Book: The Rainbow Trail

Z >> Zane Grey >> The Rainbow Trail




"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 canyon 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 canyon 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.




XVII. THE TRAIL TO NONNEZOSHE


When Shefford awoke next morning and sat up on his bed of pinyon boughs
the dawn had broken cold with a ruddy gold brightness under the trees.
Nas Ta Bega and Lassiter were busy around a camp-fire; the mustangs
were haltered near by; Jane Withersteen combed out her long, tangled
tresses with a crude wooden comb; and Fay Larkin was not in sight.
As she had been missing from the group at sunset, so she was now at
sunrise. Shefford went out to take his last look at Surprise Valley.

On the evening before the valley had been a place of dusky red veils
and purple shadows, and now it was pink-walled, clear and rosy and
green and white, with wonderful shafts of gold slanting down from the
notched eastern rim. Fay stood on the promontory, and Shefford did
not break the spell of her silent farewell to her wild home. A strange
emotion abided with him and he knew he would always, all his life,
regret leaving Surprise Valley.

Then the Indian called.

"Come, Fay," said Shefford, gently.

And she turned away with dark, haunted eyes and a white, still face.

The somber Indian gave a silent gesture for Shefford to make haste.
While they had breakfast the mustangs were saddled and packed. And
soon all was in readiness for the flight. Fay was given Nack-yal, Jane
the saddled horse Shefford had ridden, and Lassiter the Indian's roan.
Shefford and Nas Ta Bega were to ride the blanketed mustangs, and the
sixth and last one bore the pack. Nas Ta Bega set off, leading this
horse; the others of the party lined in behind, with Shefford at the
rear.

Nas Ta Bega led at a brisk trot, and sometimes, on level stretches
of ground, at an easy canter; and Shefford had a grim realization
of what this flight was going to be for these three fugitives, now
so unaccustomed to riding. Jane and Lassiter, however, needed no
watching, and showed they had never forgotten how to manage a horse.
The Indian back-trailed yesterday's path for an hour, then headed west
to the left, and entered a low pass. All parts of this plateau country
looked alike, and Shefford was at some pains to tell the difference of
this strange ground from that which he had been over. In another hour
they got out of the rugged, broken rock to the wind-worn and smooth,
shallow canyon. Shefford calculated that they were coming to the end
of the plateau. The low walls slanted lower; the canyon made a turn;
Nas Ta Bega disappeared; and then the others of the party. When
Shefford turned the corner of wall he saw a short strip of bare, rocky
ground with only sky beyond. The Indian and his followers had halted
in a group. Shefford rode to them, halted himself, and in one
sweeping glance realized the meaning of their silent gaze. But
immediately Nas Ta Bega started down; and the mustangs, without
word or touch, followed him. Shefford, however, lingered on the
promontory.

His gaze seemed impelled and held by things afar--the great yellow-
and-purple corrugated world of distance, now on a level with his
eyes. He was drawn by the beauty and the grandeur of that scene and
transfixed by the realization that he had dared to venture to find a
way through this vast, wild, and upflung fastness. He kept looking
afar, sweeping the three-quartered circle of horizon till his judgment
of distance was confounded and his sense of proportion dwarfed one
moment and magnified the next. Then he withdrew his fascinated gaze
to adopt the Indian's method of studying unlimited spaces in the
desert--to look with slow, contracted eyes from near to far.

His companions had begun to zigzag down a long slope, bare of rock,
with yellow gravel patches showing between the scant strips of green,
and here and there a scrub-cedar. Half a mile down, the slope merged
into green level. But close, keen gaze made out this level to be a
rolling plain, growing darker green, with blue lines of ravines, and
thin, undefined spaces that might be mirage. Miles and miles it swept
and relied and heaved to lose its waves in apparent darker level. A
round, red rock stood isolated, marking the end of the barren plain,
and farther on were other round rocks, all isolated, all of different
shape. They resembled huge grazing cattle. But as Shefford gazed,
and his sight gained strength from steadily holding it to separate
features these rocks were strangely magnified. They grew and grew into
mounds, castles, domes, crags--great, red, wind-carved buttes. One by
one they drew his gaze to the wall of upflung rock. He seemed to see
a thousand domes of a thousand shapes and colors, and among them a
thousand blue clefts, each one a little mark in his sight, yet which
he knew was a canyon. So far he gained some idea of what he saw. But
beyond this wide area of curved lines rose another wall, dwarfing the
lower, dark red, horizon--long, magnificent in frowning boldness, and
because of its limitless deceiving surfaces, breaks, and lines,
incomprehensible to the sight of man. Away to the eastward began a
winding, ragged, blue line, looping back upon itself, and then winding
away again, growing wider and bluer. This line was the San Juan Canyon.
Where was Joe Lake at that moment? Had he embarked yet on the river--
did that blue line, so faint, so deceiving, hold him and the boat?
Almost it was impossible to believe. Shefford followed the blue line
all its length, a hundred miles, he fancied, down toward the west where
it joined a dark, purple, shadowy cleft. And this was the Grand Canyon
of the Colorado. Shefford's eye swept along with that winding mark,
farther and farther to the west, round to the left, until the cleft,
growing larger and coming closer, losing its deception, was seen to
be a wild and winding canyon. Still farther to the left, as he swung
in fascinated gaze, it split the wonderful wall--a vast plateau now
with great red peaks and yellow mesas. The canyon was full of purple
smoke. It turned, it gaped, it lost itself and showed again in that
chaos of a million cliffs. And then farther on it became again a
cleft, a purple line, at last to fail entirely in deceiving distance.

Shefford imagined there was no scene in all the world to equal that.
The tranquillity of lesser spaces was not here manifest. Sound,
movement, life, seemed to have no fitness here. Ruin was there and
desolation and decay. The meaning of the ages was flung at him, and a
man became nothing. When he had gazed at the San Juan Canyon he had
been appalled at the nature of Joe Lake's Herculean task. He had lost
hope, faith. The thing was not possible. But when Shefford gazed
at that sublime and majestic wilderness, in which the Grand Canyon was
only a dim line, he strangely lost his terror and something else came
to him from across the shining spaces. If Nas Ta Bega led them safely
down to the river, if Joe Lake met them at the mouth of Nonnezoshe
Boco, if they survived the rapids of that terrible gorge, then
Shefford would have to face his soul and the meaning of this spirit
that breathed on the wind.

He urged his mustang to the descent of the slope, and as he went down,
slowly drawing nearer to the other fugitives, his mind alternated
between this strange intimation of faith, this subtle uplift of hid
spirit, and the growing gloom and shadow in his love for Fay Larkin.
Not that he loved her less, but more! A possible God hovering near
him, like the Indian's spirit-step on the trail, made his soul the
darker for Fay's crime, and he saw with light, with deeper sadness,
with sterner truth.

More than once the Indian turned on his mustang to look up the slope
and the light flashed from his dark, somber face. Shefford
instinctively looked back himself, and then realized the unconscious
motive of the action. Deep within him there had been a premonition of
certain pursuit, and the Indian's reiterated backward glance had at
length brought the feeling upward. Thereafter, as they descended,
Shefford gradually added to his already wrought emotions a mounting
anxiety.

No sign of a trail showed where the base of the slope rolled out to
meet the green plain. The earth was gravelly, with dark patches of
heavy silt, almost like cinders; and round, black rocks, flinty and
glassy, cracked away from the hoofs of the mustangs. There was a level
bench a mile wide, then a ravine, and then an ascent, and after that,
rounded ridge and ravine, one after the other, like huge swells of a
monstrous sea. Indian paint-brush vied in its scarlet hue with the
deep magenta of cactus. There was no sage. Soapweed and meager grass
and a bunch of cactus here and there lent the green to that barren;
and it was green only at a distance. Nas Ta Bega kept on a steady,
even trot. The sun climbed. The wind rose and whipped dust from
under the mustangs.

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