Leave Her to Heaven (10 page)

Her hands, hidden under the table, clenched hard. ‘I shall go after him,' she said, half to herself. Then, realizing that her tone and her words suggested open pursuit, and willing to dissemble, she added quickly: ‘I've always wanted to make that trip. You can send a horse to meet me, too.'

Robie courteously assented; but when they rose from the table Mrs. Berent drew Ellen aside and said sharply: ‘You're not going chasing after Mr. Harland! You're coming along with us! You're making a perfect fool of yourself over that young man!'

Ellen said recklessly: ‘I love him. I'm going to marry him, Mother.'

‘Marry him! Don't be absurd! You're engaged to Mr. Quinton.'

Ellen looked at her ringless hand. ‘I'm not engaged to Russ,
not now,' she said, and Mrs. Berent made a startled sound. ‘I mailed his ring back to him yesterday.'

‘You're making a mistake,' her mother urged. ‘Mr. Quinton isn't the sort of man with whom you can play fast and loose! Heaven knows I can't imagine what you ever saw in him, but I'll tell you one thing. He won't submit easily to being jilted!'

Ellen remembered that Quinton was by repute a dangerous enemy, but she shook her head. ‘I'll not be frightened into marrying him, Mother,' she insisted. ‘If that's what you're trying to do.' And she repeated: ‘I'm going to marry Mr. Harland.'

Mrs. Berent wrung her hands, defeated; she tried pleading. ‘Ellen, don't do this. Ride out to the lodge with us, please. I want you to.'

Ellen looked at her in a sort of wonder, astonished that her mother should persist in this attempted interference with her plans. ‘But I want to be with Mr. Harland,' she said, and giving the older woman no chance for a further word she turned away.

One of Robie's men rode with her down the canyon as far as horses could comfortably go, and she went on afoot. She had dressed this morning for the ride out to the ranch, discarding dungarees for a divided skirt and a light silk shirt of many colors like a Scotch plaid, and knotting a yellow handkerchief loosely around her throat; and since before she made her new plans the pack horses had already departed with her luggage, it had been impossible to change. So her movements were somewhat hampered, and her riding shoes were ill suited to this clambering over boulders, their soles slippery, forever threatening to betray her. Yet she proceeded in a heedless haste.

But when she saw Harland — he was intently fishing a little pool — she was content to watch him for a while, scanning every line of his body, delighting in the set of his head upon his shoulders, in the way his waist narrowed to slender hips. Only when at last he caught a great trout did she reveal herself. Her shadow lay across the rock where he stood and she moved so that her shadow moved and he looked up and saw her there.

When Harland's startled eyes met hers, they were empty of welcome, and Ellen saw this and her breath caught; but — she would somehow make him glad of her company. She climbed down to stand beside him, and cried admiringly: ‘Oh what a beauty!'

‘Why did you come?' he asked in sharp challenge.

Something thudded in her throat and her cheeks burned and at his tone her heart contracted in a knot of pain; but she spoke lightly.

‘I asked where you'd gone,' she explained, ‘and Mr. Robie told me. I've never fished down through here, so I thought you wouldn't mind if I came along.' Her answer was matter-of-fact and reassuring; and she spoke quickly of the trout again, exclaiming at its size, exerting herself to make Harland glad she was here She succeeded, felt his resentment abate. He wrapped the trout in cheesecloth and packed it away in the big game pocket of his vest, and they went on down the canyon.

Ellen was full of a singing triumph because he had accepted her companionship. It was enough, for the moment, that they should be together. For the first hours, she fished as earnestly as if it were for this she had come. They caught many trout smaller than his big one and threw them back, enjoying the sport together.

Toward one o'clock, he proposed that they eat lunch. She had neglected to bring sandwiches. He was sure he had enough for both of them, but when he opened his packet she said laughingly:

‘Heavens, I'd eat all that and cry for more. I'm famished. We'll catch some little trout and cook them.'

While he started a fire, she landed four small fish and — proud to display her capacities — borrowed his knife to clean them, and spitted them on sharpened twigs, and salted them well and set the twigs upright beside the fire. When they were cooked through, she toasted them briefly above the coals till they were crisp and curling. She and Harland ate them like small ears of corn, holding them crosswise, plucking off the sweet pink flesh with their teeth.
They sat together on a warm ledge on the sunny side of the stream; and Ellen was merry, laughing easily, sure he was happy with her now. A strong exhilaration ran through her like the fumes of wine, and to feel him by her side gave her a keener pleasure than she had ever known. When they were done, he lighted her cigarette and his own, and seeing his strong hands cup the match so near her lips made her heart beat against her ribs. She filled her lungs with a long inhalation and expelled the smoke, her eyes meeting his as he flipped the burned match into the stream. Then she spoke quickly, at random, saying anything at all to end this moment's silence — for which she wished only one ending.

‘I'm sorry for the poor little fish here,' she said, in mock sympathy. ‘The falls are so many and so steep that they can't get upstream, and down below the brook just sinks into the desert and disappears. There's nowhere they can go. I expect it's a relief, really, when someone like us comes along and catches them!'

‘They don't act relieved,' he reminded her, and they laughed together for no reason except that the day was fine, and they were young and well-content. He stirred a little, as though to rise and go on; and she felt time slipping through her fingers, dreading the end of this day they would spend together. She might devise some accident which would delay them, keep them overnight here in the canyon, and she thought, smiling inwardly at the notion: ‘If that happened, Mother's sufficiently Victorian so she'd think I was compromised and that he'd have to marry me!'

At the same time she felt, rather than heard, a deeper rumble like thunder. The small segment of sky which they could see was clear and cloudless, and she thought rain might be near; and if they were caught by one of the drenching mountain downpours, it might raise the brook and make this canyon impassable. So she spoke quickly, to delay him here as long as possible, ingeniously dilating upon the hard fate of the trout imprisoned in these rushing waters, knowing only this constricted and unchanging world. ‘They've such narrow horizons,' she said, and he argued, amused by her foolery:

‘But aren't all our horizons limited? We're no better off than the trout! Not so well off, perhaps! Certainly they couldn't ask a lovelier spot in which to live.'

‘All the same, I'm sure a lot of them are dissatisfied,' she gaily insisted. ‘Probably the young gentlemen trout want to go off and see the world, and the young husbands, I'm sure they love to wander, and their wives complain. I can just hear them. “It's all right for you, John, traipsing away up and down brook Heaven knows where, while I have to stay at home drudging from daylight till dark.”'

He chuckled and — as though he were the husband thus reproached — retorted: ‘Nonsense, my dear! I've given you a charming home here. Deep, cool water, and rocks under which to hide, and a nice hatch of flies every day all summer. What more can any self-respecting trout-wife want?'

‘Well, I want to travel, for one thing,' she declared, delighted to have won him to this foolery, hoping he would not heed the distant thunder sounds. ‘I never thought when I got married that it meant just settling down with my nose rubbing the same gravel bar for the rest of my life!'

‘All right, come along with me, then,' he proposed. ‘If you think you'd like it.' He coughed importantly. ‘As a matter of fact, it's just a business trip I'm taking today. Old Bill Cutthroat up in the falls pool has worked out a new way of trapping grasshoppers, and if it's as good as he says it is, I want to get in on the ground floor.'

Ellen put on an affectedly querulous tone, keeping up the play. ‘How can I travel? With my figure, I'm just a public laughingstock! Having fifty thousand children every fall is no fun, I can tell you. Try it yourself some time!'

‘They're my children too,' he reminded her, and added with an exaggerated leer: ‘And — I always thought having them was fun!' Then, with ponderous tenderness: ‘Seriously, my dear, you know I'd spare you all that if I could!'

She found it hard to control her breathing. This idle make-believe with which they amused themselves carried overtones
which rang like great bells deep within her; but she tossed her head, continuing the play. ‘I'll remind you of that, next spring; but a lot of good it will do! You'll start talking about our duty to the race! I know you!'

Their eyes held for a moment and then they broke into laughter, and she thought this shared mirth drew them closer; and then the sunlight where they sat suddenly faded and was gone. Harland looked up.

‘Hullo,' he said, surprised. ‘There's a cloud! You know that's almost the first cloud I've seen since we came out here!'

She spoke in casual reassurance: ‘Oh, there are always thundershowers somewhere in the mountains.' But he rose, and she saw that he too was conscious now of an ominous tingling in the air, a quickening in the breeze that drew down the canyon.

‘We'd better move,' he suggested. ‘We don't want to get caught in a cloudburst up here.'

She knew better than Harland how serious this might be; nevertheless perversely she delayed to clean up their picnic ground, prolonging in every possible fashion these pregnant hours. She gathered the paper in which his lunch had been wrapped, burning it in the embers of the little fire, wetting down the ashes till not even steam arose.

Below the great pool, the stream snaked its way through a narrow gorge, pinnacles rising straight up a hundred feet or more on one side or the other; and they had to pick a careful way, sometimes wading in the shallow border of the brook, sometimes stepping from one rock to another, sometimes clambering along the slopes above the stream. The sky was darker, and once there was a flicker of lightning, and Harland instinctively made haste; but Ellen would not be hurried. Looking up, she saw a churning, wind-torn mass of cloud which seemed to be descending, falling straight down upon them smotheringly. She paused to watch it, but Harland pushed on till he was well ahead, not knowing she had stopped, so that she had to scramble after him; and when they emerged from the narrow reach of the gorge, she was panting.

Within half an hour after the sun was first obscured, the rain
caught them. It came down the canyon on their heels, slowly, so that they saw the solid wall of falling water two hundred yards-away; and they could see, as the rain came nearer, individual drops as big as buck shot which struck the sunwarmed ledges and exploded, quickly turning to steam, till the rain wetted and cooled the stones. When the first downpour overtook them they found shelter under an overhang to wait for it to pass. The rain fell with a frightening violence, the drops pelting into the brook and turning the opposite wall of the canyon into a sluicing cascade of muddy water. The din was deafening, and they had to shout to be heard. Harland brought his lips close to her ear to say:

‘I never thought rain could fall so hard.'

She nodded, leaning so that her cheek brushed his. ‘Oh, yes, I've seen it like this often, up here. Remember there was a washout on the branch line of the railroad, the day we came. These mountain streams become rivers, rushing out across the desert plain.'

The brook at their feet had already begun to rise; and Ellen watched the water on a slanting stone which was sheltered as they were from the direct downpour. The flood crept up its sloping surface, visibly higher minute by minute. There was, she guessed, almost three miles of canyon which they must still traverse; but rain fell harder, and it was darker all the time, and she thought, half-frightened now, that the rain would not relent till night came down and caught them here. Yet — it would be bliss to huddle with him beside a little fire, finding warmth and shelter in his arms, whispering together the long night through; and her eyes softened at the thought. Harland looked at his watch uneasily, but she did not ask the hour. The rain fell as though it would persist forever, and she said:

‘Isn't it curious that when it rains we always think it's never going to stop?'

‘We ought to move on.'

‘Oh, this will be over soon.'

The brook boiled past, yellow with mud brought down from the canyon walls, rising steadily, and after a little Harland grasped
her arm. ‘Come along. It will be waist-deep here in half an hour.' He drew her to her feet so forcibly that she was thrown against him; and for a moment, as though he had snatched her into a swift embrace, all the strength drained out of her so that she hung heavy on his arm.

‘All right?' he asked.

She hid her eyes from him. ‘Perfectly,' she said.

They had to wade to their knees to pass the end of the overhang which sheltered them, and the current was strong against their legs, and Harland gripped her hand to steady her. As they took the first steps, the brook seemed to reach up for them. It rose six inches in a single hungry surge, a solid wall of water like a tidal bore plunging down the canyon as though somewhere above them a dam had let go. It swirled about their knees before they reached the end of the overhang and scrambled out on firm ground.

Yet even here, water pouring down the slopes ran ankle-deep, and they came into the full beat of the rain, and it was as though they had stepped under a waterfall. The big hats they both wore — Robie had outfitted Harland on his arrival, but Ellen's was an old friend left over from former visits to the ranch — sustained the first impact; but from shoulders down they were instantly wet through, and almost at once the hatbrims surrendered to the weight of water upon them and drooped about their ears. Ellen thought they could not travel far in this. The buffeting of the rain, hitting them a thousand blows each second, would speedily beat all their strength away. As though he had the same thought, Harland looked all about, and saw on the slope twenty feet above them a boulder which hung at an angle, with a slanting face that promised some protection; and — holding her hand, tugging her after him — he turned that way. They had to climb on hands and knees, through muddy water inches deep which made many little torrents, and they slid helplessly backward now and then, fighting to recover the lost ground, laughing and panting, wet and begrimed. The struggle to achieve even that short ascent was a hard one; but at last they reached their goal and found some shelter from the bruising beat of the rain.

Ellen's lungs were bursting with the effort, and for a while she could only gasp for breath. When she could speak, she told him smilingly: ‘This is as bad as chasing turkeys!'

He nodded, and they sat with their backs against the boulder, pulling their feet up out of the downpour. The din about them was too great to permit easy speech. The rain was so heavy that they could only dimly see the brook below. They were wet through, and when the wind came it was cold. Ellen remembered that when Harland lighted their luncheon fire he had taken a match out of a waterproof box, and she was glad his matches were dry; for unless the rain relented, they would have to spend the night here, and though she half hoped this would happen, without a fire it would be a wretched business. Robie of course would guess their situation, but not even the sure-footed western horses could pick a way through this jumble of great boulders to come to the rescue.

She was content to sit in silence, waiting for the pounding of her heart to ease. If she had not overtaken him, Harland would be alone here in this downpour; and thinking of him drenched and cold and alone, she felt toward him a brooding, almost maternal tenderness, glad that she could be here with him, could share with him whatever was to come. She watched him as though he were a child whom she must comfort and defend. He was staring at the flood with frowning eyes, and she told him, her lips close to his ear:

‘We're all right. This will pass'

‘We're so damned helpless!' he said rebelliously.

She pressed closer, huddling against the insinuating cold, wishing to make him feel her trust and her reliance. They could make no move till the violence of the rain should abate. It came in gusts, slatting and spattering against the rocky slopes as if it were thrown out of a gigantic bucket. Its violence was frightening, and even Ellen felt this; yet since they were together, nothing else mattered to her. If they were never to be parted, then she had no fear.