Part 24 (1/2)
The two women spoke English out of deference to the big man, and only dropped into their own language or into fluent French when necessity compelled them, or they thought themselves alone.
”Ah, but those red men, mother, they do not come here, so the kind man told us, for now they are also kind. Sit here and eat the biscuit. I will ask him.”
She went over to where he stood by the animals, pouring a very little water from the cans carried by the pack mule for each one. ”They'll have to hold out on this for the day, but they may only have half of it now,” he said.
”What shall I do?” Amalia looked with wide, distressed eyes in his face. ”She believes it yet, that my father lives and has gone to the camp for help. She thinks we go to him,--to the camp. How can I tell her? I cannot--I dare not.”
”Let her think what satisfies her most. We can tell her as much as is best for her to know, a little at a time, and there will be plenty of time to do it in. We'll be snowed up on this mountain all winter.” The young woman did not reply, but stood perfectly still, gazing off into the moonlit wilderness. ”When people get locoed this way, the only thing is to humor them and give them a chance to rest satisfied in something--no matter what, much,--only so they are not hectored. No mind can get well when it is being hectored.”
”Hectored? That is to mean--tortured? Yes, I understand. It is that we not suffer the mind to be tortured?”
”About that, yes.”
”Thank you. I try to comfort her. But it is to lie to her? It is not a sin, when it is for the healing?”
”I'm not authority on that, Miss, but I know lying's a blessing sometimes.”
”If I could make her see the marvelous beauty of this way we go, but she will not look. Me, I can hardly breathe for the wonder--yet--I do not forget my father is dead.”
”I'm starting you off now, because it will not be so hard on either you or the horses to travel by night, as long as it is light enough to see the way. Then when the sun comes out hot, we can lie by a bit, as we did yesterday.”
”Then is no fear of the red men we met on the plains?”
”They're not likely to follow us up here--not at this season, and now the railroad's going through, they're attracted by that.”
”Do they never come to you, at your home?”
”Not often. They think I'm a sort of white 'medicine man'--kind of a hoodoo, and leave me alone.”
She looked at him with mystification in her eyes, but did not ask what he meant, and returned to her mother.
”I have eaten. Now we go, is not?”
”Yes, mother. The kind man says we go on, and the red men will not follow us.”
”Good. I have afraid of the men 'rouge.' Your father knows not fear; only I know it.”
Soon they were mounted and traveling up the trail as before, the little pack mule following in the rear. No breeze stirred to make the frosty air bite more keenly, and the women rode in comparative comfort, with their hands wrapped in their shawls to keep them warm.
They did not try to converse, or only uttered a word now and then in their own tongue. Amalia's spirit was enrapt in the beauty around and above and below her, so that she could not have spoken more than the merest word for a reply had she tried.
The moonlight brought all the immediate surroundings into sharp relief, and the distant hills in receding gradations seemed to be created out of molten silver touched with palest gold. Above, the vault of the heavens was almost black, and the stars were few, but clear. Even the stones that impeded the horses' feet seemed to be made of silver. The depths below them seemed as vast and black as the vault above, except for the silver bath of light that touched the tops of the gigantic trees at the bottom of the canon around which they were climbing.
The silence of this vastness was as fraught with mystery as the scene, and was broken only by the scrambling of the horses over the stones and their heavy breathing. Thus throughout the rest of the night they wended steadily upward, only pausing now and then to allow the animals to breathe, and then on. At last a thing occurred to break the stillness and strike terror to Amalia's heart. It had occurred once the day before when the silence was most profound. A piercing cry rent the air, that began in a scream of terror and ended in a long-drawn wail of despair.
Amalia slipped from her horse and stumbled over the rough ground to her mother's side and poured forth a stream of words in her own tongue, and clasped her arms about the rigid form that did not bend toward her, but only sat staring into the white night as if her eye perceived a sight from which she could not turn away.
”Look at me, mother. Oh, try to make her look at me!” The big man lifted her from the horse, and she relaxed into trembling. ”There, it is gone now. Walk with me, mother;” and the two walked for a while, holding hands, and Amalia talked unceasingly in low, soothing tones.
After a little time longer the moon paled and the stars disappeared, and soon the sky became overspread with the changing coloring and the splendor of dawn. Then the sun rose out of the glory, but still they kept on their way until the heat began to overcome them. Then they halted where some pines and high rocks made a shelter, but this time the big man did not build a fire. He gave them a little coffee which he had saved for them from what he had steeped during the night, and they ate and rested, and the mother fell quickly into the sleep of exhaustion, as before.
Thus during the middle of the day they rested, Amalia and the big man sometimes sleeping and sometimes conversing quietly.