Judith of the Plains Part 22

The horses flung up their heads and sniffed it, rearing and plunging as if they had scent of something menacing. Across the horizon a dark cloud scudded, no bigger than your hand.

"Cloud-burst!" announced Mrs. Yellett.

"Cloud-burst, all right enough," agreed Leander, and he turned up his coat-collar in simple preparation for the deluge.

There flashed into Mary Carmichael's mind a sentence from her physical geography that she had been obliged to commit to heart in her school-days: "A cloud-burst is a sudden, capricious rainfall, as if the whole cloud had been precipitated at once." She wanted to question her companions as to the accuracy of this definition, but before she had time to frame a sentence the real cloud-burst came, with a splitting crack of thunder; then the lightning flashed out its message in the short-hand of the storm, across the inky blackness, and the water fell as if the ocean had been inverted. In the fraction of a second all three were drenched to the skin, the water pouring from them in sheets, as if they had been some slight obstruction in the path of a waterfall. The wagon was soon in a deep gully, with frothing, foaming, yellow water up to the hubs of the wheels.

Mrs. Yellett, like some G.o.ddess of the storm, lashed her horses forward to keep them from foundering in the mud, and the wagon creaked and groaned in all its timbers as it lurched and jolted through the angry torrents.

Each moment Mary expected to be flung from the barrels, and clung till her finger-tips were white and aching. From the drenched red bedquilts a sticky crimson trail ran over the barrel heads, as well as over Mary's hands, face, and dress. Still they forged on through the deluge, Mrs.

Yellett shouting and lashing the horses, holding them erect and safe with the skill she never lost. The fur on her rabbit-skin cap was beaten flat.

The great, wet braids had fallen from the force of the water and hung straight and black, like huge snakes uncoiled. She was far from losing her grip on either the horses or the situation, and from the inspiring ring of her voice as she urged them forward it was plain that she took a fierce joy in this conflict of the elements.

It was bitterly cold, and Mary reflected that if Leander's teeth chattered half as hard as hers did, without breaking, they must, indeed, be of excellent quality. The storm began to abate, and the sky became lighter, though the water still poured in torrents. As soon as her responsibility as driver left her time to speak, Mrs. Yellett lost no time in fastening the cloud-burst to Leander.

"This here is what comes of settin' up your back against G.o.d A'mighty and encouragin' the heathen and the infidel in his idolatry. I might 'a'

knowed somethin' would happen, takin' you along! 'And the heathen and the infidel went out, and the Lord G.o.d sent a cloud-burst to wet him,'" quoted Mrs. Yellett from the apocryphal Scriptures that never yet failed to furnish her with verse and text.

The infidel, from his side of the wagon, began to display agitation. His jaws worked, but he said nothing.

"You 'ain't lost them teeth again, have you?"

He nodded his head wretchedly.

"'And the Lord took away the teeth of his enemy, so that he could neither bite nor talk,'" quoted Mrs. Yellett to the miserable man, who could make no reply.

"Wonder you wouldn't see the foolishness o' being a heathen and a infidel, and turn to the Lord! You 'ain't got no teeth, and it takes your wife to herd you. 'And the Lord multiplied the tribulations of his enemy.' You got no more show standin' up agin the Lord than an insect would have standin'

up agin me."

She had Leander, at last, just where she wanted him. He was forced to listen, and he could make no reply. She alternately abused him for his lack of faith and urged him to repentance. Leander raged, gesticulated, turned his back on her, mouthed, and finally put his fingers in his ears.

But nothing stemmed the tide of Mrs. Yellett's eloquence; it was as inexhaustible and as remorseless as the cloud-burst.

It continued bitterly cold, even after the rain had stopped falling, and the heap of sodden bedclothes furnished no protection against the chilling dampness. It was growing dark; there was no red in the sunset, only a streak of vivid orange along the horizon, chill and clear as the empty, soulless flame of burning paper. There were no deep, glowing coals, no amethystine opalescence, fading into gold and violet. All was cold and subdued, and the scrub pines on the mountain-tops stood out sharply against this cold background like an etching on yellow paper.

Mrs. Yellett's self-inspired scriptural maxims were discontinued after a while, either because she could think of no more, or because the rain-soaked, shivering, chattering object towards which they were directed was too abject to inspire further efforts. Leander huddled on the barrel that was farthest from Mrs. Yellett, and wrapped himself in the soaked red bedquilt. The dye smeared his face till he looked like an Indian brave ready for battle, but there was no further suggestion of the fighting red man in the utter desolation of his att.i.tude. Mary Carmichael, on her barrel, shivered with grim patience and longed for a cup of tea. Only Mrs.

Yellett gave no sign of anxiety or discomfort; she drove along, sometimes whistling, sometimes swearing, erect as an Indian, and to all appearances as oblivious of cold and wet as if she were in her own home.

The gathering darkness into which the horses were plunging was mysterious and appalling. Objects stood out enormously magnified, or distorted grotesquely, in the uncertain light. It was like penetrating into the real Inferno, like stumbling across the inspiration of Dante in all its sinister splendor. It was the Inferno of his dream rather than the Inferno of his poem; it had the ghastly reality of the unreal.

"It wouldn't surprise me if we had a smash-up in Clear Creek," said Mrs.

Yellett, just by way of adding her quota of cheerful speculation. She ducked her head and whispered in Mary's ear:

"It's all along of me hirin' _him_! I wouldn't be surprised if paw died.

I'm thinkin' of shakin' him out after his teeth. 'Take not up with the enemy of the Lord, lest he make of you also an enemy.'"

But there was no accent of apprehension in Mrs. Yellett's dismal prognostications of the evil that might befall her for employing Leander.

She spoke more with the air of one who produces incidents to prove an argument than of one who antic.i.p.ates a calamity.

Leander, toothless and wretched, sitting on the side of the wagon, began to show symptoms of joy comparable to that of the vanguard of the Israelites, catching their first glimpse of the Promised Land. Touching Mary Carmichael on the shoulder, he pointed to a white tent and the remains of a camp-fire. Already Mrs. Yellett had begun to "Hallo, Ben!"

But Ben was at work at the vat, which was still a quarter of a mile further up the mountain; so Mrs. Yellett, throwing the reins to Leander and bidding him turn out the horses, lost no time in building a fire, putting on coffee, and making her little party comfortable. So various was her efficiency that she seemed no less at home in these simple domestic tasks than when guiding her horses, G.o.ddess-like, through the cloud-burst.

And Mary Carmichael, succ.u.mbing gradually to the revivifying influence of the fire and the hot coffee, acknowledged honestly to herself a warmth of affection for her hostess and for the atmosphere Mrs. Yellett created about her that made even Virginia and her aunts seem less the only pivot of rational existence. She felt that she had come West with but one eye, as it were, and countless prejudices, whereas her powers of vision were fast becoming increased a hundredfold. How very tame life must be, she reflected, as she sat smiling to herself, to those who did not know Mrs.

Yellett, how over-serious to those who did not know Leander! Yet, after all, she knew that the real basis of her readjusted vision was her brief but illuminating acquaintance with Judith Rodney. To Mary, freed for the first time in her life from the most elegantly provincial of surroundings, Judith seemed the incarnation of all the splendor and heroism of the West.

And in the glow of her enthusiasm she decided then and there not to abandon the Yellett educational problem till she should have solved it successfully. She might not be born to valiant achievement, like these st.u.r.dy folk about her, but she might as well prove to them that an Eastern tenderfoot was not all feebleness and inefficiency.

"Leander!" called Mrs. Yellett. "Just act as if you was to home and wash up these dishes."

XVIII

Foreshadowed

Alida awoke, knowing what was to happen. She had dreamed of it, just before daylight, and lay in bed stupefied by the horror of it, living, again and again, through each frightful detail. It had happened-there, in the very room, and before the children; the noise of it had startled them; and then she woke and knew she had been dreaming. In the dream the noise had wakened the children-when it really happened they must never know. It wouldn't be fair to them; they needed a "clean start."

What had she done to keep them quiet? There had been a thunderous knocking at the door. She had expected it and was prepared; because the lock was feeble, she had shoved the old brown bureau against the door.

Nothing had happened. What a fool she was to lie there and think of it!

There was the brown bureau against the wall; she could hear the deep breathing of Jim in the room beyond. Jim had been unequal to the task of conventionally going to bed the night before, and she had put a pillow under his head and a quilt over him. She was the last woman in the world to worry about Jim, drunk, or to nag him for it when sober. But she didn't like the children to see him that way.

What was it that she had done to quiet the children when "they" rode up?

She had done something and they had gone to sleep again, and she-and she-oh no, it hadn't happened. What a fool she was to lie there thinking!

There were the children to rouse and dress, and breakfast to cook, and Jim-Jim would be feeling pretty mean this morning; he'd like a good cup of coffee. She was glad he was alive to make coffee for.

She got up and, in the uncertainty bred of the dream, felt the brown bureau, felt it hungrily, almost incredulously. The brown bureau had been pushed against the door when they had come, and knocked and knocked. Then they had thundered with the b.u.t.ts of their six-shooters, and the children had wakened, and she had called out to them:

"Sh-sh! It's only a bad dream. Mammy will give you some dough to bake to-morrow."

And she had gone to press her face flat to the thin wall, and call, "For G.o.d's sake, don't wake the children!"

And they had called out, "Let him come out quiet, then."

And then she could feel that they put their shoulders to the door-the weather-beaten door-with its crazy lock that didn't half catch. The brown bureau had spun across the floor like a top, and they had crowded in. Then she had done something to quiet the children-it was queer that she could not remember what it was, when everything else in the dream still lived within her, horribly distinct and real.

What a fool she was, with Jim asleep in the next room; she would not think about it another minute. She began to dress, but her fingers were heavy, and the vague oppression of nightmare blocked her efficiency. Repeatedly she would detect herself subconsciously brooding over some one of the links in that pitiless memory-what they had said to Jim; his undaunted replies; how she had left him and gone into the next room because Jim had told her to.

She called the children, but the sight of them, happy and flushed with sleep, did not rea.s.sure her.

"Mammy," said Topeka, eldest of the family, and lately on the invalid list, the victim of a cactus thorn, "my toe's all well; can I go barefoot?"

"Topeka Rodney, what kind of feet do you expect to have when you are a young lady, if you run barefoot now?"

Topeka, sitting on the side of the bed, with tousled hair, put her small feet together and contemplated them. The toe was still suspiciously inflamed for perfect convalescence, although Topeka, with a Spartan courage that won her a place in the annals of household valor, had the day before allowed her mother to pick out with a needle the torturing cactus thorn, scorning to shed a tear during the operation, though afterwards she had taken the piece of dried apple that was offered her and devoured it to the last bite, as only just compensation for her sufferings.

"Dimmy dot a tore toe, too." But Jimmy showed a strange reticence about offering proofs of his affliction. At the peril of his equilibrium, he clasped the allegedly injured member in his chubby hand and rolled over on the bed in apparent anguish.

"Less see, Jimmy," asked his mother, anxiously.