Part 31 (1/2)
”Everything, Gail,” she replied, looking up at me with shy, sad eyes.
”First Ferdinand Ramero came to me with the command that I should consent to be married this morning. By this time I would have been Marcos' wife.” She s.h.i.+vered as she spoke. ”I can't tell you the way of it, it was so final, so cruel, so impossible to oppose. Ferdinand's eyes cut like steel when they look at you, and you know he will do more than he threatens. He said the Church demanded one-half of my little fortune and that he could give it the other half if he chose. He is as imperious as a tyrant in his pleasanter moods; in his anger he is a maniac. I believe he would murder Marcos if the boy got in his way, and his threats of disgracing me were terrible.”
”But what else happened?” I wanted to turn her away from her wretched memory.
”I have not seen anybody else except Little Blue Flower. She has an Indian admirer who is Ferdinand's tool and spy. He let her come in to see me late last night or I should not have been here now. I had almost given up when she brought me word that you and Beverly would meet me at the church at daylight. I have not slept since. What will be the end of this day's work? Isn't there safety for me somewhere?” The sight of the fair, sad face with the hunted look in the dark eyes cut me to the soul.
”Jondo said last night that the battle was on and he would fight it out in Santa Fe to-day. It is our work to go where the Hopi blossom leads us, and Bev Clarenden and I will not let anything happen to you.”
I meant what I said, and my heart is always young when I recall that morning ride toward the San Christobal Arroyo and my abounding vigor and confidence in my courage and my powers.
Our trail ran into a narrow plain now where a yellow band marked the way of the San Christobal River toward the Rio Grande. On either hand tall cliffs, huge weather-worn points of rock, and steep slopes, spotted with evergreen shrubs, bordered the river's course. The silent bigness of every feature of the landscape and the beauty of the June day in the June time of our lives, and our sense of security in having escaped the shadows and strife in Santa Fe, all combined to make us free-spirited.
Only Sister Anita rode, alert and sorrowful-faced, between Beverly and the gaily-robed Indian girl, and myself with Eloise, the beautiful.
As we rounded a bend in the narrow valley, Little Blue Flower halted us, and pointing to an old half-ruined rock structure beside the stream, she said:
”See, yonder is the chapel where Father Josef comes sometimes to pray for the souls of the Hopi people. The house we go to find is farther up a canon over there.”
”I remember the place,” Eloise declared. ”Father Josef brought me here once and left me awhile. I wasn't afraid, although I was alone, for he told me I was always safe in a church. But I was never allowed to come back again.”
Sister Anita crossed herself and, glancing over her shoulder, gave a sharp cry of alarm. We turned about to see a group, of hors.e.m.e.n das.h.i.+ng madly up the trail behind us. The wind in their faces blew back the great cloud of dust made by their horses hoofs, hiding their number and the way behind them. Their steeds were wet with foam, but their riders spurred them on with merciless fury. In the forefront Ferdinand Ramero's tall form, towering above the small statured evil-faced Mexican band he was leading, was outlined against the dust-cloud following them, and I caught the glint of light on his drawn revolver.
”Ride! Ride like the devil!” Beverly shouted.
At the same time he and the Hopi girl whirled out and, letting us pa.s.s, fell in as a rear guard between us and our pursuers. And the race was on.
Jondo had said the lonely ranch-house whither we were tending was as strong as a fort. Surely it could not be far away, and our ponies were not spent with hard riding. Before us the valley narrowed slightly, and on its rim jagged rock cliffs rose through three hundred feet of earthquake-burst, volcanic-tossed confusion to the high tableland beyond.
As we strained forward, half a dozen Mexican hors.e.m.e.n suddenly appeared on the trail before us to cut off our advance. Down between us and the new enemy stood the old stone chapel, like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, where for two hundred long years it had set up an altar to the Most High on this lonely savage plain.
”The chapel! The chapel! We must run to that now,” cried Sister Anita.
Her long veil was streaming back in the wind, and her rosary and crucifix beating about her shoulders with the hard riding, but her white face was brave with a divine trust. Yet even as she urged us I saw how imposible was her plea, for the men in front were already nearer to the place than we were. At the same time a pony dashed up beside me, and Little Blue Flower's voice rang in my ears.
”The rocks! Climb up and hide in the rocks!” She dropped back on one side of Beverly, with Sister Anita on the other, guarding our rear. As I turned our flight toward the cliff, I caught sight of an Indian in a wedge of rock just across the river, and I heard the singing flight of an arrow behind me, followed almost instantly by another arrow. I looked back to see Sister Anita's pony staggering and rearing in agony, with Little Blue Flower trying vainly to catch its bridle-rein, and Sister Anita, clutching wildly at her rosary, a great stream of blood flowing from an arrow wound in her neck.
Men think swiftly in moments like these. The impulse to halt, and the duty to press on for the protection of the girl beside me, holding me in doubt. Instantly I saw the dark crew, with Ferdinand Ramero leading fiercely forward, almost upon us, and I heard Beverly Clarenden's voice filling the valley--”Run, Gail, run! You can beat 'em up there.”
It was a cry of insistences and a.s.surances and power, and withal there was that minor tone of sympathy which had sounded in the boy's defiant voice long ago in the gray-black shadows below p.a.w.nee Rock, when his chivalric soul had been stirred by the cruel wrongs of Little Blue Flower and he had cried:
”Uncle Esmond, let's take her, and take our chances.”
I knew in a flash that the three behind us were cut off, and Eloise St.
Vrain and I pressed on alone. We crossed the narrow strip of rising ground to where the first rocks lay as they had fallen from the cliff above, split off by some t.i.tanic agony of nature. Up and up we went, our ponies stumbling now and then, but almost as surefooted as men, as they climbed the narrow way. Now the rocks hid us from the plain as we crept st.u.r.dily through narrow crevices, and now we clambered up an open path where nothing concealed our way. But higher still and higher, foot, by foot we pressed, while with oath and growl behind us came our pursuers.
At last we could ride no farther, and the miracle was that our ponies could have climbed so far. Above us huge slabs of stone, by some internal cataclysm hurled into fragments of unguessed tons of weight, seemed poised in air, about to topple down upon the plain below. Between these wild, irregular ma.s.ses a narrow footing zigzagged upward to still other wild, irregular ma.s.ses, a footing of long leaps in cramped s.p.a.ces between sharp edges of upright clefts, all gigantic, unbending, now s.h.i.+elding by their immense angles, now standing sheer and stark before us, casting no shadows to cover us from the great white glare of the New-Mexican day.
I have said no man knows where his mind will run in moments of peril. As we left our ponies and clambered up and up in hope of safety somewhere, the face of the rocks cut and carved by the rude stone tools of a race long perished, seemed to hold groups of living things staring at us and pointing the way. And there was no end to these crude pictographs. Over and over and over--the human hand, the track of the little road-runner bird, the plumed serpent coiled or in waving line, the human form with the square body and round head, with staring circles for eyes and mouth, and straight-line limbs.