Willa Cather

by Willa Cather

  Thea sat up straight and stared at him in alarm, glared into his eyes. “Perfectly hideous!” she exclaimed.

  Fred dropped back against the old stonework and laughed deep in his chest. “Well, don’t be frightened. I won’t offer them. You’re not a nest-building bird. You know I always liked your song, ‘Me for the jolt of the breakers!’ I understand.”

  She rose impatiently and walked to the edge of the cliff. “It’s not that so much. It’s waking up every morning with the feeling that your life is your own, and your strength is your own, and your talent is your own; that you’re all there, and there’s no sag in you.” She stood for a moment as if she were tortured by uncertainty, then turned suddenly back to him. “Don’t talk about these things any more now,” she entreated. “It isn’t that I want to keep anything from you. The trouble is that I’ve got nothing to keep—except (you know as well as I) that feeling. I told you about it in Chicago once. But it always makes me unhappy to talk about it. It will spoil the day. Will you go for a climb with me?” She held out her hands with a smile so eager that it made Ottenburg feel how much she needed to get away from herself.

  He sprang up and caught the hands she put out so cordially, and stood swinging them back and forth. “I won’t tease you. A word’s enough to me. But I love it, all the same. Understand?” He pressed her hands and dropped them. “Now, where are you going to drag me?”

  “I want you to drag me. Over there, to the other houses. They are more interesting than these.” She pointed across the gorge to the row of white houses in the other cliff. “The trail is broken away, but I got up there once. It’s possible. You have to go to the bottom of the canyon, cross the creek, and then go up hand-over-hand.”

  Ottenburg, lounging against the sunny wall, his hands in the pockets of his jacket, looked across at the distant dwellings. “It’s an awful climb,” he sighed, “when I could be perfectly happy here with my pipe. However—” He took up his stick and hat and followed Thea down the water trail. “Do you climb this path every day? You surely earn your bath. I went down and had a look at your pool the other afternoon. Neat place, with all those little cottonwoods. Must be very becoming.”

  “Think so?” Thea said over her shoulder, as she swung round a turn.

  “Yes, and so do you, evidently. I’m becoming expert at reading your meaning in your back. I’m behind you so much on these single-foot trails. You don’t wear stays, do you?”

  “Not here.”

  “I wouldn’t, anywhere, if I were you. They will make you less elastic. The side muscles get flabby. If you go in for opera, there’s a fortune in a flexible body. Most of the German singers are clumsy, even when they’re well set up.”

  Thea switched a piñon branch back at him. “Oh, I’ll never get fat! That I can promise you.”

  Fred smiled, looking after her. “Keep that promise, no matter how many others you break,” he drawled.

  The upward climb, after they had crossed the stream, was at first a breathless scramble through underbrush. When they reached the big boulders, Ottenburg went first because he had the longer leg-reach, and gave Thea a hand when the step was quite beyond her, swinging her up until she could get a foothold. At last they reached a little platform among the rocks, with only a hundred feet of jagged, sloping wall between them and the cliff-houses.

  Ottenburg lay down under a pine tree and declared that he was going to have a pipe before he went any farther. “It’s a good thing to know when to stop, Thea,” he said meaningly.

  “I’m not going to stop now until I get there,” Thea insisted. “I’ll go on alone.”

  Fred settled his shoulder against the tree-trunk. “Go on if you like, but I’m here to enjoy myself. If you meet a rattler on the way, have it out with him.”

  She hesitated, fanning herself with her felt hat. “I never have met one.”

  “There’s reasoning for you,” Fred murmured languidly.

  Thea turned away resolutely and began to go up the wall, using an irregular cleft in the rock for a path. The cliff, which looked almost perpendicular from the bottom, was really made up of ledges and boulders, and behind these she soon disappeared. For a long while Fred smoked with half-closed eyes, smiling to himself now and again. Occasionally he lifted an eyebrow as he heard the rattle of small stones among the rocks above. “In a temper,” he concluded; “do her good.” Then he subsided into warm drowsiness and listened to the locusts in the yuccas, and the tap-tap of the old woodpecker that was never weary of assaulting the big pine.

  Fred had finished his pipe and was wondering whether he wanted another, when he heard a call from the cliff far above him. Looking up, he saw Thea standing on the edge of a projecting crag. She waved to him and threw her arm over her head, as if she were snapping her fingers in the air.

  As he saw her there between the sky and the gulf, with that great wash of air and the morning light about her, Fred recalled the brilliant figure at Mrs. Nathanmeyer’s. Thea was one of those people who emerge, unexpectedly, larger than we are accustomed to see them. Even at this distance one got the impression of muscular energy and audacity,—a kind of brilliancy of motion,—of a personality that carried across big spaces and expanded among big things. Lying still, with his hands under his head, Ottenburg rhetorically addressed the figure in the air. “You are the sort that used to run wild in Germany, dressed in their hair and a piece of skin. Soldiers caught ‘em in nets. Old Nathanmeyer,” he mused, “would like a peep at her now. Knowing old fellow. Always buying those Zorn etchings of peasant girls bathing. No sag in them either. Must be the cold climate.” He sat up. “She’ll begin to pitch rocks on me if I don’t move.” In response to another impatient gesture from the crag, he rose and began swinging slowly up the trail.

  It was the afternoon of that long day. Thea was lying on a blanket in the door of her rock house. She and Ottenburg had come back from their climb and had lunch, and he had gone off for a nap in one of the cliff-houses farther down the path. He was sleeping peacefully, his coat under his head and his face turned toward the wall.

  Thea, too, was drowsy, and lay looking through halfclosed eyes up at the blazing blue arch over the rim of the canyon. She was thinking of nothing at all. Her mind, like her body, was full of warmth, lassitude, physical content. Suddenly an eagle, tawny and of great size, sailed over the cleft in which she lay, across the arch of sky. He dropped for a moment into the gulf between the walls, then wheeled, and mounted until his plumage was so steeped in light that he looked like a golden bird. He swept on, following the course of the canyon a little way and then disappearing beyond the rim. Thea sprang to her feet as if she had been thrown up from the rock by volcanic action. She stood rigid on the edge of the stone shelf, straining her eyes after that strong, tawny flight. O eagle of eagles! Endeavor, achievement, desire, glorious striving of human art! From a cleft in the heart of the world she saluted it . . . It had come all the way; when men lived in caves, it was there. A vanished race; but along the trails, in the stream, under the spreading cactus, there still glittered in the sun the bits of their frail clay vessels, fragments of their desire.

  VII

  From the day of Fred’s arrival, he and Thea were unceasingly active. They took long rides into the Navajo pine forests, bought turquoises and silver bracelets from the wandering Indian herdsmen, and rode twenty miles to Flagstaff upon the slightest pretext. Thea had never felt this pleasant excitement about any man before, and she found herself trying very hard to please young Ottenburg. She was never tired, never dull. There was a zest about waking up in the morning and dressing, about walking, riding, even about sleep.

  One morning when Thea came out from her room at seven o’clock, she found Henry and Fred on the porch, looking up at the sky. The day was already hot and there was no breeze. The sun was shining, but heavy brown clouds were hanging in the west, like the smoke of a forest fire. She and Fred had meant to ride to Flagstaff that morning, but Biltmer advised against it, foretelling a storm.
After breakfast they lingered about the house, waiting for the weather to make up its mind. Fred had brought his guitar, and as they had the dining-room to themselves, he made Thea go over some songs with him. They got interested and kept it up until Mrs. Biltmer came to set the table for dinner. Ottenburg knew some of the Mexican things Spanish Johnny used to sing. Thea had never before happened to tell him about Spanish Johnny, and he seemed more interested in Johnny than in Dr. Archie or Wunsch.

  After dinner they were too restless to endure the ranch house any longer, and ran away to the canyon to practice with single-sticks. Fred carried a slicker and a sweater, and he made Thea wear one of the rubber hats that hung in Biltmer’s gun-room. As they crossed the pasture land the clumsy slicker kept catching in the lacings of his leggings.

  “Why don’t you drop that thing?” Thea asked. “I won’t mind a shower. I’ve been wet before.”

  “No use taking chances.”

  From the canyon they were unable to watch the sky, since only a strip of the zenith was visible. The flat ledge about the watch-tower was the only level spot large enough for single-stick exercise, and they were still practicing there when, at about four o’clock, a tremendous roll of thunder echoed between the cliffs and the atmosphere suddenly became thick.

  Fred thrust the sticks in a cleft in the rock. “We’re in for it, Thea. Better make for your cave where there are blankets.” He caught her elbow and hurried her along the path before the cliff-houses. They made the half-mile at a quick trot, and as they ran the rocks and the sky and the air between the cliffs turned a turbid green, like the color in a moss agate. When they reached the blanketed rock room, they looked at each other and laughed. Their faces had taken on a greenish pallor. Thea’s hair, even, was green.

  “Dark as pitch in here,” Fred exclaimed as they hurried over the old rock doorstep. “But it’s warm. The rocks hold the heat. It’s going to be terribly cold outside, all right.” He was interrupted by a deafening peal of thunder. “Lord, what an echo! Lucky you don’t mind. It’s worth watching out there. We needn’t come in yet.”

  The green light grew murkier and murkier. The smaller vegetation was blotted out. The yuccas, the cedars, and piñons stood dark and rigid, like bronze. The swallows flew up with sharp, terrified twitterings. Even the quaking asps were still. While Fred and Thea watched from the doorway, the light changed to purple. Clouds of dark vapor, like chlorine gas, began to float down from the head of the canyon and hung between them and the cliff-houses in the opposite wall. Before they knew it, the wall itself had disappeared. The air was positively venomous-looking, and grew colder every minute. The thunder seemed to crash against one cliff, then against the other, and to go shrieking off into the inner canyon.

  The moment the rain broke, it beat the vapors down. In the gulf before them the water fell in spouts, and dashed from the high cliffs overhead. It tore aspens and chokecherry bushes out of the ground and left the yuccas hanging by their tough roots. Only the little cedars stood black and unmoved in the torrents that fell from so far above. The rock chamber was full of fine spray from the streams of water that shot over the doorway. Thea crept to the back wall and rolled herself in a blanket, and Fred threw the heavier blankets over her. The wool of the Navajo sheep was soon kindled by the warmth of her body, and was impenetrable to dampness. Her hair, where it hung below the rubber hat, gathered the moisture like a sponge. Fred put on the slicker, tied the sweater about his neck, and settled himself cross-legged beside her. The chamber was so dark that, although he could see the outline of her head and shoulders, he could not see her face. He struck a wax match to light his pipe. As he sheltered it between his hands, it sizzled and sputtered, throwing a yellow flicker over Thea and her blankets.

  “You look like a gypsy,” he said as he dropped the match. “Any one you’d rather be shut up with than me? No? Sure about that?”

  “I think I am. Aren’t you cold?”

  “Not especially.” Fred smoked in silence, listening to the roar of the water outside. “We may not get away from here right away,” he remarked.

  “I shan’t mind. Shall you?”

  He laughed grimly and pulled on his pipe. “Do you know where you’re at, Miss Thea Kronborg?” he said at last. “You’ve got me going pretty hard, I suppose you know. I’ve had a lot of sweethearts, but I’ve never been so much—engrossed before. What are you going to do about it?” He heard nothing from the blankets. “Are you going to play fair, or is it about my cue to cut away?”

  “I’ll play fair. I don’t see why you want to go.”

  “What do you want me around for?—to play with?”

  Thea struggled up among the blankets. “I want you for everything. I don’t know whether I’m what people call in love with you or not. In Moonstone that meant sitting in a hammock with somebody. I don’t want to sit in a hammock with you, but I want to do almost everything else. Oh, hundreds of things!”

  “If I run away, will you go with me?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that. Maybe I would.” She freed herself from her wrappings and stood up. “It’s not raining so hard now. Hadn’t we better start this minute? It will be night before we get to Biltmer’s.”

  Fred struck another match. “It’s seven. I don’t know how much of the path may be washed away. I don’t even know whether I ought to let you try it without a lantern.”

  Thea went to the doorway and looked out. “There’s nothing else to do. The sweater and the slicker will keep me dry, and this will be my chance to find out whether these shoes are really water-tight. They cost a week’s salary.” She retreated to the back of the cave. “It’s getting blacker every minute.”

  Ottenburg took a brandy flask from his coat pocket. “Better have some of this before we start. Can you take it without water?”

  Thea lifted it obediently to her lips. She put on the sweater and Fred helped her to get the clumsy slicker on over it. He buttoned it and fastened the high collar. She could feel that his hands were hurried and clumsy. The coat was too big, and he took off his necktie and belted it in at the waist. While she tucked her hair more securely under the rubber hat he stood in front of her, between her and the gray doorway, without moving.

  “Are you ready to go?” she asked carelessly.

  “If you are,” he spoke quietly, without moving, except to bend his head forward a little.

  Thea laughed and put her hands on his shoulders. “You know how to handle me, don’t you?” she whispered. For the first time, she kissed him without constraint or embarrassment.

  “Thea, Thea, Thea!” Fred whispered her name three times, shaking her a little as if to waken her. It was too dark to see, but he could feel that she was smiling.

  When she kissed him she had not hidden her face on his shoulder,—she had risen a little on her toes, and stood straight and free. In that moment when he came close to her actual personality, he felt in her the same expansion that he had noticed at Mrs. Nathanmeyer’s. She became freer and stronger under impulses. When she rose to meet him like that, he felt her flash into everything that she had ever suggested to him, as if she filled out her own shadow.

  She pushed him away and shot past him out into the rain. “Now for it, Fred,” she called back exultantly. The rain was pouring steadily down through the dying gray twilight, and muddy streams were spouting and foaming over the cliff.

  Fred caught her and held her back. “Keep behind me, Thea. I don’t know about the path. It may be gone altogether. Can’t tell what there is under this water.”

  But the path was older than the white man’s Arizona. The rush of water had washed away the dust and stones that lay on the surface, but the rock skeleton of the Indian trail was there, ready for the foot. Where the streams poured down through gullies, there was always a cedar or a piñon to cling to. By wading and slipping and climbing, they got along. As they neared the head of the canyon, where the path lifted and rose in steep loops to the surface of the plateau, the climb w
as more difficult. The earth above had broken away and washed down over the trail, bringing rocks and bushes and even young trees with it. The last ghost of daylight was dying and there was no time to lose. The canyon behind them was already black.

  “We’ve got to go right through the top of this pine tree, Thea. No time to hunt a way around. Give me your hand.” After they had crashed through the mass of branches, Fred stopped abruptly. “Gosh, what a hole! Can you jump it? Wait a minute.”

  He cleared the washout, slipped on the wet rock at the farther side, and caught himself just in time to escape a tumble. “If I could only find something to hold to, I could give you a hand. It’s so cursed dark, and there are no trees here where they’re needed. Here’s something; it’s a root. It will hold all right.” He braced himself on the rock, gripped the crooked root with one hand and swung himself across toward Thea, holding out his arm. “Good jump! I must say you don’t lose your nerve in a tight place. Can you keep at it a little longer? We’re almost out. Have to make that next ledge. Put your foot on my knee and catch something to pull by.”

  Thea went up over his shoulder. “It’s hard ground up here,” she panted. “Did I wrench your arm when I slipped then? It was a cactus I grabbed, and it startled me.”

  “Now, one more pull and we’re on the level.”

  They emerged gasping upon the black plateau. In the last five minutes the darkness had solidified and it seemed as if the skies were pouring black water. They could not see where the sky ended or the plain began. The light at the ranch house burned a steady spark through the rain. Fred drew Thea’s arm through his and they struck off toward the light. They could not see each other, and the rain at their backs seemed to drive them along. They kept laughing as they stumbled over tufts of grass or stepped into slippery pools. They were delighted with each other and with the adventure which lay behind them.