The Eye of Dread Part 23

"You'll be stronger before you know it, and then you'll want to leave, you know, and go for them yourself. Don't do that. I'll give your horse a bit more to eat and drink, and tie him again, then there'll be no need for you to leave this bunk until to-morrow. I'm to follow the trail you came up by, and not leave it until I come to--whoever it is?

Right. Do you give me your word, no matter how long gone I may be, not to leave my place here until I return, or send?"

"Oh, yes, yes."

"Good. I'll trust you. There's a better reason than I care to give you for this promise, young man. It's not a bad one."

The big man then made his preparations rapidly, pausing now and then to give the stranger instructions as to where to find provisions and how to manage there by himself, and inquiring carefully as to the party he was to find. He packed saddlebags with supplies, and water flasks, and, as he moved about, continued to question and admonish.

"By the time I get back you'll be as well as ever you were. A couple of days--and you'll be fuming round instead of waiting in patience--that's what I tell you. I'll fetch them--do you hear?

I'll do it. Now what's your name? Harry King? Harry King--very well, I have it. And the party? Father and mother and daughter. Family party. I see. Big fools, no doubt. No description needed, I guess.

Bird? Name Bird? No. McBride,--very good. Any name with a Mac to it goes on this mountain--that means me. I'm the mountain. Any one I don't want here I pack off down the trail, and _vice versa_."

Harry King lay still and heard the big man ride away. He heard his own horse stamping and nickering, and heaving a great sigh of relief his muscles relaxed, and he slept soundly on his hard bed. For hours he had fought off this terrible languor with a desperation born of terror for those he had left behind him, who looked to him as their only hope. Now he resigned their fate to the big man whose eyes had looked so kindly into his, with a childlike feeling of rest and content. He lay thus until the sun rose high in the heavens the next morning, when he was awakened by the insistent neighing of his horse which had risen almost to a cry of fear.

"Poor beast. Poor beast," he muttered. His vocal chords seemed to have stiffened and dried, and his attempt to call out to rea.s.sure the animal resulted only in a hoa.r.s.e croak. He devoured the meat of the little quail left in the jar and drank the few remaining drops of broth, then crawled out to look after the needs of his horse before making further search for food for himself. He gathered all his little strength to hold the frantic creature, maddened with hunger, and tethered him where he could graze for half an hour, then fetched him water as the big man had done, a little at a time in the great dipper.

After these efforts he rested, sitting in the doorway in the sun, and then searched out a meal for himself. The big man's larder was well stocked, and although Harry King did not appear to be a western man, he was a good camper, and could bake a corn dodger or toss a flapjack with a fair amount of skill. As he worked, everything seemed like a dream to him. The murmuring of the trees far up the mountain side, the distant roar of falling water that made him feel as if a little way off he might find the sea, filled his senses with an impression of unseen forces at work all about him, and the peculiar clearness and lightness of the atmosphere made him feel as if he were swaying over the ground and barely touching his feet to the earth, instead of walking. He might indeed be in an enchanted land, were it not for his hunger and the reality of his still hungry horse.

After eating, he again stretched himself on the earth and again slept until his horse awakened him. It was well. The sun was setting in the golden notch of the hills, and once more he set himself to the same task of laboriously giving his horse water and tethering him where the gra.s.s was lush and green, then preparing food for himself, then sitting in the doorway and letting the peace of the place sink into his soul.

The horror of his situation when the big man found him had made no impression, for he had mercifully been unconscious and too stupefied with weariness to realize it. He had even no idea of how he had come to the cabin, or from which direction. Inertly he thought over it. A trail seemed to lead away to the southwest. He supposed he must have come by it, but he had not. It was only the path made by his rescuer in going to and fro between his garden patch and his cabin.

In the loneliness and peace of the dusk he looked up and saw the dome above filled with stars, and all things were so vast and inexplicable that he was minded to pray. The longing and the necessity of prayer was upon him, and he stood with arms uplifted and eyes fixed on the stars,--then his head sank on his breast and he turned slowly into the cabin and lay down on the bunk with his hands pressed over his eyes, and moaned. Far into the night he lay thus, unsleeping, now and again uttering that low moan. Toward morning he again slept until far into the day, and thus pa.s.sed the first two days of his stay.

Strength came to him rapidly as the big man had said, and soon he was restlessly searching the short paths all about for a way by which he might find the plain below. He did not forget the promise which had been exacted from him to remain, no matter how long, until the big man's return, but he wished to discover whence he might arrive, and perhaps journey to meet him on the way.

The first trail he followed led him to the fall that ever roared in his ears. He stood amazed at its height and volume, and its wonderful beauty. It lured him and drew him again and again to the spot from which he first viewed it. Midway of its height he stood where every now and then a little stronger breeze carried the fine mist of the fall in his face. Behind him lay the garden, ever watered thus by the wind-blown spray. Smoothly the water fell over a notch worn by its never ceasing motion in what seemed the very crest of the mountain far above him. Smoothly it fell into the rainbow mists that lost its base in a wonderful iridescence of shadows and quivering, never resting lights as far below him.

He caught his breath, and remembered the big man's words. "You missed the trail to Higgins' Camp a long way back. It's easily done. I did it myself once, and never undid it." He could not choose but return over and over to that spot. A wonderful ending to a lost trail for a lost soul.

The next path he followed took him to a living spring, where the big man was wont to lead his own horse to water, and from whence he led the water to his cabin in a small flume to always drip and trickle past his door. It was at the end of this flume that Harry King had filled the large dipper for his horse. Now he went back and washed that utensil carefully, and hung it beside the door.

The next trail he followed led by a bare and more forbidding route to the place where the big man had rescued him, and he knew it must be the one by which he had come. A sense of what had happened came over him terrifyingly, and he shrank from the abyss, his body quivering and his head reeling. He would not look down into the blue depth, knowing that if he did so, by that way his sanity would leave him, but he crawled cautiously around the projecting cliff and wandered down the stony trail. Now and again he called, "Whoopee! Whoopee!" but only his own voice came back to him many times repeated.

Again and again he called and listened, "Whoopee! Whoopee!" and was regretful at the thought that he did not even know the name of the man who had saved him. Could he also save the others? The wild trail drew him and fascinated him. Each day he followed a little farther, and morning and evening he called his lonely cry, "Whoopee! Whoopee!" and still was answered by the echo in diminuendo of his own voice. He tried to resist the lure of that narrow, sun-baked, and stony descent, which he felt led to the nethermost h.e.l.l of hunger and burning thirst, but always it seemed to him as if a cry came up for help, and if it were not that he knew himself bound by a promise, he would have taken his horse and returned to the horror below.

Each evening he reasoned with himself, and repeated the big man's words for rea.s.surance: "I'll fetch them, do you hear? I'll fetch them," and again: "I'm the mountain. Any one I don't want here I pack off down the trail." Perhaps he had taken them off to Higgins' Camp instead of bringing them back with him--what then? Harry King bowed his head at the thought. Then he understood the lure of the trail.

What then? Why, then--he would follow--follow--follow--until he found again the woman for whom he had dared the unknown and to whom he had given all but a few drops of water that were needed to keep him alive long enough to find more for her. He would follow her back into that h.e.l.l below the heights. But how long should he wait? How long should he trust the man to whom he had given his promise?

He decided to wait a reasonable time, long enough to allow for the big man's going, and slow returning--long enough indeed for them to use up all the provisions he had packed down to them, and then he would break his promise and go. In the meantime he tried to keep himself sane by doing what he found to do. He gathered the ripe corn in the big man's garden patch and husked it and stored it in the shed which was built against the cabin. Then he stored the fodder in a sort of stable built of logs, one side of which was formed by a huge bowlder, or projecting part of the mountain itself, not far from the spring, where evidently it had been stored in the past, and where he supposed the man kept his horse in winter. He judged the winters must be very severe for the care with which this shed was covered and the wind holes stopped. And all the time he worked each day seemed a month of days, instead of a day of hours.

At last he felt he was justified in trying to learn the cause of the delay at least, and he baked many cakes of yellow corn meal and browned them well on the hearth, and roasted a side of bacon whole as it was, and packed strips of dried venison, and filled his water flask at the spring. After a long hunt he found empty bottles which he wrapped round with husks and filled also with water. These he purposed to hang at the sides of his saddle. He had carefully washed and mended his clothing, and searching among the big man's effects, he found a razor, dull and long unused. He sharpened and polished and stropped it, and removed a vigorous growth of beard from his face, before a little framed mirror. To-morrow he would take the trail down into the horror from which he had come.

Now it only remained for him to look well to the good yellow horse and sleep one more night in the friendly big man's bunk, then up before the sun and go.

The nights were cold, and he thought he would replenish the fire on his hearth, for he always had the feeling that at any moment they might come wearily climbing up the trail, famished and cold. Any night he might hear the "Halloo" of the big man's voice. In the shed where he had piled the husked corn lay wood cut in lengths for the fireplace, and taking a pine torch he stooped to collect a few sticks, when, by the glare of the light he held, he saw what he had never seen in the dim daylight of the windowless place. A heavy iron ring lay at his feet, and as he kicked at it he discovered that it was attached to something covered with earth beneath.

Impelled by curiosity he thrust the torch between the logs and removed the earth, and found a huge bin of hewn logs carefully fitted and smoothed on the inside. The cover was not fastened, but only held in place by the weight of stones and earth piled above it. This bin was half filled with finely broken ore, and as he lifted it in his hands yellow dust sifted through his fingers.

Quivering with a strange excitement he delved deeper, lifting the precious particles by handfuls, feeling of it, sifting it between his fingers, and holding the torch close to the ma.s.s to catch the dull glow of it. For a long time he knelt there, wondering at it, dreaming over it, and feeling of it. Then he covered it all as he had found it, and taking the wood for which he had come, he replenished the fire and laid himself down to sleep.

What was gold to him? What were all the riches of the earth and of the caves of the earth? Only one thought absorbed him,--the woman whom he had left waiting for him on the burning plain, and a haunting memory that would never leave him--never be stilled.

CHAPTER XV

THE BIG MAN'S RETURN

The night was bitter cold after a day of fierce heat. Three people climbed the long winding trail from the plains beneath, slowly, carefully, and silently. A huge mountaineer walked ahead, leading a lean brown horse. Seated on the horse was a woman with long, pale face, and deeply sunken dark eyes that looked out from under arched, dark brows with a steady gaze that never wandered from some point just ahead of her, not as if they perceived anything beyond, but more as if they looked backward upon some terror.

Behind them on a sorrel horse--a horse slenderer and evidently of better stock than the brown--rode another woman, also with dark eyes, now heavy lidded from weariness, and pale skin, but younger and stronger and more alert to the way they were taking. Her face was built on different lines: a smooth, delicately modeled oval, wide at the temples and level of brow, with heavy dark hair growing low over the sides of the forehead, leaving the center high, and the arch of the head perfect. Trailing along in the rear a small mule followed, bearing a pack.

Sometimes the big man walking in front looked back and spoke a word of encouragement, to which the younger of the two women replied in low tones, as if the words were spoken under her breath.

"We'll stop and rest awhile now," he said at last, and led the horse to one side, where a level s.p.a.ce made it possible for them to dismount and stretch themselves on the ground to give their weary limbs the needed relaxation.

The younger woman slipped to the ground and led her horse forward to where the elder sat rigidly stiff, declining to move.

"It is better we rest, mother. The kind man asks us."

"Non, Amalia, non. We go on. It is best that we not wait."

Then the daughter spoke rapidly in their own tongue, and the mother bowed her head and allowed herself to be lifted from the saddle. Her daughter then unrolled her blanket and, speaking still in her own tongue, with difficulty persuaded her mother to lie down on the mountain side, as they were directed, and the girl lay beside her, covering her tenderly and pillowing her mother's head on her arm. The big man led the animals farther on and sat down with his back against a great rock, and waited.

They lay thus until the mother slept the sleep of exhaustion; then Amalia rose cautiously, not to awaken her, and went over to him. Her teeth chattered with the cold, and she drew a little shawl closer across her chest.

"This is a very hard way--so warm in the day and so cold in the night.

It is not possible that I sleep. The cold drives me to move."

"You ought to have put part of that blanket over yourself. It's going to be a long pull up the mountain, and you ought to sleep a little.

Walk about a bit to warm yourself and then try again to sleep."

"Yes. I try."

She turned docilely and walked back and forth, then very quietly crept under the blanket beside her mother. He watched them a while, and when he deemed she also must be sleeping, he removed his coat and gently laid it over the girl. By that time darkness had settled heavily over the mountain. The horses ceased browsing among the chaparral and lay down, and the big man stretched himself for warmth close beside his sorrel horse, on the stony ground. Thus in the stillness they all slept; at last, over the mountain top the moon rose.

Higher and higher it crept up in the sky, and the stars waned before its brilliant whiteness. The big man roused himself then, and looked at the blanket under which the two women slept, and with a muttered word of pity began gathering weeds and brush with which to build a fire. It should be a very small fire, hidden by chaparral from the plains below, and would be well stamped out and the charred place covered with stones and brush when they left it. Soon he had steeped a pot of coffee and fried some bacon, then he quickly put out his fire and woke the two women. The younger sprang up, and, finding his coat over her, took it to him and thanked him with rapid utterance.

"Oh, you are too kind. I am sorry you have deprive yourself of your coat to put it over me. That is why I have been so warm."

The mother rose and shook out her skirt and glanced furtively about her. "It is not the morning? It is the moon. That is well we go early." She drank the coffee hurriedly and scarcely tasted the bacon and hard biscuit. "It is no toilet we have here to make. So we go more quickly. So is good."

"But you must eat the food, mother. You will be stronger for the long, hard ride. You have not here to hurry. No one follows us here."

"Your father may be already by the camp, Amalia--to bring us help--yes. But of those men 'rouge'--if they follow and rob us--"