Part 11 (1/2)
CHAPTER III
Susan was riding alone on the top of the bluffs. The evening before, three men returning from the Oregon country to the States, had bivouacked with them and told them that the New York Company was a day's march ahead, so she had gone to the highlands to reconnoiter.
Just here the bluffs swept inward toward the river, contracting the bottom to a valley only a few miles in width. Through it the road lay, a well-worn path crossed as with black stripes by the buffalo runs.
Susan's glance, questing ahead for the New York train, ran to the distance where the crystal glaze of the stream shrunk to a silver thread imbedded in green velvet. There was a final point where green and silver converged in a blinding dazzle, and over this the sun hung, emerging from a nebulous glare to a slowly defining sphere.
Turning to the left her gaze lost itself in the endlessness of the plains. It was like looking over the sea, especially at the horizon where the land was drawn in a straight, purplish line. She could almost see sails there, small sails dark against a sky that was so remote its color had faded to an aerial pallor. As the journey had advanced the influence of these s.p.a.cious areas had crept upon her. In the beginning there had been times when they woke in her an unexplained sadness. Now that was gone and she loved to ride onward, the one item of life in the silence, held in a new correspondence with the solemn immensity. It affected her as prayer does the devotee. Under its inspiration she wondered at old worries and felt herself impervious to new ones.
With eyes on the purple horizon her thoughts went back to her home in Rochester with the green shutters and the bra.s.ses on the door. How far away it seemed! Incidents in its peaceful routine were like the resurgences of memory from a previous incarnation. There was no tenderness in her thoughts of the past, no sentiment clung to her recollections of what was now a dead phase of her life. She was slightly impatient of its contented smallness, of her satisfaction with such things as her sewing, her cake making, her childish conferences with girl friends on the vine-grown porch. They seemed strangely trivial and unmeaning compared to the exhilarating present. She was living now, feeling the force of a rising growth, her horizon widening to suit that which her eyes sought, the dependence of her sheltered girlhood gone from her as the great adventure called upon untouched energies and untried forces. It was like looking back on another girl, or like a woman looking back on a child.
She had often spoken to David of these past days, and saw that her descriptions charmed him. He had asked her questions about it and been surprised that she did not miss the old existence more. To him it had seemed ideal, and he told her that that was the way he should like to live and some day would, with just such a servant as Daddy John, and a few real friends, and a library of good books. His enthusiasm made her dimly realize the gulf between them--the gulf between the idealist and the materialist--that neither had yet recognized and that only she, of the two, instinctively felt. The roughness of the journey irked David.
The toil of the days wore on his nerves. She could see that it pained him to urge the tired animals forward, to lash them up the stream banks and drive them past the springs. And only half understanding his character--fine where she was obtuse, sensitive where she was invulnerable, she felt the continued withdrawal from him, the instinctive shrinking from the man who was not her mate.
She had silently acquiesced in the idea, entertained by all the train, that she would marry him. The doctor had intimated to her that he wished it and from her childhood her only real religion had been to please her father. Yet half a dozen times she had stopped the proposal on the lover's lips. And not from coquetry either. Loth and reluctant she clung to her independence. A rival might have warmed her to a more coming-on mood, but there was no rival. When by silence or raillery she had shut off the avowal she was relieved and yet half despised him for permitting her to take the lead. Why had he not forced her to listen? Why had he not seized her and even if she struggled, held her and made her hear him? She knew little of men, nothing of love, but she felt, without putting her thoughts even to herself, that to a man who showed her he was master she would have listened and surrendered.
Riding back to the camp she felt a trifle remorseful about her behavior. Some day she would marry him--she had got far enough to admit that--and perhaps it was unkind of her not to let the matter be settled. And at that she gave a petulant wriggle of her shoulders under her cotton blouse. Wasn't that his business? Wasn't he the one to end it, not wait on her pleasure? Were all men so easily governed, she wondered.
Looking ahead across the gra.s.sed bottom land, she saw that the train had halted and the camp was pitched. She could see David's tall stooping figure, moving with long strides between the tents and the wagons. She laid a wager with herself that he would do certain things and brought her horse to a walk that she might come upon him noiselessly and watch. Of course he did them, built up her fire and kindled it, arranged her skillets beside it and had a fresh pail of water standing close by. It only remained for him to turn as he heard the sound of her horse's hoofs and run to help her dismount. This, for some reason, he did not do and she was forced to attract his attention by saying in a loud voice:
”There was nothing to be seen. Not a sign of a wagon from here to the horizon.”
He looked up from his cooking and said: ”Oh, you're back, Susan,” and returned to the pan of buffalo tallow.
This was a strange remissness in the slave and she was piqued.
Contrary to precedent it was her father who helped her off. She slid into his arms laughing, trying to kiss him as she slipped down, then standing with her hands on his shoulders told him of her ride. She was very pretty just then, her hair loose on her sunburned brow, her face all love and smiles. But David bent over his fire, did not raise his eyes to the charming tableau, that had its own delightfulness to the two partic.i.p.ants, and that one of the partic.i.p.ants intended should show him how sweet Susan Gillespie could be when she wanted.
All of which trivial matter combined to the making of momentous matter, momentous in the future for Susan and David. Shaken in her confidence in the subjugation of her slave, Susan agreed to his suggestion to ride to the bluffs after supper and see the plains under the full moon. So salutary had been his momentary neglect of her that she went in a chastened spirit, a tamed and gentle maiden. They had orders not to pa.s.s out of sight of the twin fires whose light followed them like the beams of two, watchful, unwinking eyes.
They rode across the bottom to where the bluffs rose, a broken bulwark.
That afternoon Susan had found a ravine up which they could pa.s.s. She knew it by a dwarfed tree, a landmark in the naked country. The moonlight lay white on the barrier indented with gulfs of darkness, from each of which ran the narrow path of the buffalo. The line of hills, silver-washed and black-caverned, was like a rampart thrown across the entrance to the land of mystery, and they like the pygmy men of fairyland come to gain an entry. It was David who thought of this.
It reminded him of Jack and the Beanstalk, where Jack, reaching the top of the vine, found himself in a strange country. Susan did not remember much about Jack. She was engrossed in recognizing the ravine, scanning the darkling hollows for the dwarf tree.
It was a steep, winding cut, the tree, halfway up its length, spreading skeleton arms against a sky clear as a blue diamond. They turned into it and began a scrambling ascent, the horses' hoofs slipping into the gutter that the buffaloes had trodden out. It was black dark in the depths with the moonlight slanting white on the walls.
”We're going now to find the giants,” David called over his shoulder.
”Doesn't this seem as if it ought to lead us up right in front of Blunderbore's Castle?”
”The buffalo runs are like trenches,” she answered. ”If you don't look out your horse may fall.”
They tied their horses to the tree and climbed on foot to the levels above. On the earth's floor, unbroken by tree or elevation, there was not a shadow. It lay silver frosted in the foreground, darkening as it receded. In the arch above no cloud filmed the clearness, the moon, huge and mottled, dominating the sky. The silence was penetrating; not a breath or sound disturbed it. It was the night of the primitive world, which stirred the savage to a sense of the infinite and made him, from sh.e.l.l or clay or stone, carve out a G.o.d.
Without speaking they walked forward to a jutting point and looked down on the river. The current sparkled like a dancer's veil spread on the gra.s.s. They could not hear its murmur or see the s.h.i.+fting disturbance of its shallows, only received the larger impression of the flat, gleaming tide split by the black shapes of islands. David pointed to the two sparks of the camp fires.
”See, they're looking after us as if they were alive and knew they mustn't lose sight of us.”
”They look quite red in the moonlight,” she answered, interested.
”As if they belonged to man and a drop of human blood had colored them.”