"When all this trouble is behind us, surely I can help you to understand and you can help me. The fact that you are alive--that La.s.siter and Jane are alive--that I shall save you all--that lifts me up. I tell you--Fay Larkin will be my salvation."
"Your words trouble me. Oh, I shall be torn one way and another.... But, John, I daren"t run away. I will not tell you where to find La.s.siter and Mother Jane."
"I shall find them--I have the Indian. He found you for me. Nas Ta Bega will find Surprise Valley."
"Nas Ta Bega!... Oh, I remember. There was an Indian with the Mormons who found us. But he was a Piute."
"Nas Ta Bega never told me how he learned about you. That he learned was enough. And, Fay, he will find Surprise Valley. He will save Uncle Jim and Mother Jane."
Fay"s hands clasped Shefford"s in strong, trembling pressure; the tears streamed down her white cheeks; a tragic and eloquent joy convulsed her face.
"Oh, my friend, save them! But I can"t go.... Let them keep me! Let him kill me!"
"Him! Fay--he shall not harm you," replied Shefford in pa.s.sionate earnestness.
She caught the hand he had struck out with.
"You talk--you look like Uncle Jim when he spoke of the Mormons," she said. "Then I used to be afraid of him. He was so different. John, you must not do anything about me. Let me be. It"s too late. He--and his men--they would hang you. And I couldn"t bear that. I"ve enough to bear without losing my friend. Say you won"t watch and wait--for--for him."
Shefford had to promise her. Like an Indian she gave expression to primitive feeling, for it certainly never occurred to her that, whatever Shefford might do, he was not the kind of man to wait in hiding for an enemy. Fay had faltered through her last speech and was now weak and nervous and frightened. Shefford took her back to the cabin.
"Fay, don"t be distressed," he said. "I won"t do anything right away.
You can trust me. I won"t be rash. I"ll consult you before I make a move. I haven"t any idea what I could do, anyway.... You must bear up.
Why, it looks as if you"re sorry I found you."
"Oh! I"m glad!" she whispered.
"Then if you"re glad you mustn"t break down this way again. Suppose some of the women happened to run into us."
"I won"t again. It"s only you--you surprised me so. I used to think how I"d like you to know--I wasn"t really dead. But now--it"s different.
It hurts me here. Yet I"m glad--if my being alive makes you--a little happier."
Shefford felt that he had to go then. He could not trust himself any further.
"Good night, Fay," he said.
"Good night, John," she whispered. "I promise--to be good to-morrow."
She was crying softly when he left her. Twice he turned to see the dim, white, slender form against the gloom of the cabin. Then he went on under the pinyons, blindly down the path, with his heart as heavy as lead. That night as he rolled in his blanket and stretched wearily he felt that he would never be able to sleep. The wind in the cedars made him shiver. The great stars seemed relentless, pa.s.sionless, white eyes, mocking his little destiny and his pain. The huge shadow of the mountain resembled the shadow of the insurmountable barrier between Fay and him.
Her pitiful, childish promise to be good was in his mind when he went to her home on the next night. He wondered how she would be, and he realized a desperate need of self-control.
But that night Fay Larkin was a different girl. In the dark, before she spoke, he felt a difference that afforded him surprise and relief. He greeted her as usual. And then it seemed, though not at all clearly, that he was listening to a girl, strangely and unconsciously glad to see him, who spoke with deeper note in her voice, who talked where always she had listened, whose sadness was there under an eagerness, a subdued gaiety as new to her, as sweet as it was bewildering. And he responded with emotion, so that the hour pa.s.sed swiftly, and he found himself back in camp, in a kind of dream, unable to remember much of what she had said, sure only of this strange sweetness suddenly come to her.
Upon the following night, however, he discovered what had wrought this singular change in Fay Larkin. She loved him and she did not know it.
How pa.s.sionately sweet and sad and painful was that realization for Shefford! The hour spent with her then was only a moment.
He walked under the stars that night and they shed a glorious light upon him. He tried to think, to plan, but the sweetness of remembered word or look made mental effort almost impossible. He got as far as the thought that he would do well to drift, to wait till she learned she loved him, and then, perhaps, she could be persuaded to let him take her and La.s.siter and Jane away together.
And from that night he went at his work and the part he played in the village with a zeal and a cunning that left him free to seek Fay when he chose.
Sometimes in the afternoon, always for a while in the evening, he was with her. They climbed the walls, and sat upon a lonely height to look afar; they walked under the stars, and the cedars, and the shadows of the great cliffs. She had a beautiful mind. Listening to her, he imagined he saw down into beautiful Surprise Valley with all its weird shadows, its colored walls and painted caves, its golden shafts of morning light and the red haze at sunset; and he felt the silence that must have been there, and the singing of the wind in the cliffs, and the sweetness and fragrance of the flowers, and the wildness of it all. Love had worked a marvelous transformation in this girl who had lived her life in a canon. The burden upon her did not weigh heavily. She could not have an unhappy thought. She spoke of the village, of her Mormon companions, of daily happenings, of Stonebridge, of many things in a matter-of-fact way that showed how little they occupied her mind. She even spoke of sealed wives in a kind of dreamy abstraction. Something had possession of her, something as strong as the nature which had developed her, and in its power she, in her simplicity, was utterly unconscious, a watching and feeling girl. A strange, witching, radiant beauty lurked in her smile. And Shefford heard her laugh in his dreams.
The weeks slipped by. The black mountain took on a white cap of snow; in the early mornings there was ice in the crevices on the heights and frost in the valley. In the sheltered canon where sunshine seemed to linger it was warm and pleasant, so that winter did not kill the flowers.
Shefford waited so long for Fay"s awakening that he believed it would never come, and, believing, had not the heart to force it upon her. Then there was a growing fear with him. What would Fay Larkin do when she awakened to the truth? Fay was indeed like that white and fragile lily which bloomed in the silent, lonely canon, but the same nature that had created it had created her. Would she droop as the lily would in a furnace blast? More than that, he feared a sudden flashing into life of strength, power, pa.s.sion, hate. She did not hate yet because she did not yet realize love. She was utterly innocent of any wrong having been done her. More and more he began to fear, and a foreboding grew upon him.
He made up his mind to broach the subject of Surprise Valley and of escaping with La.s.siter and Jane; still, every time he was with Fay the girl and her beauty and her love were so wonderful that he put off the ordeal till the next night. As time flew by he excused his vacillation on the score that winter was not a good time to try to cross the desert.
There was no gra.s.s for the mustangs, except in well-known valleys, and these he must shun. Spring would soon come. So the days pa.s.sed, and he loved Fay more all the time, desperately living out to its limit the sweetness of every moment with her, and paying for his bliss in the increasing trouble that beset him when once away from her charm.
One starry night, about ten o"clock, he went, as was his custom, to drink at the spring. Upon his return to the cedars Nas Ta Bega, who slept under the same tree with him, had arisen, with his blanket hanging half off his shoulder.
"Listen," said the Indian.
Shefford took one glance at the dark, somber face, with its inscrutable eyes, now so strange and piercing, and then, with a kind of cold excitement, he faced the way the Indian looked, and listened. But he heard only the soft moan of the night wind in the cedars.
Nas Ta Bega kept the rigidity of his position for a moment, and then he relaxed, and stood at ease. Shefford knew the Indian had made a certainty of what must have been a doubtful sound. And Shefford leaned his ear to the wind and strained his hearing.
Then the soft night breeze brought a faint patter--the slow trot of horses on a hard trail. Some one was coming into the village at a late hour. Shefford thought of Joe Lake. But Joe lay right behind him, asleep in his blankets. It could not be Withers, for the trader was in Durango at that time. Shefford thought of Willetts and Shadd.
"Who"s coming?" he asked low of the Indian.
Nas Ta Bega pointed down the trail without speaking.
Shefford peered through the white dim haze of starlight and presently he made out moving figures. Horses, with riders--a string of them--one--two--three--four--five--and he counted up to eleven. Eleven hors.e.m.e.n riding into the village! He was amazed, and suddenly keenly anxious. This visit might be one of Shadd"s raids.
"Shadd"s gang!" he whispered.
"No, Bi Nai," replied Nas Ta Bega, and he drew Shefford farther into the shade of the cedars. His voice, his action, the way he kept a hand on Shefford"s shoulder, all this told much to the young man.
Mormons come on a night visit! Shefford realized it with a slight shock.
Then swift as a lightning flash he was rent by another shock--one that brought cold moisture to his brow and to his heart a flame of h.e.l.l.
He was shaking when he sank down to find the support of a log. Like a shadow the Indian silently moved away. Shefford watched the eleven horses pa.s.s the camp, go down the road, to disappear in the village.
They vanished, and the soft clip-clops of hoofs died away. There was nothing left to prove he had not dreamed.
Nothing to prove it except this sudden terrible demoralization of his physical and spiritual being! While he peered out into the valley, toward the black patch of cedars and pinyons that hid the cabins, moments and moments pa.s.sed, and in them he was gripped with cold and fire.
Was the Mormon who had abducted Fay--the man with the cruel voice--was he among those eleven hors.e.m.e.n? He might not have been. What a torturing hope! But vain--vain, for inevitably he must be among them. He was there in the cabin already. He had dismounted, tied his horse, had knocked on her door. Did he need to knock? No, he would go in, he would call her in that cruel voice, and then...
Shefford pulled a blanket from his bed and covered his cold and trembling body. He had sunk down off the log, was leaning back upon it.
The stars were pale, far off, and the valley seemed unreal. He found himself listening--listening with sick and terrible earnestness, trying to hear against the thrum and beat of his heart, straining to catch a sound in all that cold, star-blanched, silent valley. But he could hear no sound. It was as if death held the valley in its perfect silence.
How he hated that silence! There ought to have been a million horrible, bellowing demons making the night hideous. Did the stars serenely look down upon the lonely cabins of these exiles? Was there no thunderbolt to drop down from that dark and looming mountain upon the silent cabin where tragedy had entered? In all the world, under the sea, in the abysmal caves, in the vast s.p.a.ces of the air, there was no such terrible silence as this. A scream, a long cry, a moan--these were natural to a woman, and why did not one of these sealed wives, why did not Fay Larkin, d.a.m.n this everlasting acquiescent silence? Perhaps she would fly out of her cabin, come running along the path. Shefford peered into the bright patches of starlight and into the shadows of the cedars. But he saw no moving form in the open, no dim white shape against the gloom.
And he heard no sound--not even a whisper of wind in the branches overhead.
Nas Ta Bega returned to the shade of the cedars and, lying down on his blankets, covered himself and went to sleep. The fact seemed to bring bitter reality to Shefford. Nothing was going to happen. The valley was to be the same this night as any other night. Shefford accepted the truth. He experienced a kind of self-pity. The night he had thought so much about, prepared for, and had forgotten had now arrived. Then he threw another blanket round him, and, cold, dark, grim, he faced that lonely vigil, meaning to sit there, wide-eyed, to endure and to wait.