Judith of the Plains Part 20

Kitty knew that she had treated her long-suffering cavalier with scant consideration the day he had spurred across the desert to see her. True, she had written him on her arrival, but, with feminine perversity of logic, thought it a trifle inconsiderate of him to come so soon after that trying railroad journey. An ardent resumption of his suit-and Peter could be depended on for renewing it early and often-was farthest from her inclination at that particular time. She intended to salve her conscience at the wolf-hunt for her casual reception of his impetuous visit. But apparently Peter did not intend to be prodigal of opportunity.

"How garrulous you people are this morning!" Nannie Wetmore challenged them. Peter came out of his brown study with the look of one who has again returned to earth.

"You don't find it like the drop-curtain of a theatre, now that you've seen it?" he questioned Kitty. For she had doubted her pleasure in the mountains, in the conviction that they would be too dramatic for her simple taste.

Kitty closed her eyes and sighted the peaks as if she were getting the color scheme for an afternoon toilet.

"Ma.s.s, bulk, rather than line-no, it's not like a drop-curtain, but it's distinctly 'hand-painted.' All it needs is a stag surveying the prospect from that great cliff. It's the kind of thing that would sound well in a description. Oh, I a.s.sure you I intend to make lavish use of it, but it leaves nothing to one's poor imagination!"

Peter had a distinct feeling of being annoyed. No, she could not appreciate the mountains any more than they could appreciate her. They were incongruous, antipathetic, antipodal. Kitty, in her pink and white and flaxen prettiness and her trim habit, was in harmony with the bridle-path of a city park; in this great, lonely country she was an alien. He thought of Judith and the night they had climbed Horse-Thief Trail, of her quiet endurance, her keen pleasure in the wild beauty of the night, her quality of companionship, her loyalty, her silent bearing of many burdens. Yet until he had seen them both against the same relentless background, he had never been conscious of comparing the two women.

Nannie Wetmore had fallen behind. She was riding with a bronzed young lieutenant from Fort Washakie. The two ahead rode long without speaking.

Then Peter broke the silence impatiently:

"You did not really mean that, did you?" He was boyishly hurt at her flippant summing up of his beloved blue country. And Kitty, tired with the long, hard ride, and missing that something in Peter that had always been hers, turned on him a pair of blue eyes in which the tears were br.i.m.m.i.n.g suspiciously. They were well out of sight of the others, and had come to the heavy fringes of a pine wood. Was it the psychological moment at last?

Then suddenly their horses, that had been sniffing the air suspiciously, stopped. Kitty's horse, which was in advance of Peter's, rushed towards the thicker growth of pines as if all Bedlam were in pursuit. Peter's horse, swerving from the cause of alarm, bolted back across the trail over which they had just made their way. A large brown bear, feeding with her cub, and hidden by the trees till they were directly in front of her, had caused the alarm.

And presently the hush of the shadowy green world in which Judith lay was broken by a light, sobbing sound. It had been so still that, lying on her bed of pine-needles, she had likened it to great waves of silence, rolling up from the valley, breaking over her and sweeping back again, noiseless, green from the billowing ocean of pine branches, and sunlit. Judith bent over the rocky ledge and saw a girl making her way down the game trail, dishevelled and tearful. Her hat was gone, her pale-yellow hair, that in shadow had the greenish tinge of corn-silk, blew about her shoulders, her trim skirt was torn and dusty, and she looked about, bewildered, hardly realizing that through the unexpected course of things she had been stranded in this great world of sunlit splendor and loneliness. She closed her eyes. The awful vastness and solitude oppressed her with a deepening sense of calamity. Suppose they never found her? How could she find her way in this endless wilderness, afoot? She sank to the turf and began to cry hysterically.

Judith knew in a flash of instant cognition that this was Miss Colebrooke.

Amazement seemed to have dulled her powers of action-amazement that she, who had stolen to this place and crouched close to earth that she might see the triumph of this preferred woman, and, having seen and paid her grievous dole, steal away and take up the thread of endless little things that spun for her the web of life, was forced instead to be an unwilling witness of the other's distress. Judith had risen with her first impulse, which had been to go to Kitty, but half-way through the thicket she hesitated and reconsidered. Undoubtedly Peter would come soon, and Peter's consolation would be more potent than any she could offer. She shrank in shuddering self-consciousness at the thought of her presence at their meeting, the uninvited guest, the outgrown friend and confidante, blundering in at such a time, pitifully full of good intentions. She recoiled from the picture as from a precipice that all unwittingly she had escaped. What madness had induced her to come on this expedition? A sudden panic at the possibility of discovery possessed her; suppose Peter should find her skulking like a beggar, waiting for broken meats? She looked at the image of herself that she carried in her heart. It was that of a proud woman who made no moan at the scourge of the inevitable. Many burdens had she carried in her proud, lonely heart, but of them her lips gave no sign.

In her contemplative stoicism she felt with pride that she was no unworthy daughter of her mother's people, and catching a glimpse through the trees of the abjectly waiting woman who, though safe and sound, could but wait, wretched and dispirited, for some one to come and adjust her to the situation, Judith felt for her a wondering pity at her helplessness. She waited, expectant, for the sound of Peter's horse. Surely he must come at any moment, overcome with apologies, and she-Judith hid her face in her hands at the thought-she would steal away through the thicket at the first sound of hoofs. But as the minutes slipped by and still no sign of Peter, a sickening anxiety began to gnaw at her heart. Had something happened to him?

She did not wait to ask herself the question twice. She crawled the length of the thicket with incredible rapidity, gained the pine forest, and made her way beneath the low-hanging boughs; without stopping to protect herself from them she gained the open s.p.a.ce and ran quickly to Kitty.

"Are you hurt? What has happened?"

Kitty looked up, startled at the voice. She had not heard the sound of the moccasined feet. Her wandering, forlorn thoughts crystallized at sight of the woman before her. A new lightning leaped into her eyes as she recognized Judith. There was between them a thrilling consciousness that gave to their mutual perception a something sharp and fine, that grasped the drama of the moment with the precision and fidelity of a camera. And through all the wonder of the meeting there was in the heart of each an outflowing that met and mingled and understood the potential tragedy element of the situation.

"You are Miss Rodney, I believe?"

Kitty was conscious of something strange in her voice as she looked into the dark eyes, wide with questioning fear. Ah, but she had amazing beauty, and a something that seemed of the very essence of deep-souled womanliness! The two women presented a fine bit of ant.i.thesis, Kitty, flower-like, small, delicately wrought, the finished product of the town, exotic as some rare transplanted orchid growth. And in Judith there was a gemlike quality: it was in the bloom of her skin, the iridescent radiance of her hair, that was bluish, like a plum in sunlight; it was in the warm, red life in her lips, in the pulsing vitality of the slim, brown throat; in every line was sensuous force restrained by spiritual pa.s.sion.

Kitty told of the accident in which her horse had thrown her and disappeared in the pine fringes, leaving her stunned for a moment or two; and how she had finally pulled herself together and followed what appeared to be a trail, in the hope of finding some one. She dwelt long on the details of the accident.

"Yes, but Peter, what has happened him?" Judith chose her words impatiently. She was racked with anxiety at his long delay, and now she hung over Kitty, waiting for her answer, without the semblance of a cloak for her alarm.

There was reproof in Kitty's amendment. "I don't know which way Mr.

Hamilton's horse went. It started back over the trail, I think."

Judith clasped her hands. "Let us go and look for him. Why do we waste time?" But Kitty hung back. She was shaken from her fall, and upset by the events of the morning. Besides, her faith in Peter's ability to cope with all the exigencies of this country was supreme. And chiefest reason of all for her not going was a something within her that winced at the thought of this fellowship that had for its object the quest of Peter.

"Oh, don't you see," pleaded Judith, "that if something had not happened to him he would have been here long ago?"

Judith's anxiety awoke in Kitty a new consciousness. What was she to him, that at the possibility of harm, a fear not shared by Kitty, she should throw off a reserve that every line of her face p.r.o.nounced habitual? In her very energy of att.i.tude, an energy that all unconsciously communicated itself to Kitty, there was the power that belongs to all elemental human emotion-the power that compels. Kitty rose to follow Judith, then hesitated.

"I'm sure nothing has happened him. No, I'm really too unstrung by my fall to walk." She sank again to the bowlder on which she had been sitting.

To the woman of the world, Judith's ingenuous display of feeling had in its very sincerity a something pitiable. How could she strip from her soul every fold of reserve and stand unloved and unashamed, sanctified, as it were, by the very hopelessness of her pa.s.sion? How could women make of their whole existence a thing to be rejected, reflected Kitty, who, giving nothing, could not understand. She looked again at the bronzed face beside her, so bold in outline, so expressive in detail. Yes, she was beautiful, and yet, what had her beauty availed her? The thought that she herself was the preferred woman throbbed through her for a moment with a sense of exaltation. The next moment a haunting doubt laid hold of her heart, held up mockingly the little that she and Peter had lived through together, the lofty plane of friendship along which she had tried to lead his unwilling feet sedately, his protests, his frank amus.e.m.e.nt at her serious pretensions to a career. How much fuller might not have been the intercourse between him and this woman, who, in all probability, had been his comrade for years? And she had been idealizing him, and his love for her, and his loneliness! Kitty stood with eyes cast down, while images crowded upon her, leaving her cold and smiling.

"But think," pleaded Judith; "if you don't come it will take me longer to search the trail-marks. You could show me just where the horses ran-"

Kitty's eyes were still on the ground. She did not lift them, and Judith, realizing that further appeal was but a waste of time, turned and ran swiftly down the trail.

"He is her lover," said Kitty; and all the wilderness before her was no lonelier than her heart.

Swift, intent, Judith traced Kitty's footprints. They followed the game trail, the one she herself had taken earlier in the day. She traced them back through the pine wood about a hundred rods, and then the trail-marks grew confused. This was unquestionably the place where the horses had taken fright, circled, reared, then dashed in different directions. She traced the other horse, whose tracks led under low-hanging boughs. It would have been a difficult matter for a horse with a rider to clear; and now the impression of the horse's shoes grew fainter, from the lighter footfalls of a horse at full gallop.

"Ah!" A cry broke from her as she saw the marks had become almost eliminated by something that had dragged, something heavy. Those long-drawn lines were finger-prints, where a hand had dragged in its vain endeavor to grasp at something. A sickening image came persistently before her eyes-Peter's upturned face, blood-smeared and disfigured.

"Sh-sh-sh!" She put her hand to her breast to still the beating of her heart. She could hear the sound of hoofs falling m.u.f.fled on the soft ground, and a man's voice speaking in a soothing sing-song. She listened.

It was Peter's voice, rea.s.suring the horse, asking him what kind of a bag of nerves he was for a cow pony, to get frightened at a bear? Judith stood tall and straight among the pines. Surely he could not blindly pa.s.s her by. He must feel the joy in her heart that all was well with him. The hoofs came nearer, the man's voice sounded but intermittently, as he got his horse under better control. She felt as if he must come to her, as if some overpowering consciousness of her presence would speak from her heart to his; but his eyes scanned the distant trail for a glimpse of Kitty or Kitty's horse. Judith saw that his head was bound in something white and that it bore a red stain, but he held himself well in the saddle. He was not the man to heed a tumble. He urged the horse forward, never looking towards the tree-trunks, his face white and strained with anxiety as he scoured the trail for evidences of Kitty. The horse, with a keener sense than his master, shied slightly as he pa.s.sed the group of pines where Judith stood; but Peter's glance was for the open trail, and as she heard him canter by, so close that she could have touched his stirrup with her hand, it seemed as if he must hear the beating of her heart.

"Oh, blind eyes, and ears that will not hear, and heart that has forgotten how to beat! Yes, go to that pale, cold girl! You speak one language, and life for you is the way of little things!"

She waited till the last sound of the horse's hoofs had died away and all was still in the tremulous green of the forest. Judith's mind was busy with the image of their meeting, the man bringing the joy of his youth to the calm divinity who could feel no thrill of fear in his absence. She broke into the running gait and hurried through the forest to the Daxes'.

XVI

In The Land Of The Red Silence

The beef-herd, that had been the pivotal point of the round-up and had made the mighty plain echo to its stampings and bellowings, beating up simooms that choked it with thirst, blinded it with dust, confounding itself on every side by the very fury of its blind force, had trailed for a week, tractable as toys in the hands of children. Little had happened to vary the monotony for the cow-punchers that handled the herd-they grazed, guarded, watered, night-herded the cattle day after day, night after night. Pasturage had been sufficient, if not abundant. The creeks were running low and slimy with the advance of summer, but there had been sufficient water to let the herd drink its fill at least once a day.

The outfit ate its "sow-belly," soda-biscuit, and coffee three times a day, and smoked its pipes, but was a little shy on yarns round the camp-fire.

"This yere outfit don't lather none," commented the cook to the horse-wrangler, over the smoke of an early morning fire.

"Don't lather no more than a chunk of wood," agreed the horse-wrangler.

"That's the trouble with a picked-up outfit like this. Catch 'W-square'

men kowtowing to a 'x.x.x' boss, even if he is only acting foreman."

Simpson, the origin of whose connection with the "x.x.x" was rather a sensitive subject with that outfit, had begun to take his duties as a cattle-man with grim seriousness; he was untiring in his labors; he spent long hours in the saddle, he took his turn at night herding, though he was old for this kind of work. He condemned the sheep-men with foul-mouthed denunciations, scoffed at their range-rights, said the sheep question should be dealt with in the business-like manner in which the Indian question had been settled. He was an advocate of violence-in short, a swaggering, bombastic wind-bag. He talked much of "his outfit" and "his men." "What was good enough for them was good enough for him," he would announce at meal-time, in a snivelling tone, when the food happened to be particularly bad. He split the temporary outfit, brought together for the purpose of handling the beef-herd, into factions. He put the "x.x.x" in worse repute than it already enjoyed-he was, in fact, the discordant spirit of the expedition. The men attended to their work sullenly. Discord was rife. The one thought they shared in common was that of the wages that would come to them at the end of the drive; of the feverish joy of "blowing in," in a single night; perchance, of forgetting, in one long, riotous evening, the monotony, the hardship, the lack of comradery that made this particular drive one long to be remembered in the mind of every man who had taken part in it.

Meanwhile the herd trailed its half-mile length to the slaughtering pens day after day, all unconscious of its power. When the steers had trailed for about a fortnight, the question of finding sufficient water for them began to be a serious one. The preceding winter had been unusually mild, the snow-fall on the mountains averaging less than in the recollection of the oldest plains-man. Summer had begun early and waxed hot and dry. The earth began to wrinkle, and cracked into trenches, like gaping mouths, thirsty for the water that came not. Such streams as had not dried shrank and crawled among the willows like slimy things, that the herd, thirsty though it was from the long drives, had to be coaxed to drink from.

Discontent grew. The acting foreman, who was a "x.x.x" man, and a comparative stranger to that part of the country, refused to consult with the "W-square" men in the outfit, who knew every inch of the ground. The acting foreman thought the Wetmore men looked down on him, "put on dog"; and, to flaunt his authority, he ordered the herd driven due west instead of skirting to the north by the longer route, where they would have had the advantage of drinking at several creeks before crossing Green River.

Moreover, the acting foreman was drinking hard, and he insisted upon his order in spite of the Wetmore men's protestations.

The character of the country began to change, the soil took on the color of blood, even the omnipresent sage-brush began to fail the landscape; sun-bleached bones glistened on the red soil, white as ulcers. All the animal trails led back from the country into which they were proceeding.

The sky, a vivid, cloudless blue, paled as it dipped earthward. The sun looked down, a flaming copper shield. There was no sign of life in all the land. Even the gra.s.shoppers had left it to the sun, the silence, and the desolation. To ears accustomed to the incessant shrilling of the insects, the cessation was ominous, like the sudden stopping of a clock in a chamber of death. Above the angry bellow of the thirsty herd the men strained their ears again and again for this familiar sound of life, but there was nothing but the bellowing of the cattle, the trampling of their hoofs, and sometimes the long, squealing whinny of a horse as he threw back his head in seeming demand to know the justice of this thing.

Across the red plain snailed the herd, like a many-jointed, prehistoric reptile wandering over the limitless s.p.a.ces of some primeval world. A cloud of red dust hung over them in a dense haze, trailed after them a weary length, then all was featureless monotony as before. What were a thousand steers, a handful of men and horses, in the land of the red silence? It had seen the comings and goings of many peoples, and once it had flowed with streams; but that was before the curse of G.o.d came upon it, and in its harsh, dry barrenness it grew to be a menace to living things.