Claim Number One Part 3

Under their feet was the low-clinging sheep-sage and the running herbs of yellow and gray which seemed so juiceless and dry to the eye, but which were the provender of thousands of sheep and cattle that never knew the shelter of fold or stable, nor the taste of man-grown grain or fodder, from the day of their birth to the day of their marketing.

Winter and summer alike, under the parching sun, under the strangling drifts, that clinging, gray vegetation was the animals' sole nutriment.

Behind the couple the noises of Comanche died to murmurs. Ahead of them rose the dark line of cottonwoods which stood upon the river-sh.o.r.e.

"I want to take another look at the Buckhorn Canon," said the doctor, stalking on in his st.u.r.dy, farm-bred gait.

"It makes a fearful roar," she remarked as they approached the place where the swift river, compressed into the flumelike pa.s.sage which it had whetted out of the granite, tossed its white mane in the moonlight before plunging into the dark door of the canon.

"I've been hearing yarns and traditions about that canon ever since I came here," he told her. "They say it's a thousand feet deep in places."

"June and I came over here this morning," said Agnes, "along with Sergeant Schaefer. He said he didn't believe that June could hike that far. I sat here on the rocks a long time watching it. I never saw so much mystery and terror in water before."

She drew a little nearer to him as she spoke, and he put his hand on her shoulder in an unconscious movement of restraint as she leaned over among the black boulders and peered into the hissing current.

"Do you suppose anybody ever went in there?" she asked.

"They say the Indians know some way of getting through," he replied, "but no white man ever went into the canon and came out alive. The last one to try it was a representative of a Denver paper who came out here at the beginning of the registration. He went in there with his camera on his back after a story."

"Poor fellow! Did he get through--at all?"

"They haven't reported him on the other side yet. His paper offers a reward for the solution of the mystery of his disappearance, which is no mystery at all. He didn't have the right kind of footgear, and he slipped. That's all there is to it."

He felt her shudder under his hand, which remained unaccountably on her warm shoulder after the need of restraint had pa.s.sed.

"It's a forbidding place by day," said she, "and worse at night. Just think of the despair of that poor man when he felt himself falling down there in the dark!"

"Moccasins are the things for a job like that," he declared. "I've studied it all out; I believe I could go through there without a scratch."

"What in the world would anybody want to do it for? What is there to be gained by it, to the good of anybody?" she wondered.

"Well, there's the reward of five hundred dollars offered by the newspaper in Denver," he answered.

"It's a pitiful stake against such odds!" she scorned.

"And all the old settlers say there's gold in there--rich pockets of it, washed out of the ledges in the sides of the walls and held by the rocks in the river-bed and along the margins. A nugget is picked up now and then on the other side, so there seems to be ground for the belief that fortune waits for the man who makes a careful exploration."

"He couldn't carry enough of it out to make it worth while," she objected.

"But he could go back," Dr. Slavens reminded her. "It would be easy the second time. Or he might put in effect the scheme a sheep-herder had once."

"What was that?" she asked, turning her face up to him from her place on the low stone where she sat, the moonlight glinting in her eyes.

He laughed a little.

"Not that it was much of a joke the way it turned out," he explained.

"He went in there to hunt for the gold, leaving two of his companions to labor along the brink of the canon above and listen for his signal shout in case he came across any gold worth while. Then they were to let a rope down to him and he'd send up the treasure. It was a great scheme, but they never got a chance to try it. If he ever gave any signal they never heard it, for down there a man's voice strained to its shrillest would be no more than a whisper against a tornado. You can believe that, can't you, from the way it roars and tears around out here?"

"All the gold that remains unmined wouldn't tempt me a hundred feet down that black throat," she shuddered. "But what became of the adventurer with the scheme?"

"He came through in time--they caught him at the outlet over there in the mountains. The one pocket that remained in his shredded clothing was full of gold nuggets, they say. So he must have found it, even if he couldn't make them hear."

"What a dismal end for any man!"

"A man could beat it, though," said he, leaning forward in thoughtful att.i.tude. "He'd need a strong light, and moccasins, so he could cling to the rocks. I believe it could be done, and I've thought a good deal about exploring it myself for a day or two past. If I don't draw a low number I think I'll tackle it."

"Don't you attempt it!" she cried, clutching his arm and turning her white face to him affrightedly. "Don't you ever dare try it!"

He laughed uneasily, his eyes on the black gash into which the foaming river darted.

"Oh, I don't know; I've heard of men doing riskier things than that for money," he returned.

Agnes Horton's excitement and concern seemed to pa.s.s with his words. She propped her chin in her palms and sat pensively, looking at the broken waters which reared around the barrier of scattered stones in its channel.

"Yes, men sometimes take big risks for money--even the risk of honor and the everlasting happiness of others," said she.

It was like the wind blowing aside a tent-flap as he pa.s.sed, giving him a glimpse of its intimate interior. That little lifting of her reserve was a glance into the sanctuary of her heart. The melancholy of her eyes was born out of somebody's escapade with money; he was ready to risk his last guess on that.

"Besides, there may be nothing to that story of nuggets. That may be just one of these western yarns," she added.

"Well, in any case, there's the five hundred the Denver paper offers, besides what I could make by syndicating the account of my adventure among the Sunday papers. I used to do quite a lot of that when I was in college."

"But you don't need money badly enough to go into that place after it.

n.o.body ever needed it that badly," she declared.

"Don't I?" he answered, a little biting of bitter sarcasm in his tone.

"Well, you don't know, my lady, how easy that money looks to me compared to my ordinary channels of getting it."

"It can't be so very hard in your profession," she doubted, as if a bit offended by his att.i.tude of martyrdom before an unappreciative world. "I don't believe you have half as hard a time of it as some who have too much money."

"The hards.h.i.+p of having too much money is one which I never experienced, so I can't say as to that," he said, moved to smiles by the humor of it.

"But to understand what I mean by hards.h.i.+p you must know how I've struggled in the ruts and narrow traditions of my profession, and fought, hoped, and starved. Why, I tell you that black hole over there looks like an open door with a light inside of it compared to some of the things I've gone through in the seven years that I've been trying to get a start. Money? I'll tell you how that is, Miss Horton; I've thought along that one theme so confounded long that it's worn a groove in my brain.

"Here you see me tonight, a piece of driftwood at thirty-five, and all for the want of money enough to buy an automobile and take the darned-fool world by storm on its vain side! You can't scratch it with a diamond on its reasoning side--I've scratched away on it until my nails are gone.

"I've failed, I tell you, I've botched it all up! And just for want of money enough to buy an automobile! Brains never took a doctor anywhere--nothing but money and bluff!"

"I wonder," she speculated, "what will become of you out here in this raw place, where the need of a doctor seems to be the farthest thing in the world, and you with your nerve all gone?"

It would have rea.s.sured her if she could have seen the fine flush which this charge raised in his face. But she didn't even look toward him, and couldn't have noted the change if she had, for the moonlight was not that bright, even in Wyoming.

"But I haven't lost my nerve!" he denied warmly.

"Oh, yes, you have," she contradicted, "or you wouldn't admit that you're a failure, and you wouldn't talk about money that way. Money doesn't cut much ice as long as you've got nerve."

"That's all right from your view," said he pettishly. "But you've had easy going of it, out of college into a nice home, with a lot of those pink-faced chaps to ride you around in their automobiles, and opera and plays and horse-shows and all that stuff."

"Perhaps," she admitted, a soft sadness in her voice. "But wait until you've seen somebody drunk with the pa.s.sion of too much money and crazy with the hunger for more; wait until you've seen a man's soul grow black from hugging it to his heart, and his conscience atrophy and his manhood wither. And then when it rises up and crushes him, and all that are his with it----"