The Valley of Silent Men

by James Oliver Curwood

  CHAPTER XXIII

  An hour later the fighting forces in his body dragged Kent back intoexistence. He opened his eyes. The shock of what had happened did notat once fall upon him. His first sensation was of awakening from asleep that had been filled with pain and horror.

  Then he saw a black rock wall opposite him; he heard the sullen roar ofthe stream; his eyes fell upon a vivid patch of light reflected fromthe setting sun. He dragged himself up until he was on his knees, andall at once a thing that was like an iron hoop--choking hissenses--seemed to break in his head, and he staggered to his feet,crying out Marette's name. Understanding inundated him with its horror,deadening his tongue after that first cry, filling his throat with amoaning, sobbing agony. Marette was gone. She was lost. She was dead.

  Swiftly, as reason came, his eyes took in his environment. For aquarter of a mile above him he could see the white spume between thechasm walls, darkening with the approach of night. He could hear moreclearly the roar of the death-floods. But close to him was smoothwater, and he stood now on a shelving tongue of rock and shale, uponwhich the current had flung him. In front of him was a rock wall.Behind him was another. There was no footing except where he stood. AndMarette was not with him.

  Only the truth could batter at his brain as he stood there. But hisphysical self refused to accept that truth. If he had lived, she mustlive! She was there--somewhere--along the shore--among the rocks--

  The moaning in his throat gave way to the voicing of her name. Heshouted, and listened. He swayed back along the tongue of rock to theboulder-strewn edge of the chasm wall. A hundred yards farther on wasthe opening of the Chute. He came out of this, his clothes torn fromhim, his body bleeding, unrecognizable, half a madman,--shouting hername more and more loudly. The glow of the setting sun struck him atlast. He was out from between the chasm walls, and it lighted up thegreen world for him. Ahead of him the river widened and swept on intranquil quiet.

  And now it was no longer fear that possessed him. It was the horrible,overwhelming certainty of the thing. The years fell from him, and hesobbed--sobbed like a boy stricken by some great childish grief, as hesearched along the edge of the shore. Over and over again he cried andwhispered Marette's name.

  But he did not shout it again, for he knew that she was dead. She wasgone from him forever. Yet he did not cease to search. The last of thesun went out. Twilight came, and then darkness. Even in that darknesshe continued to search for a mile below the Chute, calling her namemore loudly now, and listening always for the answer which he knewwould never come. The moon came out after a time, and hour after hourhe kept up his hopeless quest. He did not know how badly the rocks hadbattered and hurt him, and he scarcely knew when it was that exhaustiondropped him like a dead man in his tracks. When dawn came, it found himwandering away from the river, and toward noon of that day, he wasfound by Andre Boileau, the old white-haired half-breed who trapped onBurntwood Creek. Andre was shocked at the sight of his wounds and halfdragged and half carried him to his shack hidden away in the forest.

  For six days thereafter Kent remained at old Andre's place, simplybecause he had neither the strength nor the reason to move. Andrewondered that there were no broken bones in him. But his head wasterribly hurt, and it was that hurt that for three days and threenights made Kent hover with nerve-racking indecision between life anddeath. The fourth day reason came back to him, and Boileau fed himvenison broth. The fifth day he stood up. The sixth he thanked Andre,and said that he was ready to go.

  Andre outfitted him with old clothes, gave him a supply of food andGod's blessing. And Kent returned to the Chute, giving Andre tounderstand that his destination was Athabasca Landing.

  Kent knew that it was not wise for him to return to the river. He knewthat it would have been better for him both in mind and body had hegone in the opposite direction. But he no longer had in him the desireto fight, even for himself. He followed the lines of least resistance,and these led him back to the scene of the tragedy. His grief, when hereturned, was no longer the heartbreaking agony of that first night. Itwas a deep-seated, consuming fire that had already burned him out,heart and soul. Even caution was dead in him. He feared nothing,avoided nothing. Had the police boat been at the Chute, he would haverevealed himself without any thought of self-preservation. A ray ofhope would have been precious medicine to him. But there was no hope.Marette was dead. Her tender body was destroyed. And he was alone,unfathomably and hopelessly alone.

  And now, after he had reached the river again, something held himthere. From the head of the Chute to a bend in the river two milesbelow, his feet wore a beaten trail. Three or four times a day he wouldmake the trip, and along the path he set a few snares in which hecaught rabbits for food. Each night he made his bed in a crevice amongthe rocks at the foot of the Chute. At the end of a week the old JimKent was dead. Even O'Connor would not have recognized him with hisshaggy growth of beard, his hollow eyes, and the sunken cheeks whichthe beard failed to hide.

  And the fighting spirit in him also was dead. Once or twice thereleaped up in him a sudden passion demanding vengeance upon the accursedLaw that was accountable for the death of Marette, but even this flamesnuffed itself out quickly.

  And then, on the eighth day, he saw the edge of a thing that was almosthidden under an overhanging bank. He fished it out. It was Marette'slittle pack, and for many minutes before he opened it Kent crushed thesodden treasure to his breast, staring with half-mad eyes down where hehad found it, as if Marette must be there, too. Then he ran with it toan open space, where the sun fell warmly on a great, flat rock that waslevel with the ground, and with sobbing breath he opened it. It wasfilled with the things she had picked up quickly in her room the nightof their flight from Kedsty's bungalow, and as he drew them out one byone and placed them in the sun on the rock, a new and sudden rush oflife swept through his veins, and he sprang to his feet and faced theriver again, as if at last a hope had come to him. Then he looked downagain upon what she had treasured, and reaching out his arms to them,he whispered,

  "Marette--my little goddess--"

  Even in his grief the overwhelming mastery of his love for the one whowas dead brought a smile to his haggard and bearded face. For Marette,in filling her little pack on that night of hurried flight, had chosenstrange things. On the sunlit rock, where he had placed them, were apair of the little pumps which he had fallen on his knees to worship inher room, and with these she had crowded into the pack one of thebillowing, sweet-smelling dresses which had made his heart stand stillfor a moment when he first looked into their hiding-place. It was nolonger soft and cobwebby as it had been then, like down flutteringagainst his cheeks, but sodden and discolored, as it lay on the rockwith little rivulets of water running from it.

  With the shoes and the dress were the intimate necessities whichMarette had taken with her. But it was one of the pumps that Kentpicked up and crushed close to his ragged breast--one of the two shehad worn that first wonderful day she had come to see him at Cardigan'splace.

  This hour was the beginning of another change in Kent. It seemed to himthat a message had come to him from Marette herself, that the spirit ofher had returned to him and was with him now, stirring strange thingsin his soul and warming his blood with a new heat. She was goneforever, and yet she had come back to him, and the truth grew upon himthat this spirit of her would never leave him again as long as helived. He felt her nearness. Unconsciously he reached out his arms, anda strange happiness entered Into him to battle with grief andloneliness. His eyes shone with a new glow as they looked at her littlebelongings on the sunlit rock. It was as if they were flesh and bloodof her, a part of her heart and soul. They were the voice of her faithin him, her promise that she would be with him always. For the firsttime in many days Kent felt a new force within him, and he knew thatshe was not quite gone, that he had something of her left to fight for.

  That night he made his bed for a last time in the crevice between therocks, and his treasure was gathered within the p
rotecting circle ofhis arms as he slept.

  The next day he struck out north and east. On the fifth day after heleft the country of Andre Boileau he traded his watch to a half-breedfor a cheap gun, ammunition, a blanket, flour, and a cooking outfit.After that he had no hesitation in burying himself still deeper intothe forests.

  A month later no one would have recognized Kent as the one-time crackman of N Division. Bearded, ragged, long-haired, he wandered with noother purpose than to be alone and to get still farther away from theriver. Occasionally he talked with an Indian or a half-breed. Eachnight, though the weather was very warm, he made himself a smallcamp-fire, for it was always in these hours, with the fire-light abouthim, that he felt Marette was very near. It was then that he took outone by one the precious things that were in Marette's little pack. Heworshipped these things. The dress and each of the little shoes he hadwrapped in the velvety inner bark of the birch tree. He protected themfrom wet and storm. Had emergency called for it, he would have foughtfor them. They became, after a time, more precious than his own life,and in a vague sort of way at first he began to thank God that theriver had not robbed him of everything.

  Kent's inclination was not to fight himself into forgetfulness. Hewanted to remember every act, every word, every treasured caress thatchained him for all time to the love he had lost. Marette became more apart of him every day. Dead in the flesh, she was always at his side,nestling close in the shelter of his arms at night, walking with herhand in his during the day. And in this belief his grief was softenedby the sweet and merciful comfort of a possession of which neither mannor fate could rob him--a beloved Presence always with him.

  It was this Presence that rebuilt Kent. It urged him to throw up hishead again, to square his shoulders, to look life once more straight inthe face. It was both inspiration and courage to him and grew nearerand dearer to him as time passed. Early Autumn found him in the Fond duLac country, two hundred miles east of Fort Chippewyan. That Winter hejoined a Frenchman, and until February they trapped along the edges ofthe lower fingers of the Barrens.

  He came to think a great deal of Picard, his comrade. But he revealednothing of his secret to him, or of the new desire that was growing inhim. And as the Winter lengthened this desire became a deep and abidingyearning. It was with him night and day. He dreamed of it when heslept, and it was never out of his thoughts when awake. He wanted to goHOME. And when he thought of home, it was not of the Landing, and notof the country south. For him home meant only one place in the worldnow--the place where Marette had lived. Somewhere, hidden in themountains far north and west, was that mysterious Valley of Silent Menwhere they had been going when her body died. And the spirit of herwanted him to go to it now. It was like a voice pleading with him,urging him to go, to live there always where she had lived. He began toplan, and in this planning he found new joy and new life. He would findher home, her people, the valley that was to have been their paradise.So late in February, with his share of the Winter catch in his pack, hesaid good-by to Picard and faced the River again.