Riders of the Silences (21 page)

She looked about her at the pack, which had been distributed expertly, and
disposed on the ground by Wilbur. She could not even lash it in place behind the
saddle. So she drew the blanket once more around her shoulders and sat down to
think.

She might return to the housedoubtless she could find her way back. And
leave Pierre in the heart of the mountains, surely lost to her forever. She made
a determination, sullen, like a child, to ride on and on into the wilderness,
and let fate take care of her. The pack she could bundle together as best she
might; she would live as she might; and for a guide there would be the hunger
for Pierre.

So she ended her thoughts with a hope; her head nodded lower, and she slept
the deep, deep sleep of the exhausted mind and the lifeless body. She woke hours
later with a start, instantly alert, quivering with fear and life and energy,
for she felt like one who has gone to sleep with voices in his ear.

While she slept some one had been near her; she could have sworn it before
her startled eyes glanced around.

And though she kept whispering, with white lips, "No, no; it is impossible!"
yet there was evidence which proved it. The fire should have burned out, but
instead it flamed more brightly than ever, and there was a little heap of fuel
laid conveniently close. Moreover, both horses were saddled, and the pack lashed
on the saddle of her own mount.

Whatever man or demon had done this work evidently intended that she should
ride Wilbur's beautiful bay. Yes, for when she went closer, drawn by her wonder,
she found that the stirrups had been much shortened.

Nothing was forgotten by this invisible caretaker; he had even left out the
cooking-tins, and she found a little batter of flapjack flour mixed.

The riddle was too great for solving. Perhaps Wilbur had disappeared merely
to play a practical jest on her; but that supposition was too childish to be
retained an instant. Perhapsperhaps Pierre himself had discovered her, but
having vowed never to see her again, he cared for her like the invisible hands
in the old Greek fable.

This, again, an instinctive knowledge made her dismiss. If he were so close,
loving her, he could not stay away; she read in her own heart, and knew. Then it
must be something else; evil, because it feared to be seen; not wholly evil,
because it surrounded her with care.

At least this new emotion obscured somewhat the terror and the sorrow of
Wilbur's disappearance. She cooked her breakfast as if obeying the order of the
unseen, climbed into the saddle of Wilbur's horse, and started off up the
valley, leading her own mount.

Every moment or so she turned in the saddle suddenly in the hope of getting a
glimpse of the follower, but even when she surveyed the entire stretch of
country from the crest of a low hill, she saw nothingnot the least sign of
life.

She rode slowly, this day, for she was stiff and sore from the violent
journey of the night before, but though she went slowly, she kept steadily at
the trail. It was a broad and pleasant one, being the beaten sand of the
river-bottom; and the horse she rode was the finest that ever pranced beneath
her.

His trot was as smooth and springy as the gallop of most horses, and when she
let him run over a few level stretches, it was as if she had suddenly been taken
up from the earth on wings. There was something about the animal, too, which
reminded her of its vanished owner; for it had strength and pride and gentleness
at once. Unquestionably it took kindly to its new rider; for once when she
dismounted the big horse walked up behind and nuzzled her shoulder.

The mountains were much plainer before the end of the day. They rose sheer up
in wave upon frozen wave like water piled ragged by some terrific gale, with the
tops of the waters torn and tossed and then frozen forever in that position,
like a fantastic and gargantuan mask of dreaming terror. It overawed the heart
of Mary Brown to look up to them, but there was growing in her a new impulse of
friendly understanding with all this scalped, bald region of rocks, as if in
entering the valley she had passed through the gate which closes out the gentler
world, and now she was admitted as a denizen of the mountain-desert, that
scarred and ugly asylum for crime and fear and grandeur.

Feeling this new emotion, the old horizons of her mind gave way and widened;
her gentle nature, which had known nothing but smiles, admitted the meaning of a
frown. Did she not ride under the very shadow of that frown with her two horses?
Was she not armed? She touched the holster at her hip, and smiled. To be sure,
she could never hit a mark with that ponderous weapon, but at least the pistol
gave the seeming of a dangerous lone rider, familiar with the wilds.

It was about dark, and she was on the verge of looking about for a suitable
camping-place, when the bay halted sharply, tossed up his head, and whinnied.
From the far distance she thought she heard the beginning of a whinny in reply.
She could not be sure, but the possibility made her pulse quicken. In this
region, she knew, no stranger could be a friend.

So she started the bay at a gallop and put a couple of swift miles between
her and the point at which she had heard the sound; no living creature, she was
sure, could have followed the pace the bay held during that distance. So, secure
in her loneliness, she trotted the horse around a bend of the rocks and came on
the sudden light of a camp-fire.

It was too late to wheel and gallop away; so she remained with her hand
fumbling at the butt of the revolver, and her wide, blue eyes fixed on the
flicker of the fire. Not a voice accosted her. As far as she could peer among
the lithe trunks of the saplings, not a sign of a living thing was near.

Yet whoever built that fire must be near, for it was obviously, newly laid.
Perhaps some fleeing outlaw had pitched his camp here and had been startled by
her coming. In that case he lurked somewhere in the woods at that moment, his
keen eyes fixed on her, and his gun gripped hard in his hand. Perhapsand the
thought thrilled herthis little camp had been prepared by the same power, human
or unearthly, which had watched over her early that morning.

All reason and sane caution warned her to ride on and leave that camp
unmolested, but an overwhelming, tingling curiosity besieged her. The thin
column of smoke rose past the dark trees like a ghost, and reaching the
unsheltered space above the trees, was smitten by a light wind and jerked away
at a sharp angle.

She looked closer and saw a bed made of a great heap of the tips of limbs of
spruce, a bed softer than down and more fragrant than any manufactured perfume,
however costly.

Possibly it was the sight of this bed which tempted her down from the saddle,
at last. With the reins over her arm, she stood close to the fire and warmed her
hands, peering all the while on every side, like some wild and beautiful
creature tempted by the bait of the trap, but shrinking from the scent of man.

As she stood there a broad, yellow moon edged its way above the hills and
rolled up through the black trees and then floated through the sky. Beneath such
a moon no harm could come to her. It was while she stared at it, letting her
tensed alertness relax little by little, that she saw, or thought she saw, a
hint of moving white pass over the top of the rise of ground and disappear among
the trees.

She could not be sure, but her first impulse was to gather the reins with a
jerk and place her foot in the stirrup; but then she looked back and saw the
fire, burning low now and asking like a human voice to be replenished from the
heap of small, broken fuel near by; and she saw also the softly piled bed of
evergreens.

She removed her foot from the stirrup. What mattered that imaginary figure of
moving white? She felt a strong power of protection lying all about her,
breathing out to her with the keen scent of the pines, fanning her face with the
chill of the night breeze. She was alone, but she was secure in the wilderness.

For many a minute she waited by that camp-fire, but there was never a sign of
the builder of it, though she centered all her will in making her eyes and ears
sharper to pierce through the darkness and to gather from the thousand obscure
whispers of the forest any sounds of human origin. So she grew bold at length to
take off the pack and the saddles; the camp was hers, built for her coming by
the invisible power which surrounded her, which read her mind, it seemed, and
chose beforehand the certain route which she must follow.

She resigned herself to that force without question, and the worry of her
search disappeared. It seemed certain that this omnipotence, whatever it might
be, was reading her wishes and acting with all its power to fulfill them, so
that in the end it was merely a question of time before she should accomplish
her missionbefore she should meet Pierre le Rouge face to face.

That night her sleep was deep, indeed, and she only wakened when the slant
light of the sun struck across her eyes. It was a bright day, crisp and chill,
and through the clear air the mountains seemed leaning directly above her, and
chief of all two peaks, almost exactly similar, black monsters which ruled the
range. Toward the gorge between them the valley of the Old Crow aimed its
course, and straight up that diminishing canon she rode all day.

The broad, sandy bottom changed and contracted until the channel was scarcely
wide enough for the meager stream of water, and beside it she picked her way
along a narrow bridle-path with banks on either side, which became with every
mile more like cliffs, walling her in and dooming her to a single destination.

It was evening before she came to the headwaters of the Old Crow, and rode
out into the gorge between the two mountains. The trail failed her here. There
was no semblance of a ravine to follow, except the mighty gorge between the two
peaks, and into the dark throat of this pass she ventured, like some maiden of
medieval romance riding through a solemn gate with the guarding towers tall and
black on either side.

The moment she was well started in it and the steep shadow of the evening
fell across her almost like night from the west, her heart grew cold as the air
of that lofty region. A sense of coming danger filled her, like a little child
when it passes from a lighted room into one dark and still. Yet she kept on,
holding a tight rein, throwing many a fearful glance at the vast rocks which
might have concealed an entire army in every mile of their extent.

When she found the cabin she mistook it at first for merely another rock of
singular shape. It was at this shape that she stared, and checked her horse, and
not till then did she note the faint flicker of a light no brighter or more
distinct than the phosphorescent glow of the eyes of a hunted beast.

All her impulse was to drive her spurs home and pass that place at a racing
gallop, but she checked the impulse sharply and began to reason. In the first
place, it was doubtless only the cabin of some prospector, such as she had often
heard of. In the second place, night was almost upon her, and she saw no
desirable camping-place, or at least any with the necessary water at hand.

What harm could come to her? Among Western men, she well knew a woman is
safer than all the law and the police of the settled East can make her, so she
nerved her courage and advanced toward the faint, changing light.

The cabin was hidden very cunningly. Crouched among the mighty boulders which
earthquakes and storms of some wilder, earlier epoch had torn away from the side
of the crags above, the house was like another stone, leaning its back to the
mountain for support.

When she drew very close she knew that the light which glimmered at the
window must come from an open fire, and the thought of a fire warmed her very
heart. She hallooed, and receiving no answer, fastened the horses and entered
the house. The door swung to behind her, as if of its own volition it wished to
make her close prisoner.

The place consisted of one room, and not a spacious one at that, but arranged
as a shelter, not a home. The cooking, apparently, was done over the open
hearth, for there was no sign of any stove, and, moreover, on the wall near the
fireplace hung several soot-blackened pans and the inevitable coffee-pot.

There were two bunks built on opposite sides of the room, and in the middle a
table was made of a long section split from the heart of a log by wedges,
apparently, and still rude and undressed, except for the preliminary smoothing
off which had been done with a broad-ax.

The great plank was supported at either end by a roughly constructed
saw-buck. It was very low, and for this reason two fairly square boulders of
comfortable proportions were sufficiently high to serve as chairs.

For the rest, the furniture was almost too meager to suggest human
habitation, but from nails on the wall there depended a few shirts and a pair of
chaps, as well as a much-battered quirt. But a bucket of water in a corner
suggested cleanliness, and a small, round, highly polished steel plate, hanging
on the wall in lieu of a mirror, further fortified her decision that the owner
of this place must be a man somewhat particular as to his appearance.

Here she interrupted her observations to build up the fire, which was
flickering down and apparently on the verge of going out. She worked busily for
a few minutes, and a roaring blaze rewarded her; she took off her slicker to
enjoy the warmth, and in doing so, turned, and saw the owner of the place
standing with folded arms just inside the door.

"Making yourself to home?" asked the host, in a low, strangely pleasant
voice.

"Do you mind?" asked Mary Brown. "I couldn't find a place that would do for
camping."