The Golden Woman

by Cullum, Ridgwell

  Presently Joan knelt at her aunt’s side and studied her ashen features in the ruddy light. The woman’s unconsciousness had remained through all that journey. Or was she dead? Joan could not make up her mind.

  Once, as she knelt, she reeled and nearly fell across that still body. And when, recovering herself, she looked up at the men she saw that they were braced, with feet apart, supporting each other. Then, in the roar of the storm she heard Buck’s voice shouting in the Padre’s ear.

  “Guess—ther’s more to come yet,” he said with a profound significance.

  She saw the Padre’s nod, and she wondered at the fresh danger he saw ahead.

  Buck turned and looked out over the desolate plateau with troubled eyes. She followed his gaze. Strangely she had little fear, even with that trouble in her lover’s eyes.

  The plateau was desperately gloomy. It was hot, too, up there, terribly hot. But Joan had no thought for that except that she associated it with the hot wind blowing up from below. Her observation was narrowed to a complete dependence on Buck. He was her hope, her only hope.

  Suddenly she saw him reel. Then, in a moment, she saw that both men were down on hands and knees, and, almost at the instant, she, herself, was hurled flat upon the ground beside the body of her aunt.

  The earth was rocking, and now she understood more fully her lover’s trouble. Her courage slowly began to ebb. She fought against it, but slowly a terror of that dreadful hill crept up in her heart, and she longed to flee anywhere from it—anywhere but down into that caldron of fire below. But the thought was impossible. Death was on every hand beyond that hill, and the hill itself was—quaking.

  Now Buck was speaking again.

  “We’ll have to git som’ere from here,” he said.

  The Padre answered him—

  “Where?”

  It was an admission of the elder man’s weakness. Buck must guide. The girl’s eyes remained upon her lover’s face; she was awaiting his reply. She understood, had always known it, that all human help for her must come from him.

  Her suspense was almost breathless.

  “There’s shelter by the lake,” Buck said, after a long pause. “We can get to leeward of the rock, an’—it’s near the head of that path droppin’ to the creek. The creek seems better than anywher’ else—after this.”

  His manner was decided, but his words offered poor enough comfort.

  The Padre agreed, and, at once, they moved across to Joan. For the moment the earth was still again. Its convulsive shudder had passed. Joan struggled to her feet, but her increasing terror left her clinging to the man she loved. The Padre silently gathered Mercy into his arms, and the journey across the plateau began.

  But as they moved away the subterranean forces attacked again. Again came that awful rocking, and shaking, which left them struggling for a foothold. Twice they were driven to their knees, only to stagger on as the convulsions lessened. It was a nightmare of nervous tension. Every step of the journey was fraught with danger, and every moment it seemed as though the hill must fall beneath them to a crumbling wreckage.

  With heart-sick apprehension Joan watched the growing form of the great rock, which formed the source of the lake, as it loomed out of the smoke-laden dusk. It was so high, so sheer. What if it fell, wrecked with those dreadful earth quakings? But her terror found no voice, no protest. She would not add to the burden of these men. The rock passed behind them, and her relief was intense as the shadow was swallowed up again in the gloom. Then a further relief came to her as the edge of the plateau was reached, and the Padre set his burden down at the head of the narrow path which suggested a possible escape to the creek below.

  She threw herself beside her aunt, and heard Buck speaking again to his friend.

  “Stop right here with the women,” he said. “I’m goin’ around that lake—seems to me we need to get a peek at it.”

  Joan understood something of what he feared. She remembered the weirdness of that suspended lake, and thought with a shudder of the dreadful earth quakings. So she watched him go with heart well-nigh breaking.

  Buck moved cautiously away into the gloom. He knew the lake shore well. The evident volcanic origin of it might well answer many questions and doubts in his mind. Its rugged shore offered almost painful difficulties with the, now, incessant quakings below. But he struggled on till he came to the eminence he sought. Here he took up a position, lying on his stomach so that he had a wide view of the surface of the wind-swept water.

  He remained for a long while watching, watching, and striving to digest the signs he beheld. They were many, and alarming. But their full meaning was difficult to his untutored mind.

  Here it was that the Padre ultimately found him. He had been gone so long that the elder man’s uneasiness for his safety had sent him in search.

  “What d’you make of it, Buck?” he demanded, as he came up, his apprehensions finding no place in his manner.

  Buck displayed no surprise. He did not even turn his head.

  “The fires are hotting. The water’s nigh boiling. There’s goin’ to be a mighty bust-up.”

  The Padre looked out across the water.

  “There’s fire around us, fire above us, and now—fire under us. We’ve got to choose which we’re going to face, Buck—quick.”

  The Padre’s voice was steady. His feelings were under perfect control.

  Buck laughed grimly.

  “Ther’s fire we know, an’ fire we don’t. Guess we best take the fire we know.”

  They continued to gaze out across the lake in silence after that. Then the Padre spoke again.

  “What about the horses?” he asked.

  The question seemed to trouble Buck, for he suddenly caught his breath. But, in a moment, his answer came with decision.

  “Guess they must take their chances,” he said. “Same as we have to. I hate to leave him, but Cæsar’s got sense.”

  “Yes.”

  The Padre’s eyes were fixed upon one spot on the surface of the water. It was quite plain, even in that light, that a seething turmoil was going on just beneath it. He pointed at the place, but went on talking of the other things in his mind.

  “Say, you best take this pocketbook. We may get separated before the night’s out. It’s half the farm money. You see—ther’s no telling,” he ended up vaguely.

  For one instant Buck removed his eyes from the surface of the lake to glance at the snow-white head of his friend. Then he reached out and took the pocketbook.

  “Maybe Joan’ll need it, anyway,” he said, and thrust it in his pocket. “We must——Say, git busy! Look!”

  Buck’s quick eyes had suddenly caught sight of a fresh disturbance in the water. Of a sudden the whole surface of the lake seemed to be rising in a great commotion. And as he finished speaking two terrific detonations roared up from somewhere directly beneath them.

  In an instant both men were on their feet and racing in headlong flight for the point where they had left the women.

  “Get Joan!” shouted the Padre from behind. He was less swift of foot than Buck. “Get Joan! I’ll see to the other.”

  Buck reached the girl’s side. She had heard the explosions of the underworld and stood shaking with terror.

  “We’re up agin it, Joan,” he cried. And before the panic-stricken girl could reply she was in his strong young arms speeding for the downward path, which was their only hope.

  “But the Padre! Aunt Mercy!” cried Joan, in a sudden recollection.

  “They’re comin’ behind. He’ll see to her——God in heaven!”

  A deafening roar, a hundred times greater than the first explosions, came from directly beneath the man’s feet. The air was full of it. To the fugitives it was as if the whole world had suddenly been riven asunder. For one flashing moment it seemed to Buck that he had been struck with fearful force from somewhere behind him, and as the blow fell he was hurled headlong down the precipitous path.

  A confused, painful
sense of cruel buffeting left him only half-conscious. There was a roar in his ears like the bombardment of unearthly artillery. It filled his brain to the exclusion of all else, while he hugged the girl close in his arms with some instinct of saving her, and shielding her from the cruel blows with his own body.

  Beyond that he had practically no sensation. Beyond that he had no realization whatever. They were falling, falling, and every limb in his body seemed to find the obstructions with deadly certainty. How far, how long they were falling, whither the awful journey was carrying them, these things passed from him utterly.

  Then, abruptly, all sensation ceased. The limit of endurance had been reached. For him, at least, the battle for life seemed ended. The greater forces might contest in bitter rage. Element might war with element, till the whole face of the world was changed; for Providence, in a belated mercy, had suspended animation, and spared these two poor atoms of humanity a further witness of a conflict of forces beyond their finite understanding.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  ALONE—

  “Buck! Buck!”

  Faint and small, the cry was lost in the wilderness of silence. It died out, a heart-broken moan of despair, fading to nothingness in the still, desolate world.

  Then came another sound. It was the crash of a falling tree. It was louder, but it, too, could scarcely break the stillness, so silent was the world, so desolate was it in the absence of all life.

  Day had broken. The sky was brilliant with swift-speeding clouds of fleecy white. The great sun had lifted well above the horizon, and already its warming rays were thirstily drinking from a sodden, rain-drenched earth.

  The perfect calm of a summer morning reigned. Up above, high up, where it was quite lost to the desolation below, a great wind was still speeding on the fleecy storm-clouds, brushing them from its path and replacing them with the frothing scud of a glorious day. But the air had not yet regained its wonted freshness. The reek of charred timber was everywhere. It poisoned the air, and held memory whence it would willingly escape.

  “Oh, Buck, speak to me! Open your eyes! Oh, my love, my dear, dear love!”

  The cry had grown in pitch. It was the cry of a woman whose whole soul is yearning for the love which had been ruthlessly torn from her bosom.

  Again it died away in a sob of anguish, and all was still again. Not a sound broke the appalling quiet. Not a leaf rustled, for the world seemed shorn of all foliage. Not a sound came from the insect world, for even the smallest, the most minute of such life seemed to have fled, or been destroyed. There was neither the flutter of a wing, nor the voice of the prowling carnivora, for even the winged denizens of the mountains and the haunting scavengers had fled in terror from such a wilderness of desolation.

  “Buck, oh, my Buck! Speak, speak! He’s dead! Oh, my God, he’s dead!”

  Louder the voice came, and now in its wail was a note of hysteria. Fear had made harsh the velvet woman’s tones. Fear, and a rising resentment against the cruel sentence that had been passed upon her.

  She crouched down, rocking herself amidst a low scrub upon which the dead leaves still hung where the fires had scorched them. But the fire had not actually passed over them. A wide spread of barren rock intervened between the now skeleton woods and where the girl sat huddled.

  In front of her lay the figure of a man, disheveled and bleeding, and scarcely recognizable for the staunch youth who had yielded himself to the buffets of life that the woman he loved might be spared.

  But Joan only saw the radiant young face she loved, the slim, graceful figure so full of life and strength. He was hers. And—and death had snatched him from her. Death had claimed him, when all that she could ever long for seemed to be within her grasp. Death, ruthless, fierce, hateful death had crushed out that life in its cruellest, most merciless fashion.

  She saw nothing of the ruin which lay about her. She had no thought of anything else, she had no thought of those others. All she knew was that her Buck, her brave Buck, lay before her—dead.

  The girl suddenly turned her despairing eyes to the white heavens, their deep blue depths turned to a wonderful violet of emotion. Her wealth of golden hair hung loose about her shoulders, trailing about her on the sodden earth, where it had fallen in the midst of the disaster that had come upon her. Her rounded young figure was bent like the figure of an aged woman, and the drawn lines of anguish on her beautiful face gave her an age she did not possess.

  “Oh, he is not dead!” she cried, in a vain appeal. “Tell me he is not dead!” she cried, to the limitless space beyond the clouds. “He is all I have, all I have in the world. Oh, God, have mercy upon me! Have mercy!”

  Her only reply was the stillness. The stillness as of death. She raised her hands to her face. There were no tears. She was beyond that poor comfort. Dry, hard sobs racked her body, and drove the rising fever to her poor brain.

  For long moments she remained thus.

  Then, after a while, her sobs ceased and she became quite still. She dropped her hands inertly from her face, and let them lie in her lap, nerveless, helpless, while she gazed upon the well-loved features, so pale under the grime and tanning of the skin.

  She sat quite still for many minutes. It almost seemed as if the power of reason had at last left her, so colorless was her look, so unchanging was her vacant expression. But at last she stirred. And with her movement a strange light grew in her eyes. It was a look bordering upon the insane, yet it was full of resolve, a desperate resolve. Her lips were tightly compressed, and she breathed hard.

  She made no sound. There were no further lamentations. Slowly she reached out one hand toward the beloved body. Nor was the movement a caress. It passed across the tattered garments, through which the painfully contused flesh peered hideously out at her. It moved with definite purpose toward one of the gaping holsters upon the man’s waist-belt. Her hand came to a pause over the protruding butt of a revolver. Just for a moment there was hesitation. Then it dropped upon it and her fingers clasped the weapon firmly. She withdrew it, and in a moment it rested in her lap.

  She gazed down upon it with straining, hopeless eyes. It was as if she were struggling to nerve herself for that one last act of cowardice which the despairing find so hard to resist. Then, with a deep-drawn sigh, she raised the weapon with its muzzle ominously pointing at her bosom.

  Again came a pause.

  Then she closed her eyes, as though fearing to witness the passing of the daylight from her life, and her forefinger moved to embrace the trigger. It reached its object, and its pressure tightened.

  But as it tightened, and the trigger even moved, she felt the warm grip of a hand close over hers, and the pistol was turned from its direction with a wrench.

  Her startled eyes abruptly opened, and her grip upon the weapon relaxed, while a cry broke from her ashen lips. She had left the gun in Buck’s hand, and his dark eyes were gazing into hers from his bed amongst the crushed branches of the bush amidst which he was lying.

  For long moments she stared at him almost without understanding. Then, slowly, the color returned to her cheeks and lips, and great tears of joy welled up into her loving eyes.

  “Buck,” she murmured, as the heavy tears slowly rolled down her cheeks, and her bosom heaved with unspeakable joy. “My—my Buck.”

  For answer the man’s eyes smiled. Her heaven had opened at last.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  —IN THE WILDERNESS

  The golden sun was high in the heavens. Its splendor was pouring down upon a gently steaming earth. But all its joyous light, all its perfect beneficence could not undo one particle of the havoc the long dark hours of night had wrought.

  High up on a shattered eminence, where a sea of tumbled rock marked the face of Devil’s Hill, where the great hot lake had been held suspended, Joan and Buck gazed out upon the battle-ground of nature’s forces.

  Presently the girl’s eyes came back to the face of her lover.
She could not long keep them from the face, which, such a few hours ago, she had believed she would never behold again in life. She felt as though he were one returned to her from the grave, and feared lest she should wake to find his returning only a dream.

  He was a strange figure. The tattered remains of his clothing were scarcely enough to cover his nakedness, and Joan, with loving, unskilled hands, had lavered and dressed his wounds with portions of her own undergarments and the waters of the creek, whither, earlier, she had laboriously supported his enfeebled body. But Providence had spared him an added mercy besides bringing him back to life. It seemed a sheer miracle that his bones had been left whole. His flesh was torn, his whole body was terribly bruised and lacerated, but that worst of all disasters in life had been spared him, and he was left with the painful use of every limb.

  But the thought of this miracle left the man untouched. Only did Joan remember, and offer up her thankfulness. The man was of the wild, he was young, life was with him, life with all its joys and sorrows, all its shadowy possibilities, so he recked nothing of what he had escaped. That was his way.

  While Joan’s devoted eyes watched the steady light in his, staring out so intently at the wreck of world before him, no word passed her lips. It was as though he were the lord of their fate and she waited his commands.

  But for long Buck had no thought for their personal concerns. He forgot even the pains which racked his torn body, he forgot even the regrets which the destruction he now beheld had first inspired him with. He was marveling, he was awed at the thought of those dread elements, those titanic forces he had witnessed at play.

  There lay the hideous skeleton picked bare to the bones. Every semblance of the beauty lines, which, in the earth’s mature completion, it had worn, had vanished, and only mouldering remains were left. How had it happened? What terrible, or sublime purpose, had been achieved during that night of terror? He could not think.