Part 1 (1/2)
The Tyranny of the Dark.
by Hamlin Garland.
BOOK I
THE TYRANNY OF THE DARK
I
THE SETTING
The village of Colorow is enclosed by a colossal amphitheatre of dove-gray stone, in whose niches wind-warped pines stand like spectators silent and waiting. Six thousand feet above the valley floor green and orange slopes run to the edges of perennial ice-fields, while farther away, and peering above these almost inaccessible defences, like tents of besieging t.i.tans, rise three great mountains gleaming with snow and thunderous with storms.
Altogether a stage worthy of some colossal drama rather than the calm slumber of a forgotten hamlet.
The railway enters the valley from the south by sinuously following the windings of a rus.h.i.+ng, foam-white stream, and for many miles the engines cautiously feel their way among stupendous walls, pa.s.sing haltingly over bridges hung perilously between perpendicular cliffs by slender iron rods, or creep like mountain-cats from ledge to ledge, so that when they have reached safe harbor beside the little red depot they never fail to pant and wheeze like a tired, gratified dog beside his master's door. Aside from the coming and going of these trains, the town is silent as the regarding pines.
The only other ways of entrance to this deep pocket lie over threadlike trails which climb the divide from Silver City and Toltec and Vermilion, and loop their terrifying courses down the declivities trod only by the st.u.r.dy burro or the agile, sure-footed mountain-horse. These wavering paths, worn deep and dusty once, are gra.s.s-grown now, for they were built in the days when silver was accounted a precious metal, and only an occasional hunter or prospector makes present use of them.
Colorow itself, once a flaming, tumultuous centre of miners, gamblers, and social outcasts, is now risen (or declined) to the quiet of a New England summer resort, supported partly by two or three big mines (whose white ore is streaked with gold), but more and more by the growing fame of its mountains and their medicinal springs, for these splendid peaks have their waters, hot and cold and sweet and bitter, whose healing powers are becoming known to an ever-growing number of those Americans who are minded to explore their native land.
This centre of aerial storms, these groups of transcendent summits, would be more widely known still, but for the singular sense of proprietors.h.i.+p with which each discoverer regards them. The lucky traveller who falls into this paradise is seized with a certain instant jealousy of it, and communicates his knowledge only to his family and his friends. Nevertheless, its fame spreads slowly, and each year new discoverers flock in growing numbers to the one little hotel and its ramshackle bath-house, so that the community once absolutely and viciously utilitarian begins to take timid account of its aesthetic surroundings, and here and there a little log-cabin (as appropriate to this land as the chalet to the Alps) is built beside the calling ripples of the river, while saddled horses, laden burros in long lines, and now and then a vast yellow or red ore-wagon creaking dolefully as it descends, still give evidence of the mining which goes on far up the zigzag trails towards the soaring, s.h.i.+ning peaks of the Continental Divide.
II
THE MAID ON THE MOUNTAIN-SIDE
One day in July a fair young girl, with beautiful gray eyes, sat musingly beside one of these southern trails gazing upon the inverted pyramid of red sky which glowed between the sloping shoulders of the westward warding peaks. Her exquisite lips, scarlet as strawberry stains, were drawn into an expression of bitter constraint, and her brows were unnaturally knit. Her hat lay beside her on the ground, her brown hair was blowing free, and in her eyes was the look of one longing for the world beyond the hills. She appeared both lonely and desolate.
It was a pity to see one so young and so comely confronting with sad and sullen brow such aerial majesty as the evening presented. It was, indeed, a sort of impiety, and the girl seemed at last to feel this.
Her frowning brow smoothed out, her lips grew more girlish of line, and at length, rapt with wonder, she fixed her eyes on a single purple cloud which was dissolving, becoming each moment smaller, more remote, like a fleeing eagle, yet burning each instant with even more dazzling flame of color than before--hasting as if to overtake the failing day.
A dream of still fairer lands, of conquest, and of love, swept over her--became mirrored in her face. She had at this moment the wistful gaze which comes to the eyes of the young when desire of the future is strong.
Upon her musings a small sound broke, so faint, so far, she could not tell from whence it came nor what its cause might be. It might have been the rattle of a pebble under the feet of a near-by squirrel or the scrambling rush of a distant bear. A few moments later the voice of a man--very diminished and yet unmistakable--came pulsing down the mountain-side.
The girl rose as lightly, as gracefully as a fawn who, roused but not affrighted, stands on her imprint in the gra.s.s and waits and listens.
The man or men--for another voice could now be heard in answer--came rapidly on, and soon a couple of men and a small pack-train came out of a clump of thick trees at the head of a gulch, and, doubling backward and forward, descended swiftly upon the girl, who stood, with some natural curiosity, to let the travellers, whoever they might be, pa.s.s and precede her down to the valley. She resented them, for the reason that they cut short her reverie, her moment of spiritual peace.
The man who first appeared was a familiar type of the West, a small, lean, sharp-featured, foxy-eyed mountaineer, riding gracefully yet wearily--the natural horseman and trailer. Behind him two tired horses, heaped with a camp outfit, stumbled, with low-hanging heads, while at the rear, sitting his saddle st.u.r.dily rather than with grace, rode a young man bareheaded, but otherwise in the rough-and-ready dress of a plainsman. His eyes were on the sunset also, and something in the manner of his beard, as well as in the poise of his head, proclaimed him to be the master of the little train, a man of culture and an alien.
At sight of the girl he smiled and bowed with a look of frank and most respectful admiration, quite removed from the impudent stare of his guide. His hands were gloved, he wore a neat s.h.i.+rt, and his tie was in order--so much the girl saw as he faced her--and as he pa.s.sed she apprehended something strong and manly in the lines of his back and shoulders. Plainly he was not to the saddle born, like the man ahead, and yet he was quite as bronzed and travel-worn.
A turn in the trail brought them both close under her feet, and again the man in the rear glanced up at the figure poised on the bowlder above him, and his eyes glowed once more with pleasure. There was in his look an expression of acknowledged kins.h.i.+p, as of one refined soul to another, a kind of subtle flattery which pleased while it puzzled the girl. Men with eyes of that appeal were not common in her world.
The bitter look vanished out of her face. She gazed after the trailer with the unabashed interest of a child, wondering who he might be. In that instant her soul, impressionable and eager, received and retained, like a sensitive plate, every line of his figure, every minute modelling of his face--even his fas.h.i.+on of saddle and the leather of his gun-case remained with her as food for reflection, and as she loitered down the trail a wish to know more about him rose in her heart. There was a kind of smiling ecstasy on his face before he saw her--as if he, too, were transported by the scene, and this expression came at last to be the chief revelation of his character.