CHAPTER XXXLightning Passes the Barrier
BLANCHE knew better than to make any mystery of the situation when she encountered Lightning. She knew it was a moment when frankness alone was possible. For the old man laid bare his soul to her in the words of his greeting.
“You got her mare,” he had cried, at sight of the pinto, in tones that were unforgettable. “Wher’ is she? I want her, that pore, sick kid.”
Blanche replied without hesitation as she reined up her horse.
“That’s why I’m here, Lightning,” she said gently. “We’ve got her. Found her lying all of a heap up this gorge. My friends have taken her back to our camp, where there’s a doctor man.”
“She ain’t—dead?” Something like terror looked out of the man’s eyes, and again Blanche realised his burning devotion.
“She’s bad, but I don’t think she’s dead,” she replied. “Will you come with me?”
“You ain’t—lyin’?”
“Why should I lie?”
The man remained for a moment without speaking. He was striving to read behind the eyes of the woman who had no desire to conceal the truth.
“We’ll go right now,” he said at last, and bestirred himself.
“This pony?” Blanche demurred. “Can we leave her at the farm?”
Lightning shook his head decidedly.
“She’ll need her,” he said. “We’ll take her along.” Then his manner softened. “Maybe you’ll tell me things, ma’am,” he said. “You can tell me as we go.”
It was then that Blanche became mistress of the situation. She was determined that no chance word of hers should hurt her brother. And she had no fear of this man, for all his manner and the ugly guns he carried.
“No,” she said. “I’ve told you the simple truth. We found poor Molly badly smashed. She’s gone where the right help can be found for her. And I’ll take you to her at once, if you like. You must trust me.”
And Lightning agreed. Whatever suspicions Blanche’s refusal might have inspired they remained unexpressed. For the time he seemed suddenly to have frozen up.
Now they had ridden the miles of the gorge together, right up the headwaters of the creek, only speaking just sufficient for the needs of the journey.
At the foot of the inclined ledge, over which the ascent to the cavern mouth had yet to be made, Blanche turned to the cattleman. Beelzebub, with head haughtily raised, gazed disdainfully upon its more lowly companions.
Blanche indicated the path, which, for all its indefiniteness at the start, carried prompt conviction to the practical mind of Lightning. He observed the marks of usage at once. The lank grass was obviously hoof-trodden.
“Will the pinto trail behind on your rope?” she asked. “There isn’t room for two ponies abreast. If it won’t travel that way we’d best leave it right here. You can pick her up going back.”
Lightning shook his head. His eyes were unsmiling.
“Molly needs her,” he said shortly.
“Well, it’s up to you,” Blanche said with a shrug. “Look up there at the mouth of that tunnel, where the water’s pouring down the rocks. This path rises on a ledge, and makes its way to that cave. We’re going to pass right inside it. It’s a tunnel; and the walls of rockmeet overhead for several hundred yards. After that they open out, and we pass into the higher hill country. Do you feel good about it?”
“You said Molly’s at the end of our journey, ma’am,” Lightning said quietly. “The things by the way don’t matter a curse.”
Blanche smiled as she listened. Her heart warmed towards this queer creature with his ragged whisker, and his long guns with their many barrels.
She inclined her head, and turned Beelzebub to the path.
“Then keep close on my trail,” she said, and lifted her reins.
The procession started. Beelzebub moved confidently. The creature was familiar with every foot of the path, and seemed to rejoice in the rapid dropping away of the gloomy lake-shore as he mounted the sometimes almost precipitous incline. Lightning came hard behind him, and beyond him trailed the pinto on the end of a rawhide rope.
There was not a moment of hesitation on the part of the horses new to the ascent. Lightning was a master in the saddle, and his horse had the added encouragement of the black quarters directly in front of his nose. The pinto, behind, knew her stable companion, and was more than content.
The path quickly became a rocky ledge about four feet wide, with the wall of the hill sloping back from it. It mounted sharply and then flattened; and, a few yards farther on, it rose sharply again.
Lightning seemed quite unconcerned with its vagaries. He seemed to disregard its turnings and twistings, and its width at no time gave him a moment of unease. He once or twice glanced below as the precipice deepened, and the flash of sunlit waters caught his eye; but his chief concern was the well-clad woman’s figure, ahead of him, and the thing that had already passed between them.
Half-way up the mounting path Beelzebub dislodged asmall rock, which clattered as it rolled over the precipice and hurtled to the depths below. The horse gave no heed to it, but its rider was startled. Lightning saw her movement of sudden apprehension.
“Leave him his head, ma’am,” he warned. “He’s got elegant nerve.”
It was not his words so much as the sound of his voice that instantly restored Blanche’s confidence. She eased her hand, and the horse continued the ascent.
They had passed the sharp angle where the ledge cut on to the face of the western hill, and mounted the last lift which terminated at the tunnel entrance. The black pressed on eagerly towards the tumbling waters, and Lightning was close behind. The clatter of hoofs became lost in the turmoil of breaking water. A light spray was floating in the air, moistening it, and tempering its heat to something pleasantly cool and humid.
Far below them the lagoon, with its surrounding of forest, looked strangely small and distant. And the creek itself, beyond that, looked nothing bigger than a glistening silver thread. In his watchful fashion Lightning had made an estimate of the height they had climbed. He knew it could not be less than four hundred feet.
As the black came to the edge of the little watercourse Lightning held up his horse. He realised the sharpness of the turn the creature ahead of him had to make. He gave the beast room, and Beelzebub passed swiftly into the water and into the tunnel.
The waiting man was about to follow on. He lifted his reins, but on the instant checked his horse. He turned about in the saddle and sat gazing far down the gorge. He sat there still and watchful until the muffled tones of Blanche’s voice encouraging him came back to him from the tunnel. Then he urged his horse, and followed her into the yawning archway.
For awhile, as the darkness engulfed him, only the lightfrom the mouth of the cavern behind served Lightning with any idea of the nature of the tunnel through which he was passing. At first he was aware of dripping walls set nearly twenty feet apart. The roof, too, was dripping, and his horse was wading a shallow stream whose depth was no greater than sufficient to cover its fetlocks. But the sound of the movements of the horse in front came back to him, and he was satisfied. Wherever the woman led he was unafraid to follow. The pinto behind him was less easy than its stable companion. It had no rider to encourage it, and its equine terror was in full play. Once within the broad cavern, however, Lightning drew it up alongside him, and persuaded it, and soothed it, with voice and hand.
The light from behind died out, and black darkness completely engulfed him. Only was there the splash of the water underfoot to afford any sort of guidance. But this phase of the passage was little more than momentary. Almost at once, it seemed, the pitchy darkness gave way to a faint twilight that made progress possible. The light came from above, and Lightning promptly discovered that the cavern had passed, and, in its place, he was moving up the course of a stream flowing through a deep cleft in the mountain. He gazed up, searching for a sight of the sky above him, but there was none. The light percolated down through the rift, but the rugged facets of rock hid its origin.
As he rode on the light steadily increased. The rift was widening. Now Lightning could clearly see the outline of the horse and rider ahead of him. And the walls were falling back, and the bed of the stream was widening. Presently the woman and her horse passed out of view, and the watchful man understood that the passage had taken a bend to the right. He could clearly see the sharp, dark line of the wall directly ahead, and on the opposite wall was an increase of light.
He came up to the bend. He passed it. And, in a moment, he beheld full daylight. He drew a deep breath. It was an expression of that relief which never fails the human on returning to the daylight which has been denied.
The journey was nearing its end. For two hours or more Blanche and Lightning had been riding the wilderness of forest, and hill, and valley, since leaving the dark precincts of Nature’s secret postern.
It was a world whose might was nothing new with which to impress the mind of Lightning. The hills were, perhaps, more sublime in their magnificence; the forests were, perhaps, more deep and dark than those amongst which his life was passed. The towering crests, spread with the sweep of eternal glaciers, affected him no more than did the sparse grass under his horse’s hoofs, and the beds of treacherous tundra which had to be so carefully avoided. He was preoccupied to the exclusion of everything in Nature. One thought, one purpose, alone actuated him. Blindly he was permitting himself to be led to the only goal desired. Somewhere in these hills Molly was lying sick, possibly to death, and the woman beside him was conducting him to the haven with which her friends had provided her.
They were moving up an incline which mounted to a saddle between two lesser hills. There were great sweeps of forest on either hand, and with a break between them of barren, rocky highway that was without a vestige of vegetation. Away to the right, far across a valley, a mountain reared its head, and plunged it deep into the heart of the summer cloudbanks. To the left of them lay the upward sweep of forest, which only terminated where the snow-line cut it off.
“We’ve come more’n fifteen miles since we quit theheadwaters,” Lighting said, in his ungracious fashion. “How much farther?”
Blanche turned at the sound of his voice. She smiled as she took in the hawk-like profile of the man. She realised his intensity of feeling. She warned herself of the trust he had placed in her. And she forgot completely his ungraciousness, and remembered only that phrase with which he greeted her: “I want that pore sick kid.”
“You’ll see the camp from the ‘saddle,’” she said quietly, raising an arm and pointing ahead. “It’s right below the Gateway.”
“The Gateway?”
The old man was staring round at her.
Blanche nodded. Her smile had deepened, but it elicited not a shadow of any responsive smile.
“Yes. The Gateway of Hope,” she said. “It’s a wide-open Gateway, that’s never closed to those in trouble—simple human trouble. And beyond it is shelter, and help, and—peace. Molly’s in trouble, and—she’s passed in through that Gateway.”
Lightning leant and spat beyond his horse’s shoulder. Then he raised a hand and scratched the unbrushed hair under the wide brim of his hat. He stared incredulously into the woman’s eyes.
“Say, ma’am,” he suddenly exploded, “you ain’t crazy?”
They had halted at the highest point of the saddle. Blanche had permitted the cattleman to reach the summit first. It was he who had made the halt. And he sat there in his saddle, gazing down on the thing that had seemed to him so unbelievable.
There was the Gateway—two sheer, barren cliffs rising out of the forest which grew about their feet. They were wide, so wide, and towered to a height that was amazing.They formed a clean-cut gateway, as though set up by some giant hand, for the silver streak of a placid river that flowed in between them. Behind them and about them lay a wilderness of wooded hills. They had none of the darkness of the greater forests they had hitherto encountered. They were softly green and gracious in their many hues.
But Lightning ignored these things. His concern was for that which lay beyond the Gateway. It was the splendour of the valley which had captured Jim Pryse during his long imprisonment in it, and the handiwork that had since been achieved.
It was a wonderful picture in the light of the setting sun. And it stirred the old man’s pulses with something of the hope of which Blanche had spoken. The woman was not crazy. No. Molly was down there, somewhere there in the shelter of that ranch-house, with its wonderful pastures, and corrals, and barns, and——
Lightning turned from it all. He sought the woman’s face and realised her smile. Then he turned an ear to windward.
“Are you satisfied I wasn’t fooling you, Lightning?” Blanche spoke almost joyously. “Molly’s down there in my house by now, and maybe the doctor’s already fixed her.”
“It’s your house, ma’am?” Lightning said, with an ear still turned.
“Mine and my brother’s. Shall we get on down? We’ve more than two miles to go.”
“Sure, we’ll get right on down. Say——”
The old man broke off as the horses began the descent. As he made no attempt to add anything further, Blanche spoke, and there was something thrilling in her tone.
“He built all that,” she said. “He built it for a notion. A queer sort of crazy notion. And I sort of feel his dream’s coming true. You’re a cattleman, Lightning.There are cattle down there that’ll make you feel good. There’s the sort of grass you dream about, and the life you know. You’re the first from the outside that’s ever seen it.”
“You’re sure that’s so, ma’am?”
Blanche searched the eyes that were looking into hers.
“There’s only Molly else,” she said. “And maybe she’s not seen it yet,” she added significantly.
“You got folk outside them gates?” Lightning asked, pointing at the headlands.
“Not a soul.”
Lightning suddenly drew rein, and turned about in his saddle. He gazed back over the way they had come.
“Then I guess ther’s a stranger chasin’ up,” he said sharply. “We’re follered, ma’am.”