Solitude And Storm
:
Riders Of The Purple Sage
In his hidden valley Venters awakened from sleep, and his ears
rang with innumerable melodies from full-throated mockingbirds,
and his eyes opened wide upon the glorious golden shaft of
sunlight shining through the great stone bridge. The circle of
cliffs surrounding Surprise Valley lay shrouded in morning mist,
a dim blue low down along the terraces, a creamy, m
ving cloud
along the ramparts. The oak forest in the center was a plumed and
tufted oval of gold.
He saw Bess under the spruces. Upon her complete recovery of
strength she always rose with the dawn. At the moment she was
feeding the quail she had tamed. And she had begun to tame the
mocking-birds. They fluttered among the branches overhead and
some left off their songs to flit down and shyly hop near the
twittering quail. Little gray and white rabbits crouched in the
grass, now nibbling, now laying long ears flat and watching the
dogs.
Venters's swift glance took in the brightening valley, and Bess
and her pets, and Ring and Whitie. It swept over all to return
again and rest upon the girl. She had changed. To the dark
trousers and blouse she had added moccasins of her own make, but
she no longer resembled a boy. No eye could have failed to mark
the rounded contours of a woman. The change had been to grace and
beauty. A glint of warm gold gleamed from her hair, and a tint of
red shone in the clear dark brown of cheeks. The haunting
sweetness of her lips and eyes, that earlier had been illusive, a
promise, had become a living fact. She fitted harmoniously into
that wonderful setting; she was like Surprise Valley--wild and
beautiful.
Venters leaped out of his cave to begin the day.
He had postponed his journey to Cottonwoods until after the
passing of the summer rains. The rains were due soon. But until
their arrival and the necessity for his trip to the village he
sequestered in a far corner of mind all thought of peril, of his
past life, and almost that of the present. It was enough to live.
He did not want to know what lay hidden in the dim and distant
future. Surprise Valley had enchanted him. In this home of the
cliff-dwellers there were peace and quiet and solitude, and
another thing, wondrous as the golden morning shaft of sunlight,
that he dared not ponder over long enough to understand.
The solitude he had hated when alone he had now come to love. He
was assimilating something from this valley of gleams and
shadows. From this strange girl he was assimilating more.
The day at hand resembled many days gone before. As Venters had
no tools with which to build, or to till the terraces, he
remained idle. Beyond the cooking of the simple fare there were
no tasks. And as there were no tasks, there was no system. He and
Bess began one thing, to leave it; to begin another, to leave
that; and then do nothing but lie under the spruces and watch the
great cloud-sails majestically move along the ramparts, and dream
and dream. The valley was a golden, sunlit world. It was silent.
The sighing wind and the twittering quail and the singing birds,
even the rare and seldom-occurring hollow crack of a sliding
weathered stone, only thickened and deepened that insulated
silence.
Venters and Bess had vagrant minds.
"Bess, did I tell you about my horse Wrangle?" inquired Venters.
"A hundred times," she replied.
"Oh, have I? I'd forgotten. I want you to see him. He'll carry us
both."
"I'd like to ride him. Can he run?"
"Run? He's a demon. Swiftest horse on the sage! I hope he'll stay
in that canyon.
"He'll stay."
They left camp to wander along the terraces, into the aspen
ravines, under the gleaming walls. Ring and Whitie wandered in
the fore, often turning, often trotting back, open-mouthed and
solemn-eyed and happy. Venters lifted his gaze to the grand
archway over the entrance to the valley, and Bess lifted hers to
follow his, and both were silent. Sometimes the bridge held their
attention for a long time. To-day a soaring eagle attracted them.
"How he sails!" exclaimed Bess. "I wonder where his mate is?"
"She's at the nest. It's on the bridge in a crack near the top.
I see her often. She's almost white."
They wandered on down the terrace, into the shady, sun-flecked
forest. A brown bird fluttered crying from a bush. Bess peeped
into the leaves. "Look! A nest and four little birds. They're not
afraid of us. See how they open their mouths. They're hungry."
Rabbits rustled the dead brush and pattered away. The forest was
full of a drowsy hum of insects. Little darts of purple, that
were running quail, crossed the glades. And a plaintive, sweet
peeping came from the coverts. Bess's soft step disturbed a
sleeping lizard that scampered away over the leaves. She gave
chase and caught it, a slim creature of nameless color but of
exquisite beauty.
"Jewel eyes," she said. "It's like a rabbit--afraid. We won't eat
you. There--go."
Murmuring water drew their steps down into a shallow shaded
ravine where a brown brook brawled softly over mossy stones.
Multitudes of strange, gray frogs with white spots and black eyes
lined the rocky bank and leaped only at close approach. Then
Venters's eye descried a very thin, very long green snake coiled
round a sapling. They drew closer and closer till they could have
touched it. The snake had no fear and watched them with
scintillating eyes.
"It's pretty," said Bess. "How tame! I thought snakes always
ran."
"No. Even the rabbits didn't run here till the dogs chased them."
On and on they wandered to the wild jumble of massed and broken
fragments of cliff at the west end of the valley. The roar of the
disappearing stream dinned in their ears. Into this maze of rocks
they threaded a tortuous way, climbing, descending, halting to
gather wild plums and great lavender lilies, and going on at the
will of fancy. Idle and keen perceptions guided them equally.
"Oh, let us climb there!" cried Bess, pointing upward to a small
space of terrace left green and shady between huge abutments of
broken cliff. And they climbed to the nook and rested and looked
out across the valley to the curling column of blue smoke from
their campfire. But the cool shade and the rich grass and the
fine view were not what they had climbed for. They could not have
told, although whatever had drawn them was well-satisfying.
Light, sure-footed as a mountain goat, Bess pattered down at
Venters's heels; and they went on, calling the dogs, eyes dreamy
and wide, listening to the wind and the bees and the crickets and
the birds.
Part of the time Ring and Whitie led the way, then Venters, then
Bess; and the direction was not an object. They left the
sun-streaked shade of the oaks, brushed the long grass of the
meadows, entered the green and fragrant swaying willows, to stop,
at length, under the huge old cottonwoods where the beavers were
busy.
Here they rested and watched. A dam of brush and logs and mud and
stones backed the stream into a little lake. The round, rough
beaver houses projected from the water. Like the rabbits, the
beavers had become shy. Gradually, however, as Venters and Bess
knelt low, holding the dogs, the beavers emerged to swim with
logs and gnaw at cottonwoods and pat mud walls with their
paddle-like tails, and, glossy and shiny in the sun, to go on
with their strange, persistent industry. They were the builders.
The lake was a mud-hole, and the immediate environment a scarred
and dead region, but it was a wonderful home of wonderful
animals.
"Look at that one--he puddles in the mud," said Bess. "And there!
See him dive! Hear them gnawing! I'd think they'd break their
teeth. How's it they can stay out of the water and under the
water?"
And she laughed.
Then Venters and Bess wandered farther, and, perhaps not all
unconsciously this time, wended their slow steps to the cave of
the cliff-dwellers, where she liked best to go.
The tangled thicket and the long slant of dust and little chips
of weathered rock and the steep bench of stone and the worn steps
all were arduous work for Bess in the climbing. But she gained
the shelf, gasping, hot of cheek, glad of eye, with her hand in
Venters's. Here they rested. The beautiful valley glittered below
with its millions of wind-turned leaves bright-faced in the sun,
and the mighty bridge towered heavenward, crowned with blue sky.
Bess, however, never rested for long. Soon she was exploring, and
Venters followed; she dragged forth from corners and shelves a
multitude of crudely fashioned and painted pieces of pottery, and
he carried them. They peeped down into the dark holes of the
kivas, and Bess gleefully dropped a stone and waited for the
long-coming hollow sound to rise. They peeped into the little
globular houses, like mud-wasp nests, and wondered if these had
been store-places for grain, or baby cribs, or what; and they
crawled into the larger houses and laughed when they bumped their
heads on the low roofs, and they dug in the dust of the floors.
And they brought from dust and darkness armloads of treasure
which they carried to the light. Flints and stones and strange
curved sticks and pottery they found; and twisted grass rope that
crumbled in their hands, and bits of whitish stone which crushed
to powder at a touch and seemed to vanish in the air.
"That white stuff was bone," said Venters, slowly. "Bones of a
cliff-dweller."
"No!" exclaimed Bess.
"Here's another piece. Look!...Whew! dry, powdery smoke! That's
bone."
Then it was that Venters's primitive, childlike mood, like a
savage's, seeing, yet unthinking, gave way to the encroachment of
civilized thought. The world had not been made for a single day's
play or fancy or idle watching. The world was old. Nowhere could
be gotten a better idea of its age than in this gigantic silent
tomb. The gray ashes in Venters's hand had once been bone of a
human being like himself. The pale gloom of the cave had shadowed
people long ago. He saw that Bess had received the same
shock--could not in moments such as this escape her feeling
living, thinking destiny.
"Bern, people have lived here," she said, with wide, thoughtful
eyes.
"Yes," he replied.
"How long ago?"
"A thousand years and more."
"What were they?"
"Cliff-dwellers. Men who had enemies and made their homes high
out of reach."
"They had to fight?"
"Yes."
"They fought for--what?"
"For life. For their homes, food, children, parents--for their
women!"
"Has the world changed any in a thousand years?"
"I don't know--perhaps a little."
"Have men?"
"I hope so--I think so."
"Things crowd into my mind," she went on, and the wistful light
in her eyes told Venters the truth of her thoughts. "I've ridden
the border of Utah. I've seen people--know how they live--but
they must be few of all who are living. I had my books and I
studied them. But all that doesn't help me any more. I want to go
out into the big world and see it. Yet I want to stay here more.
What's to become of us? Are we cliff-dwellers? We're alone here.
I'm happy when I don't think. These--these bones that fly into
dust--they make me sick and a little afraid. Did the people who
lived here once have the same feelings as we have? What was the
good of their living at all? They're gone! What's the meaning of
it all--of us?"
"Bess, you ask more than I can tell. It's beyond me. Only there
was laughter here once--and now there's silence. There was
life--and now there's death. Men cut these little steps, made
these arrow-heads and mealing-stones, plaited the ropes we found,
and left their bones to crumble in our fingers. As far as time is
concerned it might all have been yesterday. We're here to-day.
Maybe we're higher in the scale of human beings--in intelligence.
But who knows? We can't be any higher in the things for which
life is lived at all."
"What are they?"
"Why--I suppose relationship, friendship--love."
"Love!"
"Yes. Love of man for woman--love of woman for man. That's the
nature, the meaning, the best of life itself."
She said no more. Wistfulness of glance deepened into
sadness.
"Come, let us go," said Venters.
Action brightened her. Beside him, holding his hand she slipped
down the shelf, ran down the long, steep slant of sliding stones,
out of the cloud of dust, and likewise out of the pale gloom.
"We beat the slide," she cried.
The miniature avalanche cracked and roared, and rattled itself
into an inert mass at the base of the incline. Yellow dust like
the gloom of the cave, but not so changeless, drifted away on the
wind; the roar clapped in echo from the cliff, returned, went
back, and came again to die in the hollowness. Down on the sunny
terrace there was a different atmosphere. Ring and Whitie leaped
around Bess. Once more she was smiling, gay, and thoughtless,
with the dream-mood in the shadow of her eyes.
"Bess, I haven't seen that since last summer. Look!" said
Venters, pointing to the scalloped edge of rolling purple clouds
that peeped over the western wall. "We're in for a storm."
"Oh, I hope not. I'm afraid of storms."
"Are you? Why?"
"Have you ever been down in one of these walled-up pockets in a
bad storm?"
"No, now I think of it, I haven't."
"Well, it's terrible. Every summer I get scared to death and hide
somewhere in the dark. Storms up on the sage are bad, but nothing
to what they are down here in the canyons. And in this little
valley--why, echoes can rap back and forth so quick they'll split
our ears."
"We're perfectly safe here, Bess."
"I know. But that hasn't anything to do with it. The truth is I'm
afraid of lightning and thunder, and thunder-claps hurt my head.
If we have a bad storm, will you stay close to me?"
"Yes."
When they got back to camp the afternoon was closing, and it was
exceedingly sultry. Not a breath of air stirred the aspen leaves,
and when these did not quiver the air was indeed still. The
dark-purple clouds moved almost imperceptibly out of the west.
"What have we for supper?" asked Bess.
"Rabbit."
"Bern, can't you think of another new way to cook rabbit?" went
on Bess, with earnestness.
"What do you think I am--a magician?" retorted Venters.
"I wouldn't dare tell you. But, Bern, do you want me to turn into
a rabbit?"
There was a dark-blue, merry flashing of eyes and a parting of
lips; then she laughed. In that moment she was naive and
wholesome.
"Rabbit seems to agree with you," replied Venters. "You are well
and strong--and growing very pretty."
Anything in the nature of compliment he had never before said to
her, and just now he responded to a sudden curiosity to see its
effect. Bess stared as if she had not heard aright, slowly
blushed, and completely lost her poise in happy confusion.
"I'd better go right away," he continued, "and fetch supplies
from Cottonwoods."
A startlingly swift change in the nature of her agitation made
him reproach himself for his abruptness.
"No, no, don't go!" she said. "I didn't mean--that about the
rabbit. I--I was only trying to be--funny. Don't leave me all
alone!"
"Bess, I must go sometime."
"Wait then. Wait till after the storms."
The purple cloud-bank darkened the lower edge of the setting sun,
crept up and up, obscuring its fiery red heart, and finally
passed over the last ruddy crescent of its upper rim.
The intense dead silence awakened to a long, low, rumbling roll
of thunder.
"Oh!" cried Bess, nervously.
"We've had big black clouds before this without rain," said
Venters. "But there's no doubt about that thunder. The storms are
coming. I'm glad. Every rider on the sage will hear that thunder
with glad ears."
Venters and Bess finished their simple meal and the few tasks
around the camp, then faced the open terrace, the valley, and the
west, to watch and await the approaching storm.
It required keen vision to see any movement whatever in the
purple clouds. By infinitesimal degrees the dark cloud-line
merged upward into the golden-red haze of the afterglow of
sunset. A shadow lengthened from under the western wall across
the valley. As straight and rigid as steel rose the delicate
spear-pointed silver spruces; the aspen leaves, by nature pendant
and quivering, hung limp and heavy; no slender blade of grass
moved. A gentle splashing of water came from the ravine. Then
again from out of the west sounded the low, dull, and rumbling
roll of thunder.
A wave, a ripple of light, a trembling and turning of the aspen
leaves, like the approach of a breeze on the water, crossed the
valley from the west; and the lull and the deadly stillness and
the sultry air passed away on a cool wind.
The night bird of the canyon, with clear and melancholy notes
announced the twilight. And from all along the cliffs rose the
faint murmur and moan and mourn of the wind singing in the caves.
The bank of clouds now swept hugely out of the western sky. Its
front was purple and black, with gray between, a bulging,
mushrooming, vast thing instinct with storm. It had a dark,
angry, threatening aspect. As if all the power of the winds were
pushing and piling behind, it rolled ponderously across the sky.
A red flare burned out instantaneously, flashed from the west to
east, and died. Then from the deepest black of the purple cloud
burst a boom. It was like the bowling of a huge boulder along the
crags and ramparts, and seemed to roll on and fall into the
valley to bound and bang and boom from cliff to cliff.
"Oh!" cried Bess, with her hands over her ears. "What did I tell
you?"
"Why, Bess, be reasonable!" said Venters.
"I'm a coward."
"Not quite that, I hope. It's strange you're afraid. I love a
storm."
"I tell you a storm down in these canyons is an awful thing. I
know Oldring hated storms. His men were afraid of them. There was
one who went deaf in a bad storm, and never could hear again."
"Maybe I've lots to learn, Bess. I'll lose my guess if this storm
isn't bad enough. We're going to have heavy wind first, then
lightning and thunder, then the rain. Let's stay out as long as
we can."
The tips of the cottonwoods and the oaks waved to the east, and
the rings of aspens along the terraces twinkled their myriad of
bright faces in fleet and glancing gleam. A low roar rose from
the leaves of the forest, and the spruces swished in the rising
wind. It came in gusts, with light breezes between. As it
increased in strength the lulls shortened in length till there
was a strong and steady blow all the time, and violent puffs at
intervals, and sudden whirling currents. The clouds spread over
the valley, rolling swiftly and low, and twilight faded into a
sweeping darkness. Then the singing of the wind in the caves
drowned the swift roar of rustling leaves; then the song swelled
to a mourning, moaning wail; then with the gathering power of the
wind the wail changed to a shriek. Steadily the wind strengthened
and constantly the strange sound changed.
The last bit of blue sky yielded to the on-sweep of clouds. Like
angry surf the pale gleams of gray, amid the purple of that
scudding front, swept beyond the eastern rampart of the valley.
The purple deepened to black. Broad sheets of lightning flared
over the western wall. There were not yet any ropes or zigzag
streaks darting down through the gathering darkness. The storm
center was still beyond Surprise Valley.
"Listen!...Listen!" cried Bess, with her lips close to Venters's
ear. "You'll hear Oldring's knell!"
"What's that?"
"Oldring's knell. When the wind blows a gale in the caves it
makes what the rustlers call Oldring's knell. They believe it
bodes his death. I think he believes so, too. It's not like any
sound on earth....It's beginning. Listen!"
The gale swooped down with a hollow unearthly howl. It yelled and
pealed and shrilled and shrieked. It was made up of a thousand
piercing cries. It was a rising and a moving sound. Beginning at
the western break of the valley, it rushed along each gigantic
cliff, whistling into the caves and cracks, to mount in power, to
bellow a blast through the great stone bridge. Gone, as into an
engulfing roar of surging waters, it seemed to shoot back and
begin all over again.
It was only wind, thought Venters. Here sped and shrieked the
sculptor that carved out the wonderful caves in the cliffs. It
was only a gale, but as Venters listened, as his ears became
accustomed to the fury and strife, out of it all or through it or
above it pealed low and perfectly clear and persistently uniform
a strange sound that had no counterpart in all the sounds of the
elements. It was not of earth or of life. It was the grief and
agony of the gale. A knell of all upon which it blew!
Black night enfolded the valley. Venters could not see his
companion, and knew of her presence only through the tightening
hold of her hand on his arm. He felt the dogs huddle closer to
him. Suddenly the dense, black vault overhead split asunder to a
blue-white, dazzling streak of lightning. The whole valley lay
vividly clear and luminously bright in his sight. Upreared, vast
and magnificent, the stone bridge glimmered like some grand god
of storm in the lightning's fire. Then all flashed black
again--blacker than pitch--a thick, impenetrable coal-blackness.
And there came a ripping, crashing report. Instantly an echo
resounded with clapping crash. The initial report was nothing to
the echo. It was a terrible, living, reverberating, detonating
crash. The wall threw the sound across, and could have made no
greater roar if it had slipped in avalanche. From cliff to cliff
the echo went in crashing retort and banged in lessening power,
and boomed in thinner volume, and clapped weaker and weaker till
a final clap could not reach across the waiting cliff.
In the pitchy darkness Venters led Bess, and, groping his way, by
feel of hand found the entrance to her cave and lifted her up. On
the instant a blinding flash of lightning illumined the cave and
all about him. He saw Bess's face white now with dark, frightened
eyes. He saw the dogs leap up, and he followed suit. The golden
glare vanished; all was black; then came the splitting crack and
the infernal din of echoes.
Bess shrank closer to him and closer, found his hands, and
pressed them tightly over her ears, and dropped her face upon his
shoulder, and hid her eyes.
Then the storm burst with a succession of ropes and streaks and
shafts of lightning, playing continuously, filling the valley
with a broken radiance; and the cracking shots followed each
other swiftly till the echoes blended in one fearful, deafening
crash.
Venters looked out upon the beautiful valley--beautiful now as
never before--mystic in its transparent, luminous gloom, weird in
the quivering, golden haze of lightning. The dark spruces were
tipped with glimmering lights; the aspens bent low in the winds,
as waves in a tempest at sea; the forest of oaks tossed wildly
and shone with gleams of fire. Across the valley the huge cavern
of the cliff-dwellers yawned in the glare, every little black
window as clear as at noonday; but the night and the storm added
to their tragedy. Flung arching to the black clouds, the great
stone bridge seemed to bear the brunt of the storm. It caught the
full fury of the rushing wind. It lifted its noble crown to meet
the lightnings. Venters thought of the eagles and their lofty
nest in a niche under the arch. A driving pall of rain, black as
the clouds, came sweeping on to obscure the bridge and the
gleaming walls and the shining valley. The lightning played
incessantly, streaking down through opaque darkness of rain. The
roar of the wind, with its strange knell and the re-crashing
echoes, mingled with the roar of the flooding rain, and all
seemingly were deadened and drowned in a world of sound.
In the dimming pale light Venters looked down upon the girl. She
had sunk into his arms, upon his breast, burying her face. She
clung to him. He felt the softness of her, and the warmth, and
the quick heave of her breast. He saw the dark, slender, graceful
outline of her form. A woman lay in his arms! And he held her
closer. He who had been alone in the sad, silent watches of the
night was not now and never must be again alone. He who had
yearned for the touch of a hand felt the long tremble and the
heart-beat of a woman. By what strange chance had she come to
love him! By what change--by what marvel had she grown into a
treasure!
No more did he listen to the rush and roar of the thunder-storm.
For with the touch of clinging hands and the throbbing bosom he
grew conscious of an inward storm--the tingling of new chords of
thought, strange music of unheard, joyous bells sad dreams
dawning to wakeful delight, dissolving doubt, resurging hope,
force, fire, and freedom, unutterable sweetness of desire. A
storm in his breast--a storm of real love.