The Golden Woman

by Cullum, Ridgwell

  His eyes dropped to that which lay immediately before him. He was gazing into chaotic depths of torn black rock amidst which a great cascade of water poured out from the bowels of the earth and flowed on to join the waters of Yellow Creek. It was the site where had hung the suspended lake. Half the great hill had been torn away by some terrible subterranean upheaval, which seemed to have solely occurred on that side where the lake had been, and where the hill had confronted the distant camp. Gone were the workings of the miners. Gone was that great bed of auriferous soil. And in their places lay an ocean of rock, so vast, so torn, that the power which had hurled it broadcast was inconceivable to his staggered mind.

  For a while he contemplated the scene with thoughts struggling and emotions stirring. Then with a sigh he looked out beyond. The valley of the creek, that little narrow strip of open grass-land, bordered by pine forests all its length, was gone, too. The creek was now a wide-spread expanse of flowing water, which had swept from its path the last vestige of the handiwork of those people who had lived upon the banks of the original stream.

  There was not a sign of a house or log hut to be seen anywhere. Gone, gone, swept away like the buildings of children’s toy bricks.

  What of those who had dwelt where the water now flowed? Had they, too, gone on the rushing tide? He wondered. Where had been their escape? Maybe they had had time. And yet, somehow it seemed doubtful. The skeleton forests stretched out on every hand to a great distance. They backed where the camp had stood. They rose up beyond the northern limits. To the west of the water it was the same. Had he not witnessed the furnace upon that side? And here, here to the south would they have faced this terrible barrier belching out its torrential waters, perhaps amidst fire and smoke?

  He did not know. He could not think. They were gone as everything else that indicated life was gone, and—they two were left alone in a wilderness of stricken earth.

  He sighed again as he thought of the gracious woods which the long centuries had built up. All Nature’s wonderful labors, the patient efforts of ages, wiped out in a few moments of her own freakish mood. It was heart-breaking to one who had always loved the wild hills where the all-powerful Dame’s whimsies had so long run riot.

  Then as he stared out upon the steaming horizon where hills greater and greater rose up confronting him and narrowed the limits of his vision, he saw where the dividing line ran. He remembered suddenly that even in her destructions Nature had still controlled. The floods of the heavens must have been abruptly poured out at some time during the night, or the fire would still be raging on, searching out fresh fuel beyond those hills, traveling on on and on through the limitless forests which lay to the north, and south, and west.

  The memory gave him fresh hope. It told him that the world was still outside waiting to welcome them to its hostels. And so he turned at last to the patient woman at his side.

  “It seems so a’mighty queer, little Joan,” he said gently. “It seems so a’mighty queer I can’t rightly get the hang of things. Yesterday—yesterday—why, yesterday all this,” he waved an arm to indicate the broken world about him, “was as God made it, an’ now ther’s jest ruin—blank ruin that’ll take all your life, and mine, an’ dozens who’re comin’ after us to—to build up agin. Yesterday this camp was full of busy folk chasin’ a livin’ from the products Nature had set here. Now she’s wiped ’em out. Why? Yesterday a good man was threatened by man’s law, an’ it looked as if that law was to suck us all into its web an’ make criminals of us. Now he’s gone an’ the law’ll be chased back to hunt around for its prey in places with less danger to ’em. It’s all queer—mighty queer. An’ it’s queerer still to think of you an’ me sittin’ here puzzlin’ out these things.”

  “Yes.”

  Joan nodded without removing her eyes from the face she loved so well. Then after a pause she went on—

  “You think—he’s dead?”

  Buck was some time before he answered her. His grave eyes were fixed on a spot across the water, where a break in the charred remains of the forest revealed a sky-line of green grass.

  “How else?” he said, at last. “He was behind me with your aunt. He was on the hill. You’ve scoured what remains of the plateau. Wal, he ain’t there, an’ he didn’t come down the path wher’ we come. We ain’t see ’em anyways. Yep,” he went on, with a sigh, “guess the Padre’s dead, an’ one o’ them rocks down ther’ is markin’ his grave. Seems queer. He went with her. She was the woman he had loved. They’ve gone together, even though she just—hated him. He was a good man an’—he’d got grit. He was the best man in the world an’—an’ my big friend.”

  His voice was husky with emotion, and something like a sob came with his last word, and Joan’s eyes filled with tears of sympathy and regret.

  “Tell me,” he went on, after a pause. “I ain’t got it right. The fall knocked you plumb out. An’ then?”

  His eyes were still on the distant break of the trees.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Joan said wearily, spreading out her drenched skirt to the now blazing sun. “I know I woke up quite suddenly, feeling so cold that even my teeth were chattering. The rain was falling like—like hailstones. It was dark, so dark, and I was terribly afraid. I called to you, but got no answer, and—and I thought I was alone. It was terrible. The thunder had ceased, and the lightning was no longer playing. There was no longer any forest fire, or—or earthquakings. All was still and black, and the rain—oh, it was dreadful. I sat where I was, calling you at intervals. I sat on, and on, and on, till I thought the dark would never go, that day would never break again, and I began to think that all the world had come to an end, and I, alone, was left. Then at last the rain stopped, and I saw that day was breaking. But it was not until broad daylight that I knew where I was. And then—and then I saw you lying close at my feet. Oh, Buck, don’t let me think of it any more. Don’t remind me of it. It was awful. I believed you were dead—dead. And it seemed to me that my heart died, too. It was so dreadful that I think I—I was mad. And then—you saved me—again.”

  Buck raised a stiff arm and gently drew her toward him with a wonderfully protecting movement. The girl yielded herself to him, and he kissed her sweet upturned lips.

  “No, little Joan, gal. Don’t you think of it. We got other things to think of—a whole heap.”

  “Yes, yes,” cried the girl eagerly. “We’ve got life—together.”

  Buck nodded with a grave smile.

  “An’ we must sure keep it.”

  He released her and struggled to his feet, where he stood supporting himself by clinging to a projection of rock.

  “What do you mean, Buck? What are you going to do?” Joan demanded anxiously, springing to her feet and shaking out her drenched skirt.

  “Do? Why, look yonder. Ther’ across the water. Ther’ wher’ them burnt-up woods break. See that patch o’ grass on the sky-line? Look close, an’ you’ll see two—somethings standin’ right ther’. Wal, we got to git near enough that way so Cæsar can hear my whistle.”

  “Cæsar? Is—is that Cæsar? Why—how——?”

  Buck nodded his head.

  “Maybe I’m guessin’. I ain’t sayin’. But—wal, you can’t be sure this ways off. Y’ see, Cæsar has a heap o’ sense, an’ his saddle-bags are loaded down with a heap o’ good food. An’ you’re needin’ that—same as me.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXXIX

  LOVE’S VICTORY

  The rightness of Buck’s conjecture was proved before evening, but not without long and painful effort. Joan was utterly weary, and the man was reduced to such weakness and disability as, in all his life, he had never known.

  But they faced their task with the knowledge that with every moment of delay in procuring food their chances of escape from that land of ruin were lessening. With food, and, consequently, with Buck’s horse, safety would be practically assured. They would then, too, be able to prosecute a search for the man they both had l
earned to love so well.

  With nightfall their hopes were realized, but only at a terrible cost to the man. So great had become his weakness and suffering that it was Joan who was forced to make provision for the night.

  Both horses were grazing together with an unconcern that was truly equine. Nor, when reviewed, was their escape the miracle it appeared. At the height of the storm they had been left on the farthest confines of the plateau of Devil’s Hill, where no fire would reach them, and at a considerable distance from the lake. Their native terror of fire would have held them there in a state bordering on paralysis. In all probability no power on earth could have induced them to stir from the spot where they had been left, until the drenching rain had blotted out the furnace raging below. This had been Buck’s thought. Then, perhaps, laboring under a fear of the quakings caused by the subterranean fires of the hill, and their hungry stomachs crying out for food, they had left the dreaded hill in quest of the pastures they craved.

  The well-stocked saddle-bags, which Buck’s forethought had filled for the long trail, now provided these lonely wanderers in the wilderness with the food they needed, the saddle-blankets and the saddles furnished their open-air couches, and the horses, well, the horses were there to afford them escape when the time came, and, in the meantime, could be left to recover from the effects of the storm and stress through which they, too, had passed.

  With the following dawn Buck’s improvement was wonderful, and Joan awoke from a deep, night-long slumber, refreshed and hopeful. An overhauling of their supplies showed them sufficient food, used sparingly, to last a week. And with this knowledge Buck outlined their plans to the girl, who hung upon his every word.

  “We can’t quit yet,” he said, when they had broken their fast.

  The girl waited, watching his dark contemplative eyes as they looked across the water at the diminished hill.

  “Nope,” he went on. “We owe him more’n that. We must chase around, an’—find him. We must——”

  “Yes,” Joan broke in, her eyes full of eager acquiescence. “We must not leave him—to—to—the coyotes.” She shuddered.

  “No. Guess I’ll git the horses.”

  “You? Oh, Buck—let me. I am well and strong. It is my turn to do something now. Your work is surely finished.”

  Her pleading eyes smiled up into his, but the man shook his head with that decision she had come to recognize and obey almost without question.

  “Not on your life, little gal,” he said, in his kindly, resolute fashion, and Joan was left to take her woman’s place in their scheme of things.

  But she shared in the search of the hill and the woods. She shared in the ceaseless hunt for three long, weary, heart-breaking days over a land of desolation and loneliness. She rode at Buck’s side hour after hour on the sturdy horse that had served the Padre so faithfully, till her body was healthily weary, and her eyes grew heavy with straining. But she welcomed the work. For, with the tender mother eye of the woman in her, she beheld that which gladdened her heart, and made the hardest work a mere labor of love. Each passing day, almost with each passing hour, she witnessed the returning vigor of the man she loved. His recuperative powers were marvelous, and she watched his bodily healing as though he were her own helpless offspring.

  For the rest their search was hopeless. The battling forces of a storm-riven earth had claimed their toll to the last fraction, and with the cunning of the miser had secreted the levy. Not a trace was there of any human life but their own. The waters from the hill swept the little valley, and hugged to their bosom the secrets that lay beneath their surface. And the fall of rock held deeply buried all that which it had embraced in its rending. The farm was utterly destroyed, and with it had fallen victims every head of stock Joan had possessed. The old fur fort had yielded to the fire demon, where, for all the ages, it had resisted the havoc of storm. There was nothing left to mark the handiwork of man, nothing but the terrible destruction it had brought about.

  Thus it was on the fourth morning, after breaking their fast, and the horses had been saddled, Buck once more packed the saddle-bags and strapped them into their places behind the saddles. Joan watched him without question. She no longer had any question for that which he chose to ordain.

  When all was ready he lifted her into her saddle, which she rode astride, in the manner of the prairie. She was conscious of his strength, now returned to its full capacity. She was nothing in his arms now, she might have been a child by the ease with which he lifted her. He looked to her horse’s bridle, he saw that she was comfortable. Then he vaulted into Cæsar’s saddle with all his old agility.

  “Which way, Buck?” The girl spoke with the easy manner of one who has little concern, but her eyes belied her words. A strange thrill was storming in her bosom.

  “Leeson Butte,” said Buck, a deep glow shining in his dark eyes.

  Joan let her horse amble beside the measured, stately walk of Cæsar. Her reins hung loose, and her beautiful eyes were shining as they gazed out eagerly ahead. She was thrilling with a happiness that conflicted with a strange nervousness at the naming of their destination. She had no protest to offer, no question. It was as if the lord of her destiny had spoken, and it was her happiness and desire to obey.

  They rode on, and their way lay amidst the charred skeleton of a wide, stately wood. The air was still faint with the reek of burning. There was no darkness here beyond the blackened tree trunks, for the brilliant summer sun lit up the glades, which, for ages, no sun’s rays had ever penetrated. The sense of ruin was passing from the minds of these children of the wilderness. Their focus had already adapted itself. Almost, even, their youthful eyes and hearts saw new beauties springing up about them. It was the work of that wonderful fount of hope, which dies so hardly in us all, and in youth never.

  At length they left the mouldering skeletons behind them, and the gracious, waving, tawny grass of the plains opened out before their gladdened eyes. A light breeze tempered the glorious sunlight, and set ripples afloat upon the waving crests of the motionless rollers of a grassy ocean.

  Buck drew his horse down to a walk beside the girl, and his look had lost its reflection of the sadness they were leaving behind. He had no desire now to look back. For all his life the memory of his “big friend” would remain, for the rest his way lay directly ahead, his life, and his—hope.

  “It’s all wonderful—wonderful out here, little Joan,” he said, smiling tenderly down upon her sweet face from the superior height at which Cæsar carried him. “Seems like we’re goin’ to read pages of a—fresh book. Seems like the old book’s all mussed up, so we can’t learn its lessons ever again.”

  Joan returned the warmth of his gaze. But she shook her head with an assumption of wisdom.

  “It’s the same book, dear, only it’s a different chapter. You see the story always goes on. It must go on—to the end. Characters drop out. They die, or are—killed. Incidents happen, some pleasant, some—full of sadness. But that’s all part of the story, and must be. The story always goes on to the end. You see,” she added with a tender smile, “the hero’s still in the picture.”

  “An’ the—gal-hero.”

  Joan shook her head decidedly.

  “There’s no heroine to this story,” she said. “You need courage to be a heroine, and I—I have none. Do you know, Buck,” she went on seriously, “when I look back on all that’s gone I realize how much my own silly weakness has caused the trouble. If I had only had the courage to laugh at my aunt’s prophecies, my aunt’s distorted pronouncements, all this trouble would have been saved. I should never have come to the farm. My aunt would never have found the Padre. Those men would never have fired those woods when they burnt my farm, and—and the gentle-hearted Padre would never have lost his life.”

  It was Buck’s turn to shake his head.

  “Wrong, wrong, little gal,” he said with a warmth of decision. “When you came to us—to me, an’ we saw your trouble, we jest set to work to
clear a heap o’ cobwebs from your mind. That was up to us, because you were sure sufferin’, and you needed help. But all we said, all we told you not to believe, those things were sure marked out, an’ you, an’ all of us had to go thro’ with ’em. We can’t talk away the plans o’ Providence. You jest had to come to that farm. You jest had to do all the things you did. Maybe your auntie, in that queer way of hers, told you the truth, maybe she saw things us others didn’t jest see. Who can tell?”

  Joan’s eyes lit with a startled look as she listened to the man’s words. They made her wonder at the change in him. Had that terrible cataclysm impressed him with a new view of the life by which he was surrounded? It might be. Then, suddenly, a fresh thought occurred to her. A memory rose up and confronted her, and a sudden joyous anxiety thrilled her.

  “Do you really think that, Buck?” she cried eagerly. “Do you? Do you?”

  “Things seem changed, little gal,” he said, half ruefully. “Seems to me the past week’s been years an’ years long.” He laughed. “Maybe I got older. Maybe I think those things now, same as most folks think ’em—when they get older.”

  But Joan was full of her own thought, and she went on eagerly, passing his reasons by.

  “Listen, Buck, when Aunt Mercy told me all my troubles, she told me something else. But it seemed so small by the side of those other things, that I—that I almost forgot it. What was it? Her words? Yes, yes, I asked her, was there no hope for me? No means by which I could be saved from my fate? And she said that my only hope lay in finding a love that was stronger than death. These were her words——

  “‘I loved your father with a passion nothing, no disaster could destroy. Go you, child, and find you such a love. Go you and find a love so strong that no disaster can kill it. And maybe life may still have some compensations for you, maybe it will lift the curse from your suffering shoulders. It—it is the only thing in the world that is stronger than disaster. It is the only thing in the world that is stronger than—death.’”