Book: The Rainbow Trail

Z >> Zane Grey >> The Rainbow Trail




But Shefford could not sleep. The river kept him awake. In the
distance it rumbled, low, deep, reverberating, and near at hand it was
a thing of mutable mood. It moaned, whined, mocked, and laughed. It
had the soul of a devil. It was a river that had cut its way to the
bowels of the earth, and its nature was destructive. It harbored no
life. Fighting its way through those dead walls, cutting and tearing
and wearing, its heavy burden of silt was death, destruction, and
decay. A silent river, a murmuring, strange, fierce, terrible,
thundering river of the desert! Even in the dark it seemed to wear
the hue of blood.

All night long Shefford heard it, and toward the dark hours before
dawn, when a restless, broken sleep came to him, his dreams were
dreams of a river of sounds.

All the beautiful sounds he knew and loved he heard--the sigh of the
wind in the pines, the mourn of the wolf, the cry of the laughing-
gull, the murmur of running brooks, the song of a child, the whisper
of a woman. And there were the boom of the surf, the roar of the north
wind in the forest, the roll of thunder. And there were the sounds not
of earth--a river of the universe rolling the planets, engulfing the
stars, pouring the sea of blue into infinite space.

Night with its fitful dreams passed. Dawn lifted the ebony gloom out
of the canyon and sunlight far up on the ramparts renewed Shefford's
spirit. He rose and awoke the others. Fay's wistful smile still
held its faith. They ate of the gritty, water-soaked food. Then they
embarked. The current carried them swiftly down and out of hearing of
the last rapid. The character of the river and the canyon changed.
The current lessened to a slow, smooth, silent, eddying flow. The walls
grew straight, sheer, gloomy, and vast. Shefford noted these features,
but he was listening so hard for the roar of the next rapid that he
scarcely appreciated them. All the fugitives were listening. Every
bend in the canyon--and now the turns were numerous--might hold a rapid.
Shefford strained his ears. He imagined the low, dull, strange
rumble. He had it in his ears, yet there was the growing sensation
of silence.

"Shore this 's a dead place," muttered Lassiter.

"She's only slowed up for a bigger plunge," replied Joe. "Listen!
Hear that?"

But there was no true sound, Joe only imagined what he expected and
hated and dreaded to hear.

Mile after mile they drifted through the silent gloom between those
vast and magnificent walls. After the speed, the turmoil, the
whirling, shrieking, thundering, the never-ceasing sound and change
and motion of the rapids above, this slow, quiet drifting, this utter,
absolute silence, these eddying stretches of still water below, worked
strangely upon Shefford's mind and he feared he was going mad.

There was no change to the silence, no help for the slow drift, no
lessening of the strain. And the hours of the day passed as moments,
the sun crossed the blue gap above, the golden lights hung on the
upper walls, the gloom returned, and still there was only the dead,
vast, insupportable silence.

There came bends where the current quickened, ripples widened, long
lanes of little waves roughened the surface, but they made no sound.

And then the fugitives turned through a V-shaped vent in the canyon.
The ponderous walls sheered away from the river. There was space and
sunshine, and far beyond this league-wide open rose vermilion-colored
cliffs. A mile below the river disappeared in a dark, boxlike passage
from which came a rumble that made Shefford's flesh creep.

The Mormon flung high his arms and let out the stentorian yell that
had rolled down to the fugitives as they waited at the mouth of
Nonnezoshe Boco. But now it had a wilder, more exultant note. Strange
how he shifted his gaze to Fay Larkin!

"Girl! Get up and look!" he called. "The Ferry! The Ferry!"

Then he bent his brawny back over the steering-oar, and the clumsy
craft slowly turned toward the left-hand shore, where a long, low
bank of green willows and cottonwoods gave welcome relief to the
eyes. Upon the opposite side of the river Shefford saw a boat,
similar to the one he was in, moored to the bank.

"Shore, if I ain't losin' my eyes, I seen an Injun with a red
blanket," said Lassiter.

"Yes, Lassiter," cried Shefford. "Look, Fay! Look, Jane! See!
Indians--hogans--mustangs--there above the green bank!"

The boat glided slowly shoreward. And the deep, hungry, terrible
rumble of the remorseless river became something no more to dread.




XX. WILLOW SPRINGS


Two days' travel from the river, along the saw-toothed range of Echo
Cliffs, stood Presbrey's trading-post, a little red-stone square house
in a green and pretty valley called Willow Springs.

It was nearing the time of sunset--that gorgeous hour of color in the
Painted Desert--when Shefford and his party rode down upon the post.

The scene lacked the wildness characteristic of Kayenta or Red Lake.
There were wagons and teams, white men and Indians, burros, sheep,
lambs, mustangs saddled and unsaddled, dogs, and chickens. A young,
sweet-faced woman stood in the door of the post and she it was who
first sighted the fugitives. Presbrey was weighing bags of wool on
a scale, and when she called he lazily turned, as if to wonder at
her eagerness.

Then he flung up his head, with its shock of heavy hair, in a start
of surprise, and his florid face lost its lazy indolence to become
wreathed in a huge smile.

"Haven't seen a white person in six months!" was his extraordinary
greeting.

An hour later Shefford, clean-shaven, comfortably clothed once more,
found himself a different man; and when he saw Fay in white again,
with a new and indefinable light shining through that old, haunting
shadow in her eyes, then the world changed and he embraced perfect
happiness.

There was a dinner such as Shefford had not seen for many a day, and
such as Fay had never seen, and that brought to Jane Withersteen's
eyes the dreamy memory of the bountiful feasts which, long years ago,
had been her pride. And there was a story told to the curious trader
and his kind wife--a story with its beginning back in those past years,
of riders of the purple sage, of Fay Larkin as a child and then as a
wild girl in Surprise Valley, of the flight down Nonnezoshe Boco an
the canyon, of a great Mormon and a noble Indian.

Presbrey stared with his deep-set eyes and wagged his tousled head and
stared again; then with the quick perception of the practical desert
man he said:

"I'm sending teamsters in to Flagstaff to-morrow. Wife and I will go
along with you. We've light wagons. Three days, maybe--or four--and
we'll be there. . . . Shefford, I'm going to see you marry Fay Larkin!"

Fay and Jane and Lassiter showed strangely against this background of
approaching civilization. And Shefford realized more than ever the
loneliness and isolation and wildness of so many years for them.

When the women had retired Shefford and the men talked a while. Then
Joe Lake rose to stretch his big frame.

"Friends, reckon I'm all in," he said. "Good night." In passing he
laid a heavy hand on Shefford's shoulder. "Well, you got out. I've
only a queer notion how. But SOME ONE besides an Indian and a Mormon
guided you out!. . . Be good to the girl. . . . Good-by, pard!"

Shefford grasped the big hand and in the emotion of the moment did not
catch the significance of Joe's last words.

Later Shefford stepped outside into the starlight for a few moments'
quiet walk and thought before he went to bed. It was a white night.
The coyotes were yelping. The stars shone steadfast, bright, cold.
Nas Ta Bega stalked out of the shadow of the house and joined Shefford.
They walked in silence. Shefford's heart was too full for utterance
and the Indian seldom spoke at any time. When Shefford was ready to
go in Nas Ta Bega extended his hand.

"Good-by--Bi Nai!" he said, strangely, using English and Navajo in
what Shefford supposed to be merely good night. The starlight shone
full upon the dark, inscrutable face of the Indian. Shefford bade
him good night and then watched him stride away in the silver gloom.

But next morning Shefford understood. Nas Ta Bega and Joe Lake were
gone. It was a shock to Shefford. Yet what could he have said to
either? Joe had shirked saying good-by to him and Fay. And the
Indian had gone out of Shefford's life as he had come into it.

What these two men represented in Shefford's uplift was too great for
the present to define, but they and the desert that had developed them
had taught him the meaning of life. He might fail often, since failure
was the lot of his kind, but could he ever fail again in faith in man
or God while he had mind to remember the Indian and the Mormon?

Still, though he placed them on a noble height and loved them well,
there would always abide with him a sorrow for the Mormon and a
sleepless and eternal regret for that Indian on his lonely cedar
slope with the spirits of his vanishing race calling him.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Willow Springs appeared to be a lively place that morning. Presbrey
was gay and his sweet-faced wife was excited. The teamsters were a
jolly, whistling lot. And the lean mustangs kicked and bit at one
another. The trader had brought out two light wagons for the trip,
and, after the manner of desert men, desired to start at sunrise.

Far across the Painted Desert towered the San Francisco peaks, black-
timbered, blue-canyoned, purple-hazed, with white snow, like the
clouds, around their summits.

Jane Withersteen looked at the radiant Fay and lived again in her
happiness. And at last excitement had been communicated to the old
gun-man.

"Shore we're goin' to live with Fay an' John, an' be near Venters
an' Bess, an' see the blacks again, Jane. . . . An' Venters will
tell you, as he did me, how Wrangle run Black Star off his legs!"

All connected with that early start was sweet, sad, hopeful.

And so they rode away from Willow Springs, through the green fields
of alfalfa and cotton wood, down the valley with its smoking hogans
and whistling mustangs and scarlet-blanketed Indians, and out upon
the bare, ridgy, colorful desert toward the rosy sunrise.




EPILOGUE


On the outskirts of a little town in Illinois there was a farm of
rolling pasture-land. And here a beautiful meadow, green and red
in clover, merged upon an orchard in the midst of which a brown-tiled
roof showed above the trees.

One afternoon in May a group of people, strangely agitated, walked
down a shady lane toward the meadow.

"Wal, Jane, I always knew we'd get a look at them hosses again--I shore
knew," Lassiter was saying in the same old, cool, careless drawl. But
his clawlike hands shook a little.

"Oh! will they know me?" asked Jane Withersteen, turning to a stalwart
man--no other than the dark-faced Venters, her rider of other days.

"Know you? I'll bet they will," replied Venters. "What do you say,
Bess?"

The shadow brightened in Bess's somber blue eyes, as if his words had
recalled her from a sad and memorable past.

"Black Star will know her, surely," replied Bess. "Sometimes he points
his nose toward the west and watches as if he saw the purple slopes and
smelt the sage of Utah! He has never forgotten. But Night has grown
deaf and partly blind of late. I doubt if he'd remember."

Shefford and Fay walked arm in arm in the background.

Out in the meadow two horses were grazing. They were sleek, shiny,
long-maned, long-tailed, black as coal, and, though old, still
splendid in every line.

"Do you remember them?" whispered Shefford.

"Oh, I only needed to see Black Star," murmured Fay, her voice
quivering. "I can remember being lifted on his back. . . . How
strange! It seems so long ago. . . . Look! Mother Jane is going
out to them."

Jane Withersteen advanced alone through the clover, and it was with
unsteady steps. Presently she halted. What glorious and bitter
memories were expressed in her strange, poignant call!

Black Star started and swept up his noble head and looked. But Night
went on calmly grazing. Then Jane called again--the same strange call,
only louder, and this time broken. Black Star raised his head higher
and he whistled a piercing blast. He saw Jane; he knew her as he had
remembered the call; and he came pounding toward her. She met him,
encircled his neck with her arms, and buried her face in his mane.

"Shore I reckon I'd better never say any more about Wrangle runnin'
the blacks off their legs thet time," muttered Lassiter, as if to
himself.

"Lassiter, you only dreamed that race," replied Venters, with a smile.

"Oh, Bern, isn't it good that Black Star remembered her--that she'll
have him--something left of her old home?" asked Bess, wistfully.

"Indeed it is good. But, Bess, Jane Withersteen will find a new spirit
and new happiness here."

Jane came toward them, leading both horses. "Dear friends, I am
happy. To-day I bury all regrets. Of the past I shall remember
only--my riders of the purple sage."

Venters smiled his gladness. "And you--Lassiter--what shall you
remember?" he queried.

The old gun-man looked at Jane and then at his clawlike hands and then
at Fay. His eyes lost their shadow and began to twinkle.

"Wal, I rolled a stone once, but I reckon now thet time Wrangle--"

"Lassiter, I said you dreamed that race. Wrangle never beat the
blacks," interrupted Venters. . . . "And you, Fay, what shall you
remember?"

"Surprise Valley," replied Fay, dreamily.

"And you--Shefford?"

Shefford shook his head. For him there could never be one memory
only. In his heart there would never change or die memories of the
wild uplands, of the great towers and walls, of the golden sunsets
on the canyon ramparts, of the silent, fragrant valleys where the
cedars and the sago-lilies grew, of those starlit nights when his
love and faith awoke, of grand and lonely Nonnezoshe, of that red,
sullen, thundering, mysterious Colorado River, of a wonderful Indian
and a noble Mormon--of all that was embodied for him in the meaning
of the rainbow trail.




THE END

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