Out of the Depths: A Romance of Reclamation

CHAPTER XXX

LURKING BEASTS

The moment that he had helped haul the climber to safety Gowan had ridden away with the horses to the camp. He now came jogging back with the tent and all else that they had not been carrying with them in their skirting of the cañon edge. He unloaded the packs and hastened to pitch the tent.

As he was finishing, Isobel called to him sharply. “What are you doing there, Kid? That can wait. Come here.”

“Yes, Miss Chuckie,” he replied with ready obedience. But when he came down the slope to the little group, his mouth was like a thin gash across his lean jaws. He stared coldly at Ashton between narrowed lids. “Want me to help tote him up by the fire?” he asked.

“No!” she replied. “It is Tom! He is down there–his leg broken–and no food! You must go down to him.”

“Go down?” queried the puncher. “What good would that do? I couldn’t help him with that climb. He weighs a good two hundred.”

“You can take food down to him and let him know that help is coming. You must!”

Gowan looked sullenly at the unconscious man. “Sorry, Miss Chuckie. It’s no go. I ain’t a mountain sheep.”

“But he came up!”

“That’s different. It’s a sight easier going up cliffs than climbing down. No, you’ll have to excuse me, Miss Chuckie.”

The girl flamed with indignant anger. “You coward! You saw him come up, after all that time down in those fearful depths–after fighting his way all those miles along the terrible river–yet you dare not go down! You coward! you quitter!”

The puncher’s face turned a sickly yellow, and he seemed to shrink in on himself. His voice sank to a husky whisper: “You can say that, Miss Chuckie! Any man say it, he’d be dead before now. If you want to know, I’ve got a mighty good reason for not wanting to go down. It ain’t that I’m afraid. You can bank on that. It’s something else. I’ll go quick enough–but it’s got to be on one condition. You’ve got to promise to marry me.”

“Marry you?”

“Yes. You know how I’ve felt towards you all these years. Promise to marry me, and I’ll go to hell and back for you. I’ll do anything for you. I’ll save him!”

“You cur! You’d force me to bargain myself to you!” she cried, fairly beside herself with righteous fury. “I thought you a man! You cur–you cowardly cur!”

Gowan turned from her and walked rapidly away along the cañon edge, his head hunched between his shoulders, his hands downstretched at his thighs, the fingers crooked convulsively.

“Oh!” gasped Genevieve. “You’ve driven him away! Call him back! We need him! He must go for help!”

The words shocked the girl out of her rash anger. Her flushed face whitened with fear. “Kid!” she screamed. “Come back, Kid! You must go to the ranch–bring the men!”

The cry of appeal should have brought him back to her on the run. It pierced high above the booming reverberations of the cañon. Yet he paid no heed. He neither halted nor paused nor even looked back. If anything, he hurried away faster than before.

“Kid! dear Kid! forgive me! Come back and help us!” shrieked the girl.

He kept on down along the cañon rim, his chin sunk on his breast, his downstretched hands bent like claws. She ran a little way after him; only to flutter back again, wringing her hands, distracted. “What shall we do? what shall we do?”

“Be quiet, dear–be quiet!” urged Genevieve. “You’ve driven him away. We must do the best we can. You must go yourself. I can stay and watch–”

“No, no!” cried Isobel. “The way he looked at Lafe!–I dare not go! He may come back–and I not here!”

She knelt to place her trembling hand on Ashton’s forehead.

Genevieve looked at the setting sun. “There is no time to lose,” she said. “Saddle my horse while I nurse Baby. I cannot take him with me down the mountain, in the dark.”

“Genevieve! You dare go–at night?”

“Someone must bring help, else Tom–all alone down in that dreadful chasm–!”

“But you may lose the way! I will go!”

“No, no, you must stay, Belle. I saw his eyes. He may come back. I could not protect Lafayette, but you–There is no other way. I must leave Baby, and go.”

Wondering at the courage of the young mother, Isobel ran to saddle the oldest of the picketed horses. He was the slowest of them all, but he was surefooted and steady and very wise. When she brought him down the ridge, Genevieve placed the newly fed baby in her arms and went with the glasses to peer down the sheer precipices. There in the blackness so far beneath her the glowing fire illuminated an outstretched form. It was her husband, lying flat on his back and gazing up at the heights. Almost she could fancy that he saw her as she saw him.

But she did not linger. Time was too precious. She dropped him a kiss, and ran to spring upon the waiting pony. She did not pause even to kiss the big-eyed baby. The thirsty pony needed no urging to start at a lively jog up the slope of the first ridge. As he topped the crest and broke into a lope the sun dipped below the western edge of High Mesa. A few seconds later horse and rider disappeared from Isobel’s anxious gaze down the far side of the ridge.

“Old Buck knows the trail,” murmured the girl. “He knows he is headed for the waterhole. Yet if–if he should lose the trail!”

A spasm of fear sent her hand to the pistol hilt under the fold of her skirt and twisted her head about. She glared along the cañon rim. Gowan was still striding away from her. She watched him fixedly, her hand clutched fast on the hilt of her pistol, until he disappeared around a mass of rocks.

The whinnying of the horses after their companion at last drew her attention. They had not been watered since the previous evening. Cuddling close the frightened baby, the girl fetched a basin and one of the water cans, to sponge out the dusty nostrils of the animals and give each two or three swallows.

Then, when she had soothed the fretful child to sleep, she laid him in a snug nest of blankets between a rock and a fallen tree, and went to watch beside Ashton. He lay as she had left him, in a stupor of sleep and exhaustion.

Gradually the twilight faded. Stars began to twinkle in the cloudless sky. She watched and waited while the dusk deepened. When she could barely see objects a few yards away, she stooped over the unconscious man and, putting out all her supple young strength, half dragged, half carried him up the slope to a hiding place that she had chosen, in under an overhanging ledge. There she spread pine needles and blankets on the soft mold and lifted him upon them, so that nothing hard should press against his wounds.

The fire had burned low. It was a full hundred yards away from the hiding place. She went to replenish it and take a hasty look down at that outstretched form in the depths. But soon she stole back to the sleeping man under the rock, going, as she had come, by a roundabout way in the darkness.

Night settled down close and dense over the plateau. The girl crouched beside the sleeper, her eyes peering out into the blackness, the drawn pistol ready in her hand. She could see only a few feet in the dim starlight. But her ears, accustomed to the dull monotone of the booming cañon, heard every sound–the click of the horses’ hoofs, even the munching of the nearest one, the hoot of the owls that flitted overhead, the distant yelps and wails of coyotes.

An hour passed, two hours–a third. She crept around to replenish the fire. When she returned she heard the baby fretting. Swiftly she groped her way to him and carried him to the hiding place, to quiet his outcry. He sucked in a little of the beaten egg and cream that she had ready for Ashton. It satisfied his hunger, and he fell asleep, clasped against her soft warm bosom. She crouched down with him in her lap, her right hand again clasped on the pistol hilt, ready for the expected attack.

She waited as before, silent, motionless, every sense alert. Another hour dragged by, and another. Midnight passed. Suddenly, on the ridge slope above her, one of the horses snorted and plunged. She raised the pistol. The horse became quiet. But something came gliding around the rocks, a low form vaguely outlined in the darkness. It might have been a creeping man. It turned towards the hiding place. The girl found herself looking into a pair of glaring eyes. She thrust out the pistol, with her forefinger pointing along the barrel. The darkness was too deep for her to aim by the sights.

Before she could press the trigger, the beast bounded away, with a snarl far deeper, far more ferocious than any coyote could have uttered. The girl did not fire. The wolf had seen the glint of her pistol barrel and had fled. He would not return. But she shuddered and drew the sleeping baby close as she thought of what might have happened had she left him alone in the nest between the rock and the tree.

The precious, helpless child! He was of her own blood, the son of her strong, splendid brother … of her brother, lying down there in those awful depths, helpless–in agony!..

CHAPTER XXXI

CONFESSIONS

A groping hand touched her arm; bandaged fingers sought to feel who she was. Behind her sounded a drowsy incoherent murmur. The snarl of the wolf had roused the sleeper from his torpor.

“Hush–hush!” she whispered. “It is all well. I am here by you. Lie still.”

“Isobel!” he murmured. “Isobel!”

“Yes, dear!” she soothed. “I am here. Rest–go to sleep again. All is well.”

“All is–?” He roused a little more. “You say–Then he is safe! They have brought him up–out of that hell!”

She could not lie outright. “He will soon be safe. By morning help will have come to us. As soon as the men can see to go down, they will descend for him. They will bring him up the way that you have shown us!”

Her voice quivered with pride of what he had done. She drew up his hand and pressed her lips tenderly upon the bandages.

Had the caress been a burn, he could not have more quickly snatched the hand away. He sought to rise, and struck his head against the overhanging rock.

“Where am I? Let me out!” he said.

“No, you must not! Lie still! You must not!” she remonstrated.

“Lie still?” he repeated. “Lie still! with him down there–alone!”

“But it is night–midnight. It will be hours before even the moon rises.”

“And he down there–alone! Help me make ready. I am going down to him.”

“Going down? But you cannot! It is midnight!”

“There is a lantern. I shall take that. It will be easier than in the daytime, for I shall not see those sickening precipices below.”

He sought to creep out past her. She clutched his arm.

“No, no! do not go! There is no need! Wait until they come. You have done your share–far more than your share! Wait!”

“I cannot,” he replied. “I must go down to him. I have no right to be up here, and he still down there.”

“You must!” she urged, clinging tighter to his arm. “You may fall. I am afraid! I cannot bear it! Do not go! Stay with me–say that you will stay with me–dearest!”

“Good God!” he cried, tearing himself away from her, “To let you say it–say it to me!”

“Dearest!” she repeated. “Dearest, do not go! There is no need! I cannot bear it! Do not go!”

“No need? My God! When I could fling myself over, if it were not for him! To have let you say it–to me–to a liar! thief! murderer!”

“Dearest!” she whispered. “Hush! You are delirious–you do not know–”

“It is you who do not know!” he cried. “But you shall–everything–all my cowardly baseness!” The confession burst from him in a torrent of self-denunciation–“That trip to town, when we went to fetch them, I lied to you about those bridge plans. It was not true that I found them. He handed them to me. He took no receipt. I looked at them and saw how wonderful they were. I stole them. My father had threatened to cast me off if I did not do something worth while. I was desperate. So I stole your brother’s plans. I copied them–”

“You know about Tom!” she interrupted. “But of course. You saw me tell him, there at the ravine.”

“I saw you put your arms about his neck and kiss him; but I did not hear–I did not see the truth. I believed–that is the worst of it all–I believed it possible that you–you– !.. That devil Gowan… But that is no excuse. Had I not already doubted you… And I went down–down into hell, with only one purpose–to make certain that he never should come up again!”

“Dear Christ!” whispered the girl–“Dear Christ! He has gone mad!”

“No, Isobel,” he said, his voice slow and dead with the calm of utter despair, “I am not mad. I have never been mad except for a little while after you put your arms about his neck. No–For years I was a fool, a profligate fool, wasting my life as I wasted all those thousands of dollars that I had not earned. I turned thief–a despicable sneak thief. At last the dirty crime found me out. I received a small share of the punishment that I deserved. Then you took me in–without question–treated me as a man. God knows I tried to be one!”

“You were!–you are!” she broke in. “This is all a mistake–a cruel, hideous mistake!”

“I tried to go,” he went on unflinchingly. “You urged me to stay. I was weak. I could not force myself to leave you.”

“Because–because!” she murmured.

“All the more reason why I should have gone,” he replied. “But I was weak, unfit. I lied to you and won your pity. You gave me the chance to stay and prove myself what I am. Down there, when he told me what I should have guessed–what I must have guessed had not my own baseness blinded me to the truth–when he told me he was your brother, I saw myself, my real self,–my shriveled, black, hellish soul. Now you see why I must go down again. I can never make reparation for what I have done. But I can at least go down to him.”

“You take all the blame on yourself!” she protested. “What if I had confessed my secret, there at the first, when Tom sprang down from the car and I knew him.”

“If you had told, then I should not have been tempted to doubt you, and I should have gone on, it might have been forever, with that lie and that theft between us–and I should not have been forced to see, as I now see, my absolute unworthiness of you.”

“Of me!” she cried shrilly, and she burst into wild hysterical laughter. It broke off as abruptly as it began. “Unworthy of me–of me? the daughter of a drunken mother, the sister of a girl who–” A sob choked her. She went on desperately: “You have told me all. But I–do you not wonder why I kept silent–why I denied Mary by my silence? You say you sought to harm Tom–down there. You did not know he was my brother. You thought he would harm me. Is it not so?”

“I doubted you!”

“Why? Because I failed to tell the truth. I feared to hurt him–to make trouble between him and his rich, high-bred wife. As if I should not have known better the moment I saw Genevieve! Dear sister! she knows all. But you–Either I should have spoken, or I should have hidden all my fondness for him. But I could not hide my love for him–and I was ashamed to tell.”

“Ashamed–you?”

“We lived in the slums. They told me my father was a big man, a man such as Tom is now. He was a railroad engineer. He was killed when I was a baby. Then we sank into the slums. My mother–she died when I was twelve. There was then only Mary and I and Tom. He could make only a little, working at odd jobs. Mary and I worked in a factory. Even she was under age. When I was going on fourteen there came a terrible winter when thousands were out of work. We almost starved.”

“You–starved!” murmured Ashton. “Starved! And I was starting in at college, flinging away money!”

“Tom tried to force people to let him work,” the girl went on drearily. “He was violent. They put him in jail. Soon Mary and I had nothing left. There was no work for us. We had sold everything that anyone would buy. The rent was overdue. They turned us out–on the streets… I was too young; but Mary… She found a place where I could stay. They were decent people, but hard…

“The weather was bitterly cold. She was taken sick. When the people with whom I was staying heard what she had done, they refused to help. I begged in the street. I was very small and thin. The–the beasts did not trouble me. Then, when Mary was very sick, I met Daddy. I begged from him. He did not give me a nickel and pass on. He stopped and made me talk–he made me take him to Mary.

“He had her moved to the best hospital… It was too late… I also had pneumonia. They said I would die. But Daddy brought me home just as soon as I could be moved. The railroad was then a hundred miles from Dry Mesa. But he kept me wrapped in furs, and all the way he carried me in his arms. Do you wonder why I love him so?.. That is all. You see now why I shrank from telling–why I denied Mary.”

“She is in Heaven,” said Ashton–“in Heaven, where some day you will go. But I–I–” She could see no more than the vague blotch of his white face in the darkness, but his voice told her the anguish of his look. “He was right–your brother. He told me that we always take with us the heaven or the hell that we each have made for ourselves… I have lost you… You know now why I am going down to do the little that I can do.”

“You are going down?” she asked wonderingly. “You still say that you are going down? Yet I have told you about–Mary!”

“If you were she, I still would be utterly unfit to look you in the face. I shall go to the camp for the lantern. There were other gloves and some of my clothing.”

“They are all here.”

“Show me where they are, and get ready the lantern and bandages and a sack of food.”

“You are going down,” she acquiesced. “You are going to Tom. And you are coming up with him–to me!”

“That is too much. I doubted you. Where are those things? He is waiting down there alone.”

“Here is his child, my nephew,” she said. “Hold him while I go for what you need. Here is my pistol. The man who shot you, who twice tried to murder you–he is somewhere up here. He will not harm me. But you–If he comes creeping in on you here, shoot him as you would shoot a coyote.”

“The man who shot me? He is up here?”

“You have seen him every day since that first day I met you,” replied the girl. “His name is Gowan.”

“Gowan?”

“Kid Gowan, murderer! I saw his eyes as he looked at you, lying down there on the brink. Then I knew.”

“But–if he–Where is Genevieve? I cannot go and leave you alone.”

“You can–you must! He is a coward. He dare not follow you down that terrible place. No harm will come to me if you are gone. But if he comes back and finds you–do you not see that if he kills you, he must also kill me? But in the morning, when the others come–Oh, why hasn’t Daddy come? All this long time since you went down into the depths, and he not with us! If only he were here!”

“Genevieve?” again inquired Ashton.

“She has gone. She started down the mountain for help when Kid went away. I’m so afraid for you, dear! He may be creeping back now–he may be waiting already, close by here, in the darkness. But if he has not heard our voices, he will go first to where you came up, and then to the tent. Keep quiet until I return. Wait; here is cream and egg. Drink it all.”

When he had drained the bowl that she held to his lips, she crept away. Ashton sat still, the warm, soft little body of the sleeping baby in his arms, the pistol in his bandaged right hand. In her excitement Isobel had forgotten his bound fingers. If Gowan had come on him then, he would have put the baby back in under the rock, and faced the puncher’s revolver with a smile. What had he now to live for? He had lost her. She had not yet grasped the baseness of what he had thought and done. As soon as she realized … And he could never forgive himself.

CHAPTER XXXII

OVER THE BRINK

Isobel came back to him, noiselessly gliding around through the darkness. She set down the bundle she was carrying, and hung blankets over the entrance of the little cave. She then lighted the lantern. He held out his bound hands. She unbound them enough for him to use his fingers, and taking the baby and the pistol, crouched down, with her ear close to the screening blankets, while he exchanged his tattered clothes for those she had brought to him.

There were also his change of boots and a pair of Blake’s gauntlet gloves, into which he was able to force his slender fingers without removing the remaining bandages. Isobel had already bound up into a kind of knapsack the food and clothing and first-aid package that he was to take down to her injured brother. He slung it upon his back, and whispered that he was ready.

She nestled the baby in the warm blankets on which he had lain, wrapped a blanket about the lantern, and led him cautiously down to the brink of the chasm. Dark as was the night about them, it was bright compared with the intense blackness of that profound abyss. The girl caught his arm and shrank back from the edge.

“You will not fall? you are certain you will not fall?” she whispered.

“I cannot fall,” he answered with calm conviction. “He needs me. I am going down to him. Besides, it will be easier with the lantern than if I could see below.”

“Do not uncover the light until you are down over the edge.–Wait!”

She stooped to knot the rope that he had brought up from the depths, to the lariats with which he had been dragged up the last ledges. She looped the end about his waist.

“There,” she said. “I shall at least be able to help you down the first fifty yards.”

“God bless you and keep you! Good-by!” he murmured in a choking voice, and he hastily crept down to slip over the first ledge of that night-shrouded Cyclopean ladder.

“Lafe!” she whispered. “Surely you do not mean to go without first telling me–I cannot let you go until–If you should fall! Wait, dearest! Kiss me–tell me that you–Oh, if you should fall!”

“I will not fall; I cannot. Good-by!”

The dim white blotch of his face disappeared below the verge. The line jerked through the girl’s hands. She clutched it with frantic strength and flung herself back with her feet braced against a point of rock. After a moment of tense straining, the rope slackened, and his voice came up to her over the ledge: “Pay out, please. It’s all right. I’ve found a crevice.”

She eased off on the line a few inches at a time, but always keeping it taut and always holding herself braced for a sudden jerk. At last the end came into her hand. She had to lie out on the rim-rock and call down to him. He called back in a tone of quiet assurance. The line slackened. He had cast it loose. The lantern glowed out in the blackness and showed him standing on a narrow shelf.

As Isobel bent lower to gaze at him, a frightful scream rang out above the booming of the cañon. It was a shriek such as a woman would utter in mortal fear. The girl drew back from the verge, her hair stiffening with horror. Could it be possible that Genevieve had lost her way and was wandering back to camp, and that Gowan–

Again the fearful scream pierced the air. Isobel looked quickly across towards the far side of the cañon. She could see nothing, but she drew in a deep sigh of relief. The second cry had told her that it was only a mountain lion, over on the other brink of the chasm.

When she again looked down at Ashton he was descending a crevice with a rapidity that brought her heart into her mouth. Yet there was no hurry in his quick movements, and every little while he paused on a shelf to peer at the steep slope immediately below him. Soon the circle of lantern light became smaller and dimmer to the anxious watcher above. Steadily it waned until all she could see was a little point of light far down in the darkness–and always it grew smaller and fainter.

Lying there with her bosom pressed against the hard stone, her straining eyes fixed on that lessening point of light, she had lost all count of time. Her whole soul was in her eyes, watching, watching, watching lest that tiny light should suddenly shoot down like a meteor and vanish in the darkness. Many times it disappeared, but never in swift downward flight, and always it reappeared.

Not until the moon came gliding up above the lofty white crests of the snowy range did she think of aught else than that speck of light and of him who was bearing it down into the black depths. But the glint of moonlight on a crystalline stone broke her steadfast gaze. Before she could again fix it on the faint point of lantern light a sound that had been knocking at the threshold of her consciousness at last made itself heard. It was an intermittent clinking as of steel on stone.