CHAPTER XXXI
CONFESSIONS
A groping hand touched her arm; bandaged fingers sought to feel who she was. Behind her sounded a drowsy incoherent murmur. The snarl of the wolf had roused the sleeper from his torpor.
“Hush–hush!” she whispered. “It is all well. I am here by you. Lie still.”
“Isobel!” he murmured. “Isobel!”
“Yes, dear!” she soothed. “I am here. Rest–go to sleep again. All is well.”
“All is–?” He roused a little more. “You say–Then he is safe! They have brought him up–out of that hell!”
She could not lie outright. “He will soon be safe. By morning help will have come to us. As soon as the men can see to go down, they will descend for him. They will bring him up the way that you have shown us!”
Her voice quivered with pride of what he had done. She drew up his hand and pressed her lips tenderly upon the bandages.
Had the caress been a burn, he could not have more quickly snatched the hand away. He sought to rise, and struck his head against the overhanging rock.
“Where am I? Let me out!” he said.
“No, you must not! Lie still! You must not!” she remonstrated.
“Lie still?” he repeated. “Lie still! with him down there–alone!”
“But it is night–midnight. It will be hours before even the moon rises.”
“And he down there–alone! Help me make ready. I am going down to him.”
“Going down? But you cannot! It is midnight!”
“There is a lantern. I shall take that. It will be easier than in the daytime, for I shall not see those sickening precipices below.”
He sought to creep out past her. She clutched his arm.
“No, no! do not go! There is no need! Wait until they come. You have done your share–far more than your share! Wait!”
“I cannot,” he replied. “I must go down to him. I have no right to be up here, and he still down there.”
“You must!” she urged, clinging tighter to his arm. “You may fall. I am afraid! I cannot bear it! Do not go! Stay with me–say that you will stay with me–dearest!”
“Good God!” he cried, tearing himself away from her, “To let you say it–say it to me!”
“Dearest!” she repeated. “Dearest, do not go! There is no need! I cannot bear it! Do not go!”
“No need? My God! When I could fling myself over, if it were not for him! To have let you say it–to me–to a liar! thief! murderer!”
“Dearest!” she whispered. “Hush! You are delirious–you do not know–”
“It is you who do not know!” he cried. “But you shall–everything–all my cowardly baseness!” The confession burst from him in a torrent of self-denunciation–“That trip to town, when we went to fetch them, I lied to you about those bridge plans. It was not true that I found them. He handed them to me. He took no receipt. I looked at them and saw how wonderful they were. I stole them. My father had threatened to cast me off if I did not do something worth while. I was desperate. So I stole your brother’s plans. I copied them–”
“You know about Tom!” she interrupted. “But of course. You saw me tell him, there at the ravine.”
“I saw you put your arms about his neck and kiss him; but I did not hear–I did not see the truth. I believed–that is the worst of it all–I believed it possible that you–you– !.. That devil Gowan… But that is no excuse. Had I not already doubted you… And I went down–down into hell, with only one purpose–to make certain that he never should come up again!”
“Dear Christ!” whispered the girl–“Dear Christ! He has gone mad!”
“No, Isobel,” he said, his voice slow and dead with the calm of utter despair, “I am not mad. I have never been mad except for a little while after you put your arms about his neck. No–For years I was a fool, a profligate fool, wasting my life as I wasted all those thousands of dollars that I had not earned. I turned thief–a despicable sneak thief. At last the dirty crime found me out. I received a small share of the punishment that I deserved. Then you took me in–without question–treated me as a man. God knows I tried to be one!”
“You were!–you are!” she broke in. “This is all a mistake–a cruel, hideous mistake!”
“I tried to go,” he went on unflinchingly. “You urged me to stay. I was weak. I could not force myself to leave you.”
“Because–because!” she murmured.
“All the more reason why I should have gone,” he replied. “But I was weak, unfit. I lied to you and won your pity. You gave me the chance to stay and prove myself what I am. Down there, when he told me what I should have guessed–what I must have guessed had not my own baseness blinded me to the truth–when he told me he was your brother, I saw myself, my real self,–my shriveled, black, hellish soul. Now you see why I must go down again. I can never make reparation for what I have done. But I can at least go down to him.”
“You take all the blame on yourself!” she protested. “What if I had confessed my secret, there at the first, when Tom sprang down from the car and I knew him.”
“If you had told, then I should not have been tempted to doubt you, and I should have gone on, it might have been forever, with that lie and that theft between us–and I should not have been forced to see, as I now see, my absolute unworthiness of you.”
“Of me!” she cried shrilly, and she burst into wild hysterical laughter. It broke off as abruptly as it began. “Unworthy of me–of me? the daughter of a drunken mother, the sister of a girl who–” A sob choked her. She went on desperately: “You have told me all. But I–do you not wonder why I kept silent–why I denied Mary by my silence? You say you sought to harm Tom–down there. You did not know he was my brother. You thought he would harm me. Is it not so?”
“I doubted you!”
“Why? Because I failed to tell the truth. I feared to hurt him–to make trouble between him and his rich, high-bred wife. As if I should not have known better the moment I saw Genevieve! Dear sister! she knows all. But you–Either I should have spoken, or I should have hidden all my fondness for him. But I could not hide my love for him–and I was ashamed to tell.”
“Ashamed–you?”
“We lived in the slums. They told me my father was a big man, a man such as Tom is now. He was a railroad engineer. He was killed when I was a baby. Then we sank into the slums. My mother–she died when I was twelve. There was then only Mary and I and Tom. He could make only a little, working at odd jobs. Mary and I worked in a factory. Even she was under age. When I was going on fourteen there came a terrible winter when thousands were out of work. We almost starved.”
“You–starved!” murmured Ashton. “Starved! And I was starting in at college, flinging away money!”
“Tom tried to force people to let him work,” the girl went on drearily. “He was violent. They put him in jail. Soon Mary and I had nothing left. There was no work for us. We had sold everything that anyone would buy. The rent was overdue. They turned us out–on the streets… I was too young; but Mary… She found a place where I could stay. They were decent people, but hard…
“The weather was bitterly cold. She was taken sick. When the people with whom I was staying heard what she had done, they refused to help. I begged in the street. I was very small and thin. The–the beasts did not trouble me. Then, when Mary was very sick, I met Daddy. I begged from him. He did not give me a nickel and pass on. He stopped and made me talk–he made me take him to Mary.
“He had her moved to the best hospital… It was too late… I also had pneumonia. They said I would die. But Daddy brought me home just as soon as I could be moved. The railroad was then a hundred miles from Dry Mesa. But he kept me wrapped in furs, and all the way he carried me in his arms. Do you wonder why I love him so?.. That is all. You see now why I shrank from telling–why I denied Mary.”
“She is in Heaven,” said Ashton–“in Heaven, where some day you will go. But I–I–” She could see no more than the vague blotch of his white face in the darkness, but his voice told her the anguish of his look. “He was right–your brother. He told me that we always take with us the heaven or the hell that we each have made for ourselves… I have lost you… You know now why I am going down to do the little that I can do.”
“You are going down?” she asked wonderingly. “You still say that you are going down? Yet I have told you about–Mary!”
“If you were she, I still would be utterly unfit to look you in the face. I shall go to the camp for the lantern. There were other gloves and some of my clothing.”
“They are all here.”
“Show me where they are, and get ready the lantern and bandages and a sack of food.”
“You are going down,” she acquiesced. “You are going to Tom. And you are coming up with him–to me!”
“That is too much. I doubted you. Where are those things? He is waiting down there alone.”
“Here is his child, my nephew,” she said. “Hold him while I go for what you need. Here is my pistol. The man who shot you, who twice tried to murder you–he is somewhere up here. He will not harm me. But you–If he comes creeping in on you here, shoot him as you would shoot a coyote.”
“The man who shot me? He is up here?”
“You have seen him every day since that first day I met you,” replied the girl. “His name is Gowan.”
“Gowan?”
“Kid Gowan, murderer! I saw his eyes as he looked at you, lying down there on the brink. Then I knew.”
“But–if he–Where is Genevieve? I cannot go and leave you alone.”
“You can–you must! He is a coward. He dare not follow you down that terrible place. No harm will come to me if you are gone. But if he comes back and finds you–do you not see that if he kills you, he must also kill me? But in the morning, when the others come–Oh, why hasn’t Daddy come? All this long time since you went down into the depths, and he not with us! If only he were here!”
“Genevieve?” again inquired Ashton.
“She has gone. She started down the mountain for help when Kid went away. I’m so afraid for you, dear! He may be creeping back now–he may be waiting already, close by here, in the darkness. But if he has not heard our voices, he will go first to where you came up, and then to the tent. Keep quiet until I return. Wait; here is cream and egg. Drink it all.”
When he had drained the bowl that she held to his lips, she crept away. Ashton sat still, the warm, soft little body of the sleeping baby in his arms, the pistol in his bandaged right hand. In her excitement Isobel had forgotten his bound fingers. If Gowan had come on him then, he would have put the baby back in under the rock, and faced the puncher’s revolver with a smile. What had he now to live for? He had lost her. She had not yet grasped the baseness of what he had thought and done. As soon as she realized … And he could never forgive himself.
CHAPTER XXXII
OVER THE BRINK
Isobel came back to him, noiselessly gliding around through the darkness. She set down the bundle she was carrying, and hung blankets over the entrance of the little cave. She then lighted the lantern. He held out his bound hands. She unbound them enough for him to use his fingers, and taking the baby and the pistol, crouched down, with her ear close to the screening blankets, while he exchanged his tattered clothes for those she had brought to him.
There were also his change of boots and a pair of Blake’s gauntlet gloves, into which he was able to force his slender fingers without removing the remaining bandages. Isobel had already bound up into a kind of knapsack the food and clothing and first-aid package that he was to take down to her injured brother. He slung it upon his back, and whispered that he was ready.
She nestled the baby in the warm blankets on which he had lain, wrapped a blanket about the lantern, and led him cautiously down to the brink of the chasm. Dark as was the night about them, it was bright compared with the intense blackness of that profound abyss. The girl caught his arm and shrank back from the edge.
“You will not fall? you are certain you will not fall?” she whispered.
“I cannot fall,” he answered with calm conviction. “He needs me. I am going down to him. Besides, it will be easier with the lantern than if I could see below.”
“Do not uncover the light until you are down over the edge.–Wait!”
She stooped to knot the rope that he had brought up from the depths, to the lariats with which he had been dragged up the last ledges. She looped the end about his waist.
“There,” she said. “I shall at least be able to help you down the first fifty yards.”
“God bless you and keep you! Good-by!” he murmured in a choking voice, and he hastily crept down to slip over the first ledge of that night-shrouded Cyclopean ladder.
“Lafe!” she whispered. “Surely you do not mean to go without first telling me–I cannot let you go until–If you should fall! Wait, dearest! Kiss me–tell me that you–Oh, if you should fall!”
“I will not fall; I cannot. Good-by!”
The dim white blotch of his face disappeared below the verge. The line jerked through the girl’s hands. She clutched it with frantic strength and flung herself back with her feet braced against a point of rock. After a moment of tense straining, the rope slackened, and his voice came up to her over the ledge: “Pay out, please. It’s all right. I’ve found a crevice.”
She eased off on the line a few inches at a time, but always keeping it taut and always holding herself braced for a sudden jerk. At last the end came into her hand. She had to lie out on the rim-rock and call down to him. He called back in a tone of quiet assurance. The line slackened. He had cast it loose. The lantern glowed out in the blackness and showed him standing on a narrow shelf.
As Isobel bent lower to gaze at him, a frightful scream rang out above the booming of the cañon. It was a shriek such as a woman would utter in mortal fear. The girl drew back from the verge, her hair stiffening with horror. Could it be possible that Genevieve had lost her way and was wandering back to camp, and that Gowan–
Again the fearful scream pierced the air. Isobel looked quickly across towards the far side of the cañon. She could see nothing, but she drew in a deep sigh of relief. The second cry had told her that it was only a mountain lion, over on the other brink of the chasm.
When she again looked down at Ashton he was descending a crevice with a rapidity that brought her heart into her mouth. Yet there was no hurry in his quick movements, and every little while he paused on a shelf to peer at the steep slope immediately below him. Soon the circle of lantern light became smaller and dimmer to the anxious watcher above. Steadily it waned until all she could see was a little point of light far down in the darkness–and always it grew smaller and fainter.
Lying there with her bosom pressed against the hard stone, her straining eyes fixed on that lessening point of light, she had lost all count of time. Her whole soul was in her eyes, watching, watching, watching lest that tiny light should suddenly shoot down like a meteor and vanish in the darkness. Many times it disappeared, but never in swift downward flight, and always it reappeared.
Not until the moon came gliding up above the lofty white crests of the snowy range did she think of aught else than that speck of light and of him who was bearing it down into the black depths. But the glint of moonlight on a crystalline stone broke her steadfast gaze. Before she could again fix it on the faint point of lantern light a sound that had been knocking at the threshold of her consciousness at last made itself heard. It was an intermittent clinking as of steel on stone.
She looked around, thinking that one of the horses was walking along the ridge slope with a loose shoe. But all were standing motionless in the moonlight, dozing. Again she heard the click, and this time she located the direction from which it came. She looked at the split rock on the edge of the sheer drop. From beside it she had peered down through the field glasses at the outstretched form of her brother, far beneath in the cañon bottom.
The sound came from that rock. She stared at the side of the frost-split fragment with dilated eyes. The crack between the loose outer bowlder and the main mass showed very black and wide in the moonlight. Could it be possible that it had widened–that it was slipping over? And her brother down there beneath it!..
By setting wedge-shaped stones in the top of the cleft rock and prying with the crowbar, Gowan had gradually canted the top of the loose outer bowlder towards the edge of the precipice. It had only to topple forward in order to plunge down the cañon wall. He was working as silently as he could, but with a fierce eagerness that caused an occasional slip of the crowbar on the rock.
Although the great block of stone weighed over two tons, its base was small and rounded, and the mass behind it gave him leverage for his bar. Every inch that he pried it forward, the stones slipped farther down into the widening crack and held the vantage he had gained. Already the bowlder had been pushed out at the top many inches. It was almost balanced. The time had come to see if he could not pry it over with a single heave.
He did not propose to fall over after the rock. He turned his face to the brink, set the end of the bar in the crevice, and braced himself to heave backwards on the outer end. He put his weight on it and pulled. He could feel the rock give–the top was moving outward. A little more, and it must topple over.
Close behind him spoke a voice so hoarse and low-pitched with horror that it sounded like a man’s–“Drop that bar! drop it!”
With the swiftness of a wolf, he bounded sideways along the rim-rock. In the same lightning movement, he whirled face about and whipped his Colt’s from its holster. His finger was crooking against the trigger before he saw who it was that confronted him. The hammer fell in the same instant that he twitched the muzzle up and sideways. The heavy bullet scorched the girl’s cheek.
Above the crashing report rose a wild cry, “Miss Chuckie–God!”
Through the blinding, stinging powder-smoke she saw him stagger backwards as if to flee from what he thought he had done. His foot went down over the sharp edge. He flung up his hands and dropped into the abyss.
She did not shriek. She could not. Her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. Her heart stopped beating. She crumpled down and lay gasping. But the fascination of horror spurred her to struggle to her knees and creep over to peer down from the place where he had fallen.
Beneath her was only blank, utter darkness. No sound came up out of the deep except only that ceaseless reverberation of the hidden river. Twelve hundred feet down, the falling man had struck glancingly upon the smooth side of an out-jutting rock and his crushed body had been flung far out and sideways. It plunged into the rapids below the barrier and was borne away down the cañon. But this the girl could not have seen even in midday.
She looked for the red star of the distant fire where she knew her brother was lying. She could not see it. The point upon which the falling man had struck shut off her view. The other side of the split rock was where she and Genevieve had looked down through the glasses and seen Blake. She failed to realize the difference in the change of position. Her horror deepened. She thought that Gowan had hurled straight down to the bottom with all the terrific velocity of that sheer drop, and that he had plunged upon the fire and upon the dear form outstretched beside it, to crush and mangle and be crushed and mangled. The thought was too frightful for human endurance.
A long time she lay in a swoon, her head on the very edge of the brink. It was the wailing of the hungry, frightened baby that at last called her back to life and action. She dragged herself up around to the hiding place. The neglected baby was not easy to quiet. The cream had soured. There was nothing that she could give him except water. All the eggs that were left she had put in the knapsack that Ashton was carrying down to her brother. The baby now showed the full reflex of his mother’s long hours of anxiety and fear. He fretted and cried and would not be comforted.
The chill of approaching dawn forced her to rebuild the outburnt fire. The warm glow and the play of the flames diverted the child and hushed his outcry. Holding him so that he might continue to watch the dancing tongues of fire, the girl sat motionless, going over and over again in her mind all that had occurred since the tattered, bleeding, purple-faced climber had come straining up out of the depths… It could not have happened–it was all a hideous dream… Would they never come? Must she sit here forever–alone!