From the summit of the wall the plateau waved away in red and yellow ridges, with here and there little valleys green with cedar and pinyon.
Upon one of these ridges, silhouetted against the sky, appeared the stalking figure of the Indian. He had espied the fugitives. He disappeared in a niche, and presently came again into view round a corner of cliff. Here he waited, and soon Shefford and Fay joined him.
“Bi Nai, it is well,” he said.
Shefford eagerly asked for the horses, and Nas Ta Bega silently pointed down the niche, which was evidently an opening into one of the shallow cañon. Then he led the way, walking swiftly. It was Shefford, and not Fay, who had difficulty in keeping close to him. This speed caused Shefford to become more alive to the business, instead of the feeling, of the flight. The Indian entered a crack between low cliffs--a very narrow cañon full of rocks and clumps of cedars--and in a half-hour or less he came to where the mustangs were halted among some cedars. Three of the mustangs, including Nack-yal, were saddled; one bore a small pack, and the remaining two had blankets strapped on their backs.
“Fay, can you ride in that long skirt?” asked Shefford. How strange it seemed that his first words to her were practical when all his impassioned thought had been only mute! But the instant he spoke he experienced a relief, a relaxation.
“I'll take it off,” replied Fay, just as practically. And in a twinkling she slipped out of both waist and skirt. She had worn them over the short white-flannel dress with which Shefford had grown familiar.
As Nack-yal appeared to be the safest mustang for her to ride, Shefford helped her upon him and then attended to the stirrups. When he had adjusted them to the proper length he drew the bridle over Nack-yal's head and, upon handing it to her, found himself suddenly looking into her face. She had taken off the hood, too. The instant there eyes met he realized that she was strangely afraid to meet his glance, as he was to meet hers. That seemed natural. But her face was flushed and there were unmistakable signs upon it of growing excitement, of mounting happiness. Save for that fugitive glance she would have been the Fay Larkin of yesterday. How he had expected her to look he did not know, but it was not like this. And never had he felt her strange quality of simplicity so powerfully.
“Have you ever been here--through this little cañon?” he asked.
“Oh yes, lots of times.”
“You'll be able to lead us to Surprise Valley, you think?”
“I know it. I shall see Uncle Jim and Mother Jane before sunset!”
“I hope--you do,” he replied, a little shakily. “Perhaps we'd better not tell them of the--the--about what happened last night.”
Her beautiful, grave, and troubled glance returned to meet his, and he received a shock that he considered was amaze. And after more swift consideration he believed he was amazed because that look, instead of betraying fear or gloom or any haunting shadow of darkness, betrayed apprehension for him--grave, sweet, troubled love for him. She was not thinking of herself at all--of what he might think of her, of a possible gulf between them, of a vast and terrible change in the relation of soul to soul. He experienced a profound gladness. Though he could not understand her, he was happy that the horror of Waggoner's death had escaped her. He loved her, he meant to give his life to her, and right then and there he accepted the burden of her deed and meant to bear it without ever letting her know of the shadow between them.
“Fay, we'll forget--what's behind us,” he said. “Now to find Surprise Valley. Lead on. Nack-yal is gentle. Pull him the way you want to go. We'll follow.”
Shefford mounted the other saddled mustang, and they set off, Fay in advance. Presently they rode out of this cañon up to level cedar-patched, solid rock, and here Fay turned straight west. Evidently she had been over the ground before. The heights to which he had climbed with her were up to the left, great slopes and looming promontories. And the course she chose was as level and easy as any he could have picked out in that direction.
When a mile or more of this up-and-down travel had been traversed Fay halted and appeared to be at fault. The plateau was losing its rounded, smooth, wavy characteristics, and to the west grew bolder, more rugged, more cut up into low crags and buttes. After a long, sweeping glance Fay headed straight for this rougher country. Thereafter from time to time she repeated this action.
“Fay, how do you know you're going in the right direction?” asked Shefford, anxiously.
“I never forget any ground I've been over. I keep my eyes close ahead. All that seems strange to me is the wrong way. What I've seen, before must be the right way, because I saw it when they brought me from Surprise Valley.”
Shefford had to acknowledge that she was following an Indian's instinct for ground he had once covered.
Still Shefford began to worry, and finally dropped back to question Nas Ta Bega.
“Bi Nai, she has the eye of a Navajo,” replied the Indian. “Look! Iron-shod horses have passed here. See the marks in the stone?”
Shefford indeed made out faint cut tracks that would have escaped his own sight. They had been made long ago, but they were unmistakable.
“She's following the trail by memory--she must remember the stones, trees, sage, cactus,” said Shefford in surprise.
“Pictures in her mind,” replied the Indian.
Thereafter the farther she progressed the less at fault she appeared and the faster she traveled. She made several miles an hour, and about the middle of the afternoon entered upon the more broken region of the plateau. View became restricted. Low walls, and ruined cliffs of red rock with cedars at their base, and gullies growing into cañon and cañon opening into larger ones--these were passed and crossed and climbed and rimmed in travel that grew more difficult as the going became wilder. Then there was a steady ascent, up and up all the time, though not steep, until another level, green with cedar and pinyon, was reached.
It reminded Shefford of the forest near the mouth of the Sagi. It was so dense he could not see far ahead of Fay, and often he lost sight of her entirely. Presently he rode out of the forest into a strip of purple sage. It ended abruptly, and above that abrupt line, seemingly far away, rose a long, red wall. Instantly he recognized that to be the opposite wall of a cañon which as yet he could not see.
Fay was acting strangely and he hurried forward. She slipped off Nack-yal and fell, sprang up and ran wildly, to stand upon a promontory, her arms uplifted, her hair a mass of moving gold in the wind, her attitude one of wild and eloquent significance.
Shefford ran, too, and as he ran the red wall in his eager sight seemed to enlarge downward, deeper and deeper, and then it merged into a strip of green.
Suddenly beneath him yawned a red-walled gulf, a deceiving gulf seen through transparent haze, a softly shining green-and-white valley, strange, wild, beautiful, like a picture in his memory.
“Surprise Valley!” he cried, in wondering recognition.
Fay Larkin waved her arms as if they were wings to carry her swiftly downward, and her plaintive cry fitted the wildness of her manner and the lonely height where she leaned.
Shefford drew her back from the rim.
“Fay, we are here,” he said. “I recognize the valley. I miss only one thing--the arch of stone.”
His words seemed to recall her to reality.
“The arch? That fell when the wall slipped, in the great avalanche. See! There is the place. We can get down there. Oh, let us hurry!”
The Indian reached the rim and his falcon gaze swept the valley. “Ugh!” he exclaimed. He, too, recognized the valley that he had vainly sought for half a year.
“Bring the lassos,” said Shefford.
With Fay leading, they followed the rim toward the head of the valley. Here the wall had caved in, and there was a slope of jumbled rock a thousand feet wide and more than that in depth. It was easy to descend because there were so many rocks waist-high that afforded a handhold. Shefford marked, however, that Fay never took advantage of these. More than once he paused to watch her. Swiftly she went down; she stepped from rock to rock; lightly she crossed cracks and pits; she ran along the sharp and broken edge of a long ledge; she poised on a pointed stone and, sure-footed as a mountain-sheep, she sprang to another that had scarce surface for a foothold; her moccasins flashed, seemed to hold wondrously on any angle; and when a rock tipped or slipped with her she leaped to a surer stand. Shefford watched her performance, so swift, agile, so perfectly balanced, showing such wonderful accord between eye and foot; and then when he swept his gaze down upon that wild valley where she had roamed alone for twelve years he marveled no more.
The farther down he got the greater became the size of rocks, until he found himself amid huge pieces of cliff as large as houses. He lost sight of Fay entirely, and he anxiously threaded a narrow, winding, descending way between the broken masses. Finally he came out upon flat rock again. Fay stood on another rim, looking down. He saw that the slide had moved far out into the valley, and the lower part of it consisted of great sections of wall. In fact, the base of the great wall had just moved out with the avalanche, and this much of it held its vertical position. Looking upward, Shefford was astounded and thrilled to see how far he had descended, how the walls leaned like a great, wide, curving, continuous rim of mountain.
“Here! Here!” called Fay. “Here's where they got down--where they brought me up. Here are the sticks they used. They stuck them in this crack, down to that ledge.”
Shefford ran to her side and looked down. There was a narrow split in this section of wall and it was perhaps sixty feet in depth. The floor of rock below led out in a ledge, with a sheer drop to the valley level.
As Shefford gazed, pondering on a way to descend lower, the Indian reached his side. He had no sooner looked than he proceeded to act. Selecting one of the sticks, which were strong pieces of cedar, well hewn and trimmed, he jammed it between the walls of the crack till it stuck fast. Then sitting astride this one he jammed in another some three feet below. When he got down upon that one it was necessary for Shefford to drop him a third stick. In a comparatively short time the Indian reached the ledge below. Then he called for the lassos. Shefford threw them down. His next move was an attempt to assist Fay, but she slipped out of his grasp and descended the ladder with a swiftness that made him hold his breath. Still, when his turn came, her spirit so governed him that he went down as swiftly, and even leaped sheer the last ten feet.
Nas Ta Bega and Fay were leaning over the ledge.
“Here's the place,” she said, excitedly. “Let me down on the rope.”
It took two thirty-foot lassos tied together to reach the floor of the valley. Shefford folded his vest, put it round Fay, and slipped a loop of the lasso under her arms. Then he and Nas Ta Bega lowered her to the grass below. Fay, throwing off the loop, bounded away like a wild creature, uttering the strangest cries he had ever heard, and she disappeared along the wall.
“I'll go down,” said Shefford to the Indian. “You stay here to help pull us up.”
Hand over hand Shefford descended, and when his feet touched the grass he experienced a shock of the most singular exultation.
“In Surprise Valley!” he breathed, softly. The dream that had come to him with his friend's story, the years of waiting, wondering, and then the long, fruitless, hopeless search in the desert uplands--these were in his mind as he turned along the wall where Fay had disappeared. He faced a wide terrace, green with grass and moss and starry with strange white flowers, and dark-foliaged, spear-pointed spruce-trees. Below the terrace sloped a bench covered with thick copse, and this merged into a forest of dwarf oaks, and beyond that was a beautiful strip of white aspens, their leaves quivering in the stillness. The air was close, sweet, warm, fragrant, and remarkably dry. It reminded him of the air he had smelled in dry caves under cliffs. He reached a point from where he saw a meadow dotted with red-and-white-spotted cattle and little black burros. There were many of them. And he remembered with a start the agony of toil and peril Venters had endured bringing the progenitors of this stock into the valley. What a strange, wild, beautiful story it all was! But a story connected with this valley could not have been otherwise.
Beyond the meadow, on the other side of the valley, extended the forest, and that ended in the rising bench of thicket, which gave place to green slope and mossy terrace of sharp-tipped spruces--and all this led the eye irresistibly up to the red wall where a vast, dark, wonderful cavern yawned, with its rust-colored streaks of stain on the wall, and the queer little houses of the cliff-dwellers, with their black, vacant, silent windows speaking so weirdly of the unknown past.
Shefford passed a place where the ground had been cultivated, but not as recently as the last six months. There was a scant shock of corn and many meager standing stalks. He became aware of a low, whining hum and a fragrance overpowering in its sweetness. And there round another corner of wall he came upon an orchard all pink and white in blossom and melodious with the buzz and hum of innumerable bees.
He crossed a little stream that had been dammed, went along a pond, down beside an irrigation-ditch that furnished water to orchard and vineyard, and from there he strode into a beautiful cove between two jutting corners of red wall. It was level and green and the spruces stood gracefully everywhere. Beyond their dark trunks he saw caves in the wall.
Suddenly the fragrance of blossom was overwhelmed by the stronger fragrance of smoke from a wood fire. Swiftly he strode under the spruces. Quail fluttered before him as tame as chickens. Big gray rabbits scarcely moved out of his way. The branches above him were full of mockingbirds. And then--there before him stood three figures.
Fay Larkin was held close to the side of a magnificent woman, barbarously clad in garments made of skins and pieces of blanket. Her face worked in noble emotion. Shefford seemed to see the ghost of that fair beauty Venters had said was Jane Withersteen's. Her hair was gray. Near her stood a lean, stoop-shouldered man whose long hair was perfectly white. His gaunt face was bare of beard. It had strange, sloping, sad lines. And he was staring with mild, surprised eyes.
The moment held Shefford mute till sight of Fay Larkin's tear-wet face broke the spell. He leaped forward and his strong hands reached for the woman and the man.
“Jane Withersteen!... Lassiter! I have found you!”
“Oh, sir, who are you?” she cried, with rich and deep and quivering voice. “This child came running--screaming. She could not speak. We thought she had gone mad--and escaped to come back to us.”
“I am John Shefford,” he replied, swiftly. “I am a friend of Bern Venters--of his wife Bess. I learned your story. I came west. I've searched a year. I found Fay. And we've come to take you away.”
“You found Fay? But that masked Mormon who forced her to sacrifice herself to save us!... What of him? It's not been so many long years--I remember what my father was--and Dyer and Tull--all those cruel churchmen.”
“Waggoner is dead,” replied Shefford.
“Dead? She is free! Oh, what--how did he die?”
“He was killed.”
“Who did it?”
“That's no matter,” replied Shefford, stonily, and he met her gaze with steady eyes. “He's out of the way. Fay was never his wife. Fay's free. We've come to take you out of the country. We must hurry. We'll be tracked--pursued. But we've horses and an Indian guide. We'll get away.... I think it better to leave here at once. There's no telling how soon we'll be hunted. Get what things you want to take with you.”
“Oh--yes--Mother Jane, let us hurry!” cried Fay. “I'm so full--I can't talk--my heart hurts so!”
Jane Withersteen's face shone with an exceedingly radiant light, and a glory blended with a terrible fear in her eyes.
“Fay! my little Fay!”
Lassiter had stood there with his mild, clear blue eyes upon Shefford.
“I shore am glad to see you--all,” he drawled, and extended his hand as if the meeting were casual. “What'd you say your name was?”
Shefford repeated it as he met the proffered hand.
“How's Bern an' Bess?” Lassiter inquired.
“They were well, prosperous, happy when last I saw them.... They had a baby.”
“Now ain't thet fine?... Jane, did you hear? Bess has a baby. An', Jane, didn't I always say Bern would come back to get us out? Shore it's just the same.”
How cool, easy, slow, and mild this Lassiter seemed! Had the man grown old, Shefford wondered? The past to him manifestly was only yesterday, and the danger of the present was as nothing. Looking in Lassiter's face, Shefford was baffled. If he had not remembered the greatness of this old gun-man he might have believed that the lonely years in the valley had unbalanced his mind. In an hour like this coolness seemed inexplicable--assuredly would have been impossible in an ordinary man. Yet what hid behind that drawling coolness? What was the meaning of those long, sloping, shadowy lines of the face? What spirit lay in the deep, mild, clear eyes? Shefford experienced a sudden check to what had been his first growing impression of a drifting, broken old man.
“Lassiter, pack what little you can carry--mustn't be much--and we'll get out of here,” said Shefford.
“I shore will. Reckon I ain't a-goin' to need a pack-train. We saved the clothes we wore in here. Jane never thought it no use. But I figgered we might need them some day. They won't be stylish, but I reckon they'll do better 'n these skins. An' there's an old coat thet was Venters's.”
The mild, dreamy look became intensified in Lassiter's eyes.
“Did Venters have any hosses when you knowed him?” he asked.
“He had a farm full of horses,” replied Shefford, with a smile. “And there were two blacks--the grandest horses I ever saw. Black Star and Night! You remember, Lassiter?”
“Shore. I was wonderin' if he got the blacks out. They must be growin' old by now.... Grand hosses, they was. But Jane had another hoss, a big devil of a sorrel. His name was Wrangle. Did Venters ever tell you about him--an' thet race with Jerry Card?”
“A hundred times!” replied Shefford.
“Wrangle run the blacks off their legs. But Jane never would believe thet. An' I couldn't change her all these years.... Reckon mebbe we'll get to see them blacks?”
“Indeed, I hope--I believe you will,” replied Shefford, feelingly.
“Shore won't thet be fine. Jane, did you hear? Black Star an' Night are livin' an' we'll get to see them.”
But Jane Withersteen only clasped Fay in her arms, and looked at Lassiter with wet and glistening eyes.
Shefford told them to hurry and come to the cliff where the ascent from the valley was to be made. He thought best to leave them alone to make their preparations and bid farewell to the cavern home they had known for so long.
Then he strolled back along the wall, loitering here to gaze into a cave, and there to study crude red paintings in the nooks. And sometimes he halted thoughtfully and did not see anything. At length he rounded a corner of cliff to espy Nas Ta Bega sitting upon the ledge, reposeful and watchful as usual. Shefford told the Indian they would be climbing out soon, and then he sat down to wait and let his gaze rove over the valley.
He might have sat there a long while, so sad and reflective and wondering was his thought, but it seemed a very short time till Fay came in sight with her free, swift grace, and Lassiter and Jane some distance behind. Jane carried a small bundle and Lassiter had a sack over his shoulder that appeared no inconsiderable burden.
“Them beans shore is heavy,” he drawled, as he deposited the sack upon the ground.
Shefford curiously took hold of the sack and was amazed to find that a second and hard muscular effort was required to lift it.
“Beans?” he queried.
“Shore,” replied Lassiter.
“That's the heaviest sack of beans I ever saw. Why--it's not possible it can be.... Lassiter, we've a long, rough trail. We've got to pack light--”
“Wal, I ain't a-goin' to leave this here sack behind. Reckon I've been all of twelve years in fillin' it,” he declared, mildly.
Shefford could only stare at him.
“Fay may need them beans,” went on Lassiter.
“Why?”
“Because they're gold.”
“Gold!” ejaculated Shefford.
“Shore. An' they represent some work. Twelve years of diggin' an' washin'!”
Shefford laughed constrainedly. “Well, Lassiter, that alters the case considerably. A sack of gold nuggets or grains, or beans, as you call them, certainly must not be left behind.... Come, now, we'll tackle this climbing job.”
He called up to the Indian and, grasping the rope, began to walk up the first slant, and then by dint of hand-over-hand effort and climbing with knees and feet he succeeded, with Nas Ta Bega's help, in making the ledge. Then he let down the rope to haul up the sack and bundle. That done, he directed Fay to fasten the noose round her as he had fixed it before. When she had complied he called to her to hold herself out from the wall while he and Nas Ta Bega hauled her up.
“Hold the rope tight,” replied Fay, “I'll walk up.”
And to Shefford's amaze and admiration, she virtually walked up that almost perpendicular wall by slipping her hands along the rope and stepping as she pulled herself up. There, if never before, he saw the fruit of her years of experience on steep slopes. Only such experience could have made the feat possible.
Jane had to be hauled up, and the task was a painful one for her. Lassiter's turn came then, and he showed more strength and agility than Shefford had supposed him capable of. From the ledge they turned their attention to the narrow crack with its ladder of sticks. Fay had already ascended and now hung over the rim, her white face and golden hair framed vividly in the narrow stream of blue sky above.
“Mother Jane! Uncle Jim! You are so slow,” she called.
“Wal, Fay, we haven't been second cousins to a cañon squirrel all these years,” replied Lassiter.
This upper half of the climb bid fair to be as difficult for Jane, if not so painful, as the lower. It was necessary for the Indian to go up and drop the rope, which was looped around her, and then, with him pulling from above and Shefford assisting Jane as she climbed, she was finally gotten up without mishap. When Lassiter reached the level they rested a little while and then faced the great slide of jumbled rocks. Fay led the way, light, supple, tireless, and Shefford never ceased looking at her. At last they surmounted the long slope and, winding along the rim, reached the point where Fay had led out of the cedars.
Nas Ta Bega, then, was the one to whom Shefford looked for every decision or action of the immediate future. The Indian said he had seen a pool of water in a rocky hole, that the day was spent, that here was a little grass for the mustangs, and it would be well to camp right there. So while Nas Ta Bega attended to the mustangs Shefford set about such preparations for camp and supper as their light pack afforded. The question of beds was easily answered, for the mats of soft needles under pinyon and cedar would be comfortable places to sleep.
When Shefford felt free again the sun was setting. Lassiter and Jane were walking under the trees. The Indian had returned to camp. But Fay was missing. Shefford imagined he knew where to find her, and upon going to the edge of the forest he saw her sitting on the promontory. He approached her, drawn in spite of a feeling that perhaps he ought to stay away.
“Fay, would you rather be alone?” he asked.
His voice startled her.
“I want you,” she replied, and held out her hand.
Taking it in his own, he sat beside her.
The red sun was at their backs. Surprise Valley lay hazy, dusky, shadowy beneath them. The opposite wall seemed fired by crimson flame, save far down at its base, which the sun no longer touched. And the dark line of red slowly rose, encroaching upon the bright crimson. Changing, transparent, yet dusky veils seemed to float between the walls; long, red rays, where the sun shone through notch or crack in the rim, split the darker spaces; deep down at the floor the forest darkened, the strip of aspen paled, the meadow turned gray; and all under the shelves and in the great caverns a purple gloom deepened. Then the sun set. And swiftly twilight was there below while day lingered above. On the opposite wall the fire died and the stone grew cold.
A cañon night-hawk voiced his lonely, weird, and melancholy cry, and it seemed to pierce and mark the silence.
A pale star, peering out of a sky that had begun to turn blue, marked the end of twilight. And all the purple shadows moved and hovered and changed till, softly and mysteriously, they embraced black night.
Beautiful, wild, strange, silent Surprise Valley! Shefford saw it before and beneath him, a dark abyss now, the abode of loneliness. He imagined faintly what was in Fay Larkin's heart. For the last time she had seen the sun set there and night come with its dead silence and sweet mystery and phantom shadows, its velvet blue sky and white trains of stars.
He, who had dreamed and longed and searched, found that the hour had been incalculable for him in its import.
