Robber's Roost (1989) (34 page)

"For myself I'm not afraid. . . . But for you I am. You brave-- splendid man! . . . To fight as you did for me--indeed you must have loved me. At Star Ranch I did not believe. . . . God bless you. You did--your best. I'll--pray--for you--with my last-- breath."

Suddenly the earth under Jim trembled and a terrific boom momentarily drowned the other sounds. An avalanche or a falling rock! But this he had expected. It added not a tithe to his terror. That was not physical.

Staring out into the gathering darkness, he pondered this thing.

It had come from her last words. She had no fear at the prospect of death. A curling flame might have licked at the heart of Jim's manhood. Brave and splendid she had called him. Craven and ignoble he called his past. It was what Helen Herrick had said that had wrought this transformation in his feelings--this swelling, flaying reproach, this hate of that which allied him with the robber who had carried her off. Of course he had loved her, though he had not dwelt often or thoughtfully upon that. Up until now love in his crude opinion had been the hunger, the need of a woman, without regard to her mind, her heart, her spirit. But that was not what she had meant. . . . And again she besought God to bless him--and she would pray for him with her last breath.

A hard pang clutched Jim's breast. It numbed his throat. And for the moment his mind became chaotic. Let that last breath of hers mingle with his last breath, drowned in that thrashing torrent or smothered under tons of crushing rock and earth. . . . It would have been nothing to die for her--that he had risked--but to die with her, to have her locked in his arms--that would be great. . . .

What had he ever done with his life that he should want to prolong it? . . . A ne'er-do-well, a failure, a rolling stone, a robber, a killer! Could he pray to save it now, to go on being the same kind of hard, wicked, useless man? No, by the God she whispered of--he could not. He would not. . . . And now that she lay helpless, trusting, dependent upon him, the truth of his monstrous past roared in his inward ear mightier than the storm and flood.

He relaxed his stiff frame against the wall. A shuddering spell or a demon of spirit seemed wrenched out of him and flung to the night. This free and wild life had been part of him, and the whole savageness of it seemed to have cumulated in the fury of the elements, to cast his sin out, to change his whole life was yet left to feel, to understand, to grovel in repentance.

The God she called upon and the Nature he knew had conspired to defeat him. The former he could only tremble before as One unfamiliar, never recognized until now when it was too late. But Nature he had lived with and now he welcomed her furies.

Thunder buried all the other earthly sounds and a red flare of lightning showed the appallingly black sky and the ghastly gorge.

The heavens above appeared to burst and a deluge descended upon that place, so that no sound pierced the continuous, beating roar of rain.

Jim Wall gathered Helen up in his arms and drew her breast to his.

He felt her warmth. But she was unconscious or so deep in slumber that she could not awaken. Now let the very firmament fall upon them! Two lost humans, inexplicably hounded into this desert, where fire and water and earth were hollowing a grave for them!

The terror that Helen's acknowledgment of his heroism and his love had roused, abode within him still, but was losing itself in the defiance he threw into the teeth of this cataclysm.

This was the climax of the storm that had been gathering for days.

Out upon the level desert it would have been serious for travelers; here in this gorge it was a maelstrom. Jim did not expect to live to hear it pass away. Yet he did. And then began the aftermath of a flood let loose upon such unstable earth. The waterfall gradually rose to a thundering, continuous crash. It dominated for a while, until the thousand streams from above poured over the rims to deaden all, to completely deafen Jim.

A sheet of water, sliding over the rock, hid the opaque blackness from Jim's eyes. Any moment now a flood would rise over the bank, and when it did Jim meant to climb higher with the girl, to front the hurtling rocks and slipping slides, and fight till the bitter end.

But many changes as the hours brought, that flood did not rise above the bank. Jim saw the sheet of water fail, and the black space of gorge again. He heard the avalanches and the great single boulders come down, and the furious backlash of the torrent below, and the lessening roar of the waterfall. The time came to Jim, as if he dreamed, when all sounds changed, lessened, faded away, except the peculiar threshing of the stream below. And he got to listening for the sound, which occurred only occasionally. For a while the sliding rush of heavy water swept on, suddenly to change into a furious contention. At length Jim calculated it was a strong current laden with sand, which at times caused billows to rise and lash their twisting tips back upon themselves. Long he heard these slowly diminishing, gradually separating sounds.

The streams ceased flowing, the slides ceased slipping, the rocks ceased rolling, and the waterfall failed from a thundering to a hollow roar and from that to a softening splash. Nature had audited so much for that storm, and still the mountain-side appeared intact with its fugitive atoms of flesh and spirit.

Jim imagined he saw dim stars out in a void that seemed to change from black to gray. Was dawn at hand? Had they been spared? The gurgle of the stream below merged into the distant, low ramble of the Dirty Devil. Jim rested there, staring out at the spectral forms on the opposite wall, thinking thoughts never before inhabitants of his confounded brain.

But the sky was graying, the gorge taking shape in the gloom, and this place which had heard a concatenated din of hideous sounds was silent as a grave.

At last Jim had to accept a marvelous phenomenon--dawn was at hand.

Gently he slipped Helen into the hollow of the saddle. She was still asleep. His cramped limbs buckled under him and excruciating pains shot through his bones and muscles.

In the gray light objects were discernible. He could not see to the head of the gorge, where the waterfall had plunged out from the wall. But silence meant that it had been surface water, a product of the storm, and it was gone. Beneath the bank ran a channel of fine-ribbed sand where not even a puddle showed. On the bank the horses stood patiently, except Bay, and he was nosing around for a blade of grass that did not exist on the sodden earth. The great slope appeared the same and yet not the same. A mute acceptance of ultimate destruction hovered over it.

Sunrise found Jim Wall topping a rise of rocky ground, miles beyond the scene of his night vigil. Again he followed the lead pack- horse.

The sky was blue, the sun bright and warm, and on the moment it crowned with gold the top of the purple butte Jim had seen twice before. It appeared close now, rearing a corrugated peak above yellow and brown hills. Jim was carrying Helen in front of him.

Conscious, but too spent to speak or move, she lay back on his arm and watched him.

There had been a trail here once, as was proved by a depressed line on the gravelly earth. When Jim surmounted this barren divide he suddenly was confronted by an amazing and marvelous spectacle.

"Blue Valley!" he ejaculated.

Below him opened a narrow, winding valley, green as emerald with its cottonwoods and willows. Only in the distance did it shine blue under the hot sun. Through it the Dirty Devil wound a meandering course, yellow as a bright ribbon. It was bank full in swirling flood. And from where it left the valley, which point Jim could not see, a dull chafing of waters came to his ears.

"Blue Valley! . . . Helen, we're out of the brakes! . . . Safe!

Mormons live here."

She heard him, for she smiled up into his face, glad for his sake, but in her exhaustion beyond caring for her own.

There was no sign of habitations, nor any smoke. But Jim knew this was Blue Valley. It was long, perhaps fifteen miles, and probably the farms were located at the head, where irrigation had been possible. How could even Mormon pioneers utilize that ferocious river?

The startling beauty of this lost valley struck Jim next. It resembled a winding jewel of emerald and amethyst, set down amid barren hills of jasper and porphyry, and variegated mosaics of foothills waving away on the left, and golden racks of carved rocks, and mounds of brown clay and dunes of rusty earth. All these were stark naked, characterized by thousands of little eroded lines from top to bottom. The purple butte to the west dominated this scene, so magnificent in its isolation and its strange conformation, that it dwarfed a yellow mesa looming over the valley.

Jim followed the lead pack-horse down into gumbo mud. The floor of the valley supported a mass of foliage besides the stately cottonwoods. Sunflowers burned a riot of gold against the green.

Willows and arrowweed and grass, and star-eyed daisies sprang in luxuriant profusion out of the soil. And at every step a horse hoof sank deep, to come forth with a huge cake of mud.

At midday Jim passed deserted cabins, some on one side of the river, some on the other. They did not appear so old, yet they were not new. Had Blue Valley been abandoned? Jim was convinced it could not be so. But when he espied a deserted church, with vacant eyelike windows, then his heart sank. Helen must have rest, care, food. He was at the end of his resources.

An hour later he toiled past a shack built of logs and stones, and adjoining a dugout, set into the hill. People had lived there once, but long ago. Old boots and children's shoes lying about, the remains of a wagon, a dismantled shovel and a sewing-machine, gave melancholy manifestation of the fact that a family had abode there.

Jim's last hope fled. He was still far from the head of the valley, but apparently he had left the zone of habitation behind.

The afternoon waned. The horses plodded on, slower and slower, wearying to exhaustion. Helen was a dead weight. Despair had seized upon him, when he turned a yellow corner between the slope and the cottonwoods, to be confronted by a wide pasture at the end of which a log-cabin nestled among cottonwoods. A column of blue smoke rose lazily against the foliage. And behind this transfiguring sight loomed the purple butte, commanding in its lofty height, somehow vastly more to Jim than a landmark.

The horses labored out of the mud to higher ground. Jim rode up to the cabin. Never in all his life had he been so glad to smell smoke, to see a garden, to hear a dog bark. His ever-quick eye caught sight of a man who had evidently been watching, for he stepped out on the porch, rifle in hand. Jim kept on to the barred gate. There were flowers in the yard and vines on the cabin--proof of feminine hands. And he saw a bed on the porch.

"Hello!" he shouted, as he got off carefully, needing both hands to handle Helen.

"Hullo, yourself!" called the man, who was apparently curious but not unfriendly. Then as Jim let down a bar of the gate with his foot, this resident of Blue Valley leaned his rifle against the wall and called to some one within.

Jim hurried on to the porch and laid Helen on the bed. She was so exhausted that she could not speak, but she smiled at Jim. Her plight was evident. Then Jim straightened up to look at the man.

Friend or foe--it made no difference to Jim--because here he would see that Helen received the care and food that she needed. Jim could deal with men. His swift gaze, never so penetrating, fell upon a sturdy individual of middle age--a typical pioneer of the Mormon breed, still-faced and bearded. The instant Jim looked into the blue eyes, mildly curious, he knew that, whoever the man was, he had not heard of the abduction of Herrick's sister.

"Howdy, stranger!"

"My name's Wall," said Jim, in reply, slowly reckoning for words.

"Mine's Tasker. Whar you from?"

"Durango. . . . My--my wife and I got lost. She wasn't strong.

She gave out. I'm afraid she's in bad shape."

"She shore looks bad. But the Lord is good. If it's only she's tuckered out."

"What place is this?"

"Blue Valley."

"And where is Blue Valley?"

"Sixty miles from Torrey."

"Torrey? Never heard of it."

"It's a Mormon settlement, friend. Yes, I've stuck it out here, but I'll be givin' up soon. No use tryin' to fight thet Dirty Devil River. Five years ago there was eighty people livin' hyar.

Blue Valley has a story, friend--"

"One I'd be glad to hear," interrupted Jim. "Will you help me? I have money and can pay you."

"Stay an' welcome, friend. An' keep your money. Me an' my womenfolks ask nothin' fer good will toward those in need."

"Thank--you," Jim replied, huskily. "Will you call them to look after my--my wife?"

Helen was staring up at Jim with wondering, troubled eyes.

"Is everything all right?" she asked, faintly.

"Yes, if to find friends an' care is that," replied the Mormon, kindly. Then he stepped to the door to call within. "Mary, this rider was not alone. It was his wife he was carryin'. They got lost in the brakes an' she gave out. We must take them in."

Chapter
1
8

That night, after the good Mormons assured Jim that Helen was just worn out and she had smiled a wistful guaranty of that, Jim went to sleep under the cottonwoods and never moved for seventeen hours.