Judith of the Godless Valley Part 63

THE TRAIL OVER THE Pa.s.s

"Some riders' spurs are the lightest when their hearts are the heaviest."

--_The Moose_.

It was a clear day, but in the increasing light, white clouds could be seen whirling from the crest of Lost Chief.

"Lost Chief is making snow, but we won't get it before evening," said Peter, as they dismounted at the post-office corral. "Now we'll just outfit for a couple of days. I'm believing we'll overtake one or both before night, but you can't tell. If Jude was crazy enough to run away in zero weather, she's crazy enough to have taken any kind of a risk and to be paying for it."

Douglas went swiftly and silently to work. The sun was just pushing over the Indian Range when, each leading a pack-horse, they crossed Lost Chief Creek and started up the long climb to the Pa.s.s. Here the wind was rising and dry snow sifted constantly across the trail, obliterating any trace of hoofs that might have been there. It was slow going, too, for there had been much snow on the Pa.s.s and the drifts were frequent and deep. Douglas was extremely sparing of his mount. Nothing that he could do should interfere with his efficiency in the search, and although his mad desire bade him rowell the straining brute, he rode light of heel, resting at frequent enough intervals to satisfy even Peter's large ideas of what was owing to a horse.

It was not until they were half-way to the summit, pushing between towering jade green walls, where the wind was excluded, that Douglas suddenly pulled up. The snow was level and hard-packed. There were hoof and wheel marks, leading south. Friday's mail stage. A number of hoof marks leading north. The two men dismounted and for many minutes studied these.

"Here!" exclaimed Peter at last. "Four horses in a walk, up to this point. Here, they break into a trot; and this is old Johnny on Jingo, and that is the Wolf Cub.

"Easy, Doug! Don't kill the horses. It's only a guess you are following."

Douglas grunted impatiently and set his horse, Justus, to the trot. At the summit, still following trail, they pulled up to breathe the horses, then plunged downward. Half through the afternoon they followed the hoof marks. The biting wind rose and the sun warmed their backs as they crested the ridges. The wind fell and the sun darkened as they dropped into the valleys. Eagles on the hunt hung watchfully in the sky. Coyotes now and again sneaked across the trail before them. The two men threshed their arms across their chests or dropped their aching feet from the stirrups, and still the hoof marks of five horses led on before them.

Their shadows had grown long and blue-black on the trail before them when suddenly Douglas pulled Justus up, and Peter pushed up beside him.

About a quarter of a mile farther on lay the half-way house. They were crossing a broad, flat valley into which the trail dipped lazily. Just before them, the tracks of two horses and a dog led sharply to the left and disappeared. Some one had fallen. There was a confusion of tracks, then a two-horse trail led on toward the half-way house. Without a word, they put their horses to a gallop that did not ease until they pulled in at the little log corral, of the half-way house. There were two horses, John's and old Johnny's, in the shed.

Crumpled on the doorstep was old Johnny, Doug's shot-gun across his knees, at first glance, sound asleep. It was bitter cold. Douglas and Peter pounded their numbed fingers, then examined the little old cowman.

He was, indeed, asleep, but his was the sleep that knows no waking.

"I thought he knew better than this," said Douglas, pitifully.

"He hadn't any outside clothes on." Peter fingered the cotton jumper.

"Had a sudden thought and went off as crazy as Jude. Let's lift him into the house."

They opened the door. On the floor beside the stove lay John, his right leg b.l.o.o.d.y. They laid old Johnny carefully against the wall. Douglas stood rigidly staring at his father. Peter hurriedly lifted the wounded man's hands, then forced some whiskey down his throat.

"Start a fire, Doug!" he ordered.

Douglas did not stir. He stood, blue eyes haggard, cheeks frost-burned, staring at his father. John opened his eyes.

"Get my right boot off, for G.o.d's sake!" he said faintly.

"Wait!" said Douglas peremptorily, when Peter would have obeyed. "Give him some more whiskey so I can hear the story and be off. Those were Judith's tracks back, there."

"The pain is killing me!" protested John.

"Where is Judith? Have you hurt her?" demanded Doug.

Peter applied his flask again to John's mouth. John drank, then groaned.

"I was drunk. Awful drunk. If Doug hadn't been so crazy about the preacher he'd have seen that. Jude went down to the house to get some warm things while she hunted for the preacher. I followed her. The house was warm and got me even more fuddled than I was. I don't know what I said but she came at me like a wild cat. Then she ran out of the house and me after her. I never touched her. I never saw such riding. I could just keep her in sight, and it wasn't till daylight that I came up to her in this valley. After I sobered up I kept yelling at her, trying to explain. But she didn't even turn her head. Then I rode my horse round in front of her and she turned that devilish little wild mare loose on me, kicking and biting my horse like a stallion. In the middle of the mix-up, that blank old fool of a Johnny gallops up, half-dressed and shooting in every direction. Jude she takes off up the valley and Johnny gave me this leg when I tried to follow. I got up here, him following me, and the fool wouldn't help me. Just sat guard outside the door. I kept telling him he'd freeze to death. He kept saying he was saving Jude for Douglas." John ended with another groan.

Douglas stood clenching and unclenching his gloved hands. Suddenly he turned on his heel. "Come on, Peter."

"We can't leave your father this way, Doug."

"Come on, I tell you!" Doug's low voice was as hard as his eyes.

"Wait!" cried Peter.

"Wait! Wait! While Judith freezes to death too!" exclaimed Douglas.

"She couldn't freeze to death. She's too mad!" groaned John.

"An hour won't make any difference," urged Peter. "I guess Jude had this thing planned out."

"Planned!" Douglas' blue eyes burned. "She's gone off her head with anger and disgust and she doesn't care where she goes as long as she's rid of him. I know Jude!"

"You don't know Jude!" contradicted Peter. "Help me to lift John to the bunk. He's gat to be taken care of."

Douglas turned on his heel, took a quilt from the bunk and laid it over old Johnny, gray and silent against the wall. Then without a word, he lifted the door-latch.

"Don't forget that this is your father after all."

"But I have forgotten!" returned Douglas clearly.

"Stop that kind of talk," said Peter sharply, "and help me get his boot off!"

Douglas gave Peter a long stare of resentment; then, without a word, he rushed out of the cabin. He watered the horses, mounted Justus, and took the lead rope of his pack-animal, putting both horses to the gallop.

When he reached the point where Judith had left the main trail he turned and followed her tracks, which were rapidly drifting over with snow.

The whole world was white. Lifting from the valley to the right, little hills rolled over into one another like foaming billows. Beyond these were distant ranges blue, white, and gold. Judith's trail led along the base of the little hills into a grove of Lebanon cedars, gnarled and wind-distorted. There was little snow among the trees and so for a while the trail was lost. But when the cedars opened out on a circular mesa where the snow was taking on the saffron tints of the evening sky, he picked it up again.

The mesa ended abruptly in a drifted mountain, opalescent pink from its foot to its cone-shaped head. The snow on the mesa was not deep, and Douglas realized that Judith had followed an old trapper's trail that worked south toward Lost Chief Peak.

By the time Doug reached the foot of the mountain it was so dark that he barely could discern that Judith had circled to the right, around the base of the peak. There would be a moon a little later. Douglas dismounted in the shelter of a huge rock, cut down a small cedar, and made himself a fire and cooked some coffee. And he fed the horses.

He sat for an hour over the fire, waiting for the moon. He was not conscious of weariness. He was not thinking. It was as if there had been no burning of his ranch, no preacher, no old Johnny. His whole mind was focussed on finding Judith. On finding her and somehow ending the intolerable uncertainty and longing which he had endured for so many years.

The threatened snow thus far had held off. If the clear weather would hold for another twelve hours, he was sure that he could overtake her.

He was impatient of delay and watched restlessly for the moon. Shortly after seven o'clock it sailed over the mountain, flooding the world with a light so intense and pure that the unbelievable colors of the daytime returned like prismatic ghosts.

Douglas mounted and slowly and carefully followed the trail around the mountain. He found the spot where Judith had made a fire. He paused over a drift where one of her horses had floundered. He urged his tired horses to a trot where Judith had followed a beaten coyote trail along a hidden brook. Hours of this, and then--a thickening cloud across the moon and a sudden thickening blast of snow in his face. He had been fearing this all day, yet the moon had risen so clearly that his fears had been lulled. He pushed on as long as he could distinguish the trail. Then, with a groan, he pulled up beside a clump of bushes. The horses sighed gratefully. Justus' shoulders were quivering with fatigue.

Douglas unsaddled the horses and hobbled them; then he shoveled snow away from beneath some of the bushes and made a rough shelter over the open s.p.a.ce with a blanket. He built a fire, crept under his rude canopy, and rolled himself in many blankets. He was very, very tired, and after a time he dropped miles deep into slumber.

It was gray dawn when he awoke and he was snug beneath a foot of snow that had blown over his bed-covering. He crawled out stiffly and made a fire. Then he fed the horses and ate his breakfast, examining the landscape as he did so.

Lost Chief Range rose to the left. To the right lay a broad mesa cut by impa.s.sable canyons. Far to the south and to the right lifted Black Devil Range, forming, with Lost Chief, a deep valley, the valley in which Elijah Nelson had settled. From Douglas' camp, the valley was almost inaccessible: almost, but not quite. Just under the crest of Black Devil Peak lay a pa.s.s. If this could be crossed one dropped southward into a cup-shaped valley called Johnson's Basin. Beyond the basin a lesser pa.s.s into sheep country, and thence still south to the railroad and the whole wide world.

Black Devil Pa.s.s was used in summer but only by seasoned hunters and cattle-men. In winter, it was closed by snow and ice. Yet now, Douglas was convinced that, unless big snows had stopped her, Judith was attempting that perilous pa.s.sage. She was by now cooled down; she would not turn back. Pride, resentment, restlessness, and that virile love of adventure which only increased as she grew older, would urge her on and on. And to cross Black Devil Pa.s.s in winter was a feat which even Charleton would refuse to undertake. Yet, he did not believe that Judith would attempt such a journey without carefully outfitting. And where could she have done this? Had she foreseen her flight and cached food and fodder? Douglas shrugged this suggestion aside as highly improbable. But she could have gone into Mormon Valley for supplies. It was possible to reach Black Devil Pa.s.s from the upper end of Mormon Valley, possible in summer at least. Possible also to reach the Pa.s.s by swinging around to the right of the Black Devil Range.