The Cup of Trembling and Other Stories Part 7

David Bruce modestly attempted to give an incidental character to his visit by inventing an errand in that neighborhood.

"Excuse me, ma'am," he said. "I was going along over to the Mule Deer, but I thought I'd just ask if Mr. Waring's brother got through all right yesterday evenin'. It was so ugly outside."

The girl parted her lips to speak, but no sound came. The light shone in her ashy face. Her eyes were losing their expression. Bruce saw that she was fainting, and caught her as she fell.

The interview begun in this unpromising manner proved of the utmost comfort to Esmee. There was nothing in Bruce's manner to herself, nothing in his references to Jack, that implied any curiosity on his part as to the relation between them, or the least surprise at their being together at the Dreadnaught. He had "spared the situation" with an instinct that does not come from knowledge of the world.

He listened to her story of the night's tragedy, which she told with helpless severity, almost with indifference, as if it had happened to another.

He appeared to be greatly moved by it personally; its moral significance he did not seem to see. He sat helplessly repeating himself, in his efforts to give words to his sorrow for the "kid." His vocabulary being limited, and chiefly composed of words which he could not use before a lady, he was put to great inconvenience to do justice to his feelings.

He blamed himself and his brother for letting the young man go by their cabin on such a threatening day.

"Why, Jim and me we couldn't get to sleep for thinkin' about him, 't was blowin' such a blizzard. Seemed like we could hear him a-yellin' to us, 'Is this the way to the Dreadnaught mine?' Wisht the Lord we'd 'a' said it wa'n't. Well, sir, we don't want no more such foolishness. And that's partly why I come. We never thought but what he _had_ got through, for all we was pestered about it, or else me and Jim would 'a' turned out last night. But what we was a-sayin' this morning was this: Them folks up there ain't acquainted with this country like we be--not in the winter-time. This here is what we call snow-slide weather. Hain't you been hearing how things is lettin' go? The snow slumpin' off the trees--you must have heard that. It's lettin' go up above us, too.

There's a million ton of snow up there a-settlin' and a-crawlin' in this chinook, just a-gettin' ready to start to slide. We fellers in the mountains know how 'tis. This cabin has stood all right so far, but the woods above was cut last summer. Now, I want you to come along with me right now. I've got a hand-sleigh here. You can tuck yourself up on it, and we'll pull out for the Mule Deer, and likely meet with Mr. Waring on the way. And if there's a snow-slide here before morning, it'll bury the dead, and not the living and the dead."

At these words the blood rushed to Esmee's cheek, and then dropped back to her heart, leaving her as white as snow.

"I don't remember that I have ever seen you before," she said; "but I thank you more than I ever thanked anybody in all my life."

David Bruce thought of course that she was going with him. But that was not what she meant. Her face shone. G.o.d, in his great mercy, had given her this one opportunity.

"This is my watch, you know. I cannot leave this house. But I don't think there will be a snow-slide. Things do not happen so simply as that. You don't know what I mean? But think a moment. You know, do you not, who I am? Should you think really that death is a thing that any friend of mine would wish to save me from? Life is what I am afraid of--long life to the end. I don't think there will be a snow-slide, not in time for me. But I thank you so much. You have made me feel so human--so like other people. You don't understand that, either? Well, no matter. I am just as grateful. I shall remember your visit all my life; and even if I live long, I doubt if I shall ever have a kinder visitor.

I am much better for your coming, though you may think you have come for nothing. Now you must go before it gets too dark. You will go to the Mule Deer, will you not, and carry this same message to--there?"

"I'm goin' to stop right here till Jack Waring gets back."

"Oh, no, you're not. You are going this instant." She rose, and held out her hand. She had that power over him that one so much in earnest as she will always have over one who is amazed and in doubt.

"Won't you shake hands with me?" Her thrilling voice made a sort of music of the common words.

He took her hand, and wagged it clumsily in a dazed way, and she almost pushed him out of the house.

"Well, I'll be hanged if that ain't the meanest trick since I was born--to leave a little lone woman watchin' with a dead man in a cabin, with snow-slides startin' all over the mountains! What's the matter with me, anyhow? Seem to be knocked silly with her blamed queer talk. Heap of sense in it, too. Wouldn't think one of her kind would see it that way, though. Durned if I know which kind she is. B'lieve I'll go back now.

Why, Lord! I must go back! What'll I say to Jim?"

David Bruce had gained the top of the road leading away from the mine before he came to himself in a burst of unconscious profanity. He could hear the howling of the wind around the horn of the peak. He looked up and down, and considered a second.

In another second it was too late--too late to add his life to hers, that instant buried beneath the avalanche.

A stroke out of a clear sky; a roar that filled the air; a burst of light snow mounting over the tree-tops like steam condensed above a rus.h.i.+ng train; a concussion of wind that felled trees in the valley a hundred yards from the spot where the plunging ma.s.s shot down--then the chinook eddied back, across the track of the snow-slide, and went storming up the peak.

MAVERICK

Traveling b.u.t.tes is a lone stage-station on the road, largely speaking, from Blackfoot to Boise. I do not know whether the stages take that road now, but ten years ago they did, and the man who kept the stage-house was a person of primitive habits and corresponding appearance named Gilroy.

The stage-house is perhaps half a mile from the foot of the largest b.u.t.te, one of three that loom on the horizon, and appear to "travel"

from you, as you approach them from the plains. A day's ride with the b.u.t.tes as a landmark is like a stern chase, in that you seem never to gain upon them.

From the stage-house the plain slopes up to the foot of the Big b.u.t.te, which rises suddenly in the form of an enormous tepee, as if Gitche Manito, the mighty, had here descended and pitched his tent for a council of the nations.

The country is dest.i.tute of water. To say that it is "thirsty" is to mock with vain imagery that dead and mummied land on the borders of the Black Lava. The people at the stage-house had located a precious spring, four miles up, in a cleft near the top of the Big b.u.t.te; they piped the water down to the house and they sold it to travelers on that Jericho road at so much per horse. The man was thrown in, but the man usually drank whisky.

Our guide commented unfavorably on this species of husbandry, which is common enough in the arid West, and as legitimate as selling oats or hay; but he chose to resent it in the case of Gilroy, and to look upon it as an instance of individual and exceptional meanness.

"Any man that will jump G.o.d's water in a place like this, and sell it the same as drinks--he'd sell water to his own father in h.e.l.l!"

This was our guide's opinion of Gilroy. He was equally frank, and much more explicit, in regard to Gilroy's sons. "But," he concluded, with a philosopher's acceptance of existing facts, "it ain't likely that any of that outfit will ever git into trouble, so long as Maverick is sheriff of Lemhi County."

We were about to ask why, when we drove up to the stage-house, and Maverick himself stepped out and took our horses.

"What the--infernal has happened to the man?" my companion, Ferris, exclaimed; and our guide answered indifferently, as if he were speaking of the weather,--

"Some Injuns caught him alone in an out-o'-the-way ranch, when he was a kid, and took a notion to play with him. This is what was left when they got through. I never see but one worse-looking man," he added, speaking low, as Maverick pa.s.sed us with the team: "him a bear wiped over the head with its paw. 'Twas quicker over with, I expect, but he lived, and _he_ looked worse than Maverick."

"Then I hope to the Lord I may never see him!" Ferris e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed; and I noticed that he left his dinner untasted, though he had boasted of a hunter's appet.i.te.

We were two college friends on a hunting trip, but we had not got into the country of game. In two days more we expected to make Jackson's Hole, and I may mention that "hole," in this region, signifies any small, deep valley, well hidden amidst high mountains, where moisture is perennial, and gra.s.s abounds. In these pockets of plenty, herds of elk gather and feed as tame as park pets; and other hunted creatures, as wild but less innocent, often find sanctuary here, and cache their stolen stock and other spoil of the road and the range.

We did not forget to put our question concerning Maverick, that unhappy man, in his character of legalized protector of the Gilroy gang. What did our free-spoken guide mean by that insinuation?

We were told that Gilroy, in his rough-handed way, had been as a father to the lad, after the savages wreaked their pleasure on him: and his people being dead or scattered, Maverick had made himself useful in various humble capacities at the stage-house, and had finally become a sort of factotum there and a member of the family. And though perfectly square himself, and much respected on account of his personal courage and singular misfortunes, he could never see the old man's crookedness, nor the more than crookedness of his sons. He was like a son of the house, himself; but most persons agreed that it was not as a brother he felt toward Rose Gilroy. And a tough lookout it was for the girl; for Maverick was one whom no man would lightly cross, and in her case he was acting as "general dog around the place," as our guide called it. The young fellows were shy of the house, notwithstanding the attraction it held. It was likely to be Maverick or n.o.body for Rose.

We did not see Rose Gilroy, but we heard her step in the stage-house kitchen, and her voice, as clear as a lark's, giving orders to the tall, stooping, fair young Swede, who waited on us at table, and did other work of a menial character in that singular establishment.

"How is it the watch-dog allows such a pretty sprig as that around the place?" Ferris questioned, eying our knight of the trencher, who blushed to feel himself remarked.

"He won't stay," our guide p.r.o.nounced; "they don't none of 'em stay when they're good-lookin'. The old man he's failin' considerable these days,--gettin' kind o' silly,--and the boys are away the heft of the time. Maverick pretty much runs the place. I don't justly blame the critter. He's watched that little Rose grow up from a baby. How's he goin' to quit being fond of her now she's a woman? I dare say he'd a heap sooner she'd stayed a little girl. And these yere boys around here they're a triflin' set, not half so able to take care of her as Maverick. He's got the sense and he's got the sand; but there's that awful head on him! I don't blame him much, lookin' the way he does, and feelin' the same as any other man."

We left Traveling b.u.t.tes and its cruel little love-story, but we had not gone a mile when a horseman overtook us with a message for Ferris from his new foreman at the ranch, a summons which called him back for a day at the least. Ferris was exceedingly annoyed: a day at the ranch meant four days on the road; but the business was imperative. We held a brief council, and decided that, with Ferris returning, our guide should push on with the animals and camp outfit into a country of gra.s.s, and look up a good camping-spot (which might not be the first place he struck) this side of Jackson's Hole. It remained for me to choose between going with the stuff, or staying for a longer look at the phenomenal Black Lava fields at Arco; Arco being another name for desolation on the very edge of that weird stone sea. This was my ostensible reason for choosing to remain at Arco; but I will not say the reflection did not cross me that Arco is only sixteen miles from Traveling b.u.t.tes--not an insurmountable distance between geology and a pretty girl, when one is five and twenty, and has not seen a pretty face for a month of Sundays.

Arco, at that time, consisted of the stage-house, a store, and one or two cabins--a poor little seed of civilization dropped by the wayside, between the Black Lava and the hills where Lost River comes down and "sinks" on the edge of the lava. The station is somewhat back from the road, with its face--a very grimy, unwashed countenance--to the lava.

Quaking asps and mountain birches follow the water, pausing a little way up the gulch behind the house, but the eager gra.s.s tracks it all the way till it vanishes; and the dry bed of the stream goes on and spreads in a ma.s.s of coa.r.s.e sand and gravel, beaten flat, flailed by the feet of countless driven sheep that have gathered here. For this road is on the great overland sheep-trail from Oregon eastward--the march of the million mouths, and what the mouths do not devour the feet tramp down.

The staple topic of conversation at Arco was one very common in the far west, when a tenderfoot is of the company. The poorest place can boast of some distinction, and Arco, though hardly on the highroad of fas.h.i.+on and commerce, had frequently been named in print in connection with crime of a highly sensational and picturesque character. Scarcely another fifty miles of stage-road could boast of so many and such successful road-jobs; and although these affairs were of almost monthly occurrence, and might be looked for to come off always within that noted danger-limit, yet it was a fact that the law had never yet laid finger on a man of the gang, nor gained the smallest clew to their hide-out. It was a difficult country around Arco, one that lent itself to secrecy.

The road-agents came, and took, and vanished as if the hills were their co-partners as well as the receivers of their goods. As for the lava, which was its front dooryard, so to speak, for a hundred miles, the man did not live who could say he had crossed it. What it held or was capable of hiding, in life or in death, no man knew.

The day after Ferris left me I rode out upon that arrested tide--those silent breakers which for ages have threatened, but never reached, the sh.o.r.e. I tried to fancy it as it must once have been, a sluggish, vitreous flood, filling the great valley, and stiffening as it slowly pushed toward the bases of the hills. It climbed and spread, as dough rises and crawls over the edge of the pan. The Black Lava is always called a sea--that image is inevitable; yet its movement had never in the least the character of water. "This is where h.e.l.l pops," an old plains-man feelingly described it, and the suggestion is perfect. The colors of the rock are those produced by fire: its texture is that of slag from a furnace. One sees how the lava hardened into a crust, which cracked and sank in places, mingling its tumbled edges with the creeping flood not cooled beneath. After all movement had ceased and the ma.s.s was still, time began upon its tortured configurations, crumbled and wore and broke, and sifted a little earth here and there, and sealed the burnt rock with fairy print of lichens, serpent-green and orange and rust-red. The spring rains left shallow pools which the summer dried.

Across it, a few dim trails wander a little way and give out, like the water.

For a hundred miles to the Snake River this Plutonian gulf obliterates the land--holds it against occupation or travel. The shoes of a marching army would be cut from their feet before they had gone a dozen miles across it; horses would have no feet left; and water would have to be packed as on an ocean, or a desert, cruise.