, lifting it bodily, hurled it like a molten meteor against the dark walls of the adjacent pine forest.

  Joan saw nothing of this, she understood nothing. She was blind and deaf to every added terror. All she felt, all she understood was storm, storm, always storm. Her poor weary brain was reeling, her heart was faint with terror. She was alive, she was conscious, but she might well have been neither in the paralysis that held her. It meant no more that that avalanche of fire, hurled amidst the resinous woods, had suddenly brought into existence the greatest earthly terror that could visit the mountain world; it meant no more to her that an added roar of wind could create a greater peril; it meant no more to her that, in a moment, the whole world about her would be in a blaze so that the burning sacrifice should be complete. Nothing could possibly mean more to her, for she was at the limit of human endurance.

  But other eyes, other brains were alive to all these things, eyes and minds trained by a knowledge which only that mountain world could teach. To them the significance was all absorbing. To them this new terror was a thousandfold more appalling than all other storm and tempest. With the forest afire there was safety for neither human nor beast. With that forest afire flight was well-nigh impossible. With that forest afire to save any living creature would be well-nigh a miracle, and miracles had no place in their thoughts.

  Yet those eyes, so watchful, remained unchanged. Those straining brains only strained the harder. Those eager hearts knew no flinching from their purpose, and if they quailed it was merely at the natural dread for those whom they were seeking to succor.

  Even in face of the added peril their purpose remained. The heavens might roar their thunders, the lightnings might blind their staring eyes, the howling gale might strew their path with every obstruction, nothing could change them, nothing could stop them but death itself.

  So with horses a-lather they swept along. Their blood-stained spurs told their tale of invincible determination. These two men no longer sat in their saddles, they were leaning far out of them over their racing horses’ necks, urging them and easing them by every trick in a horseman’s understanding. They were making a trail which soon they knew would be a path of fire. They knew that with every stride of the stalwart creatures under them they were possibly cutting off the last hope of a retreat to safety. They knew, none better, that once amidst that furnace which lay directly ahead it was something worse than an even chance of life.

  Buck wiped the dripping sweat out of his eyes that he might get a clearer view. The blaze of lightning was of no use to him. It only helped to make obscure that which the earthly fires were struggling to reveal. The Padre’s horse was abreast of his saddle. The sturdy brute was leaving Cæsar to make the pace while she doggedly pursued.

  “We’ll make it yet!” shouted Buck, over his shoulder, amidst the roar of thunder.

  The Padre made no attempt at response. He deemed it useless.

  Buck slashed Cæsar’s flanks with ruthless force.

  The blazing farm was just ahead, as was also the roaring fire of the forest. It was the latter on which both men were concentrating their attention. For the moment its path lay eastward, away to the right of the trail. But this they knew was merely the howling force of the wind. With a shift of direction by half a point and the gale would drive it straight down the trail they were on.

  The trail bent away to the left. And as they swung past the turn Buck again shouted.

  “Now for it!”

  He dashed his spurs again at the flanks of his horse, and the great beast stretched out for a final burst across the bridge over the narrow creek.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXXV

  FROM OUT OF THE ABYSS

  Joan swayed where she stood. She stumbled and fell; and the fall went on, and on, and on. It seemed to her that she was rushing down through endless space toward terrors beyond all believing. It seemed to her that a terrific wind was beating on her, and driving her downward toward a fiercely storm-swept ocean, whose black, hideous waves were ever reaching up to engulf her.

  She cried out. She knew she cried out, and she knew she cried out in vain. Some one, it seemed to her, was far, far up above her, watching, seeking to aid her, but powerless to respond to her heart-broken cries. Still she called, and she knew she must go on calling, till the dark seas below drowned the voice in her throat.

  Now shadows arose about her, mocking, cruel shadows. They were definite figures, but she could not give them definite form in her mind. She reached out toward them, clutching vainly at fluttering shapes, but ever missing them in her headlong career. She sped on, buffeted and hurtling, and tor
n; on, on, making that hideous journey through space.

  Her despairing thoughts flashed at lightning speed through her whirling brain. Faster they came, faster and faster, till she had no time to recognize, no power to hold them. She could see them, yes, she could literally see them sweep by, vanishing like shadows in that black space of terror.

  Then came a sudden accession of sharp stabbing pain. It seemed to tick through her body as might a clock, and each stab came as with the sway of the pendulum, and with a regularity that was exquisite torture. The stabs of pain came quicker, the pendulum was working faster. Faster and faster it swung, and so the torture was ever increasing. Now the pain was in her head, her eyes, her ears, her brain. The agony was excruciating. Her head was bursting. She cried louder and louder, and, with every cry, the pain increased until she felt she was going mad. Then suddenly the pendulum stopped swinging and her cries and her agony ceased, and all was still, silent and dark.

  It might have been a moment, or it might have been ages. Suddenly this wonderful peace was disturbed. It was as though she had just awakened from a deep refreshing sleep in some strange, unfamiliar world. The darkness remained, but it was the darkness of peace. The beating wind had gone, and she only heard it sighing afar off. She was calling again, but no longer in despair. She was calling to that some one far above her with the certain knowledge that she would be answered. The darkness was passing, too. Yes, and she was no longer falling, but soaring up, up, winging her way above, without effort, without pain.