Chapter V

“Where are you taking me?” was the first thing she said. Then, ashamed that she should always be thinking of herself, she added hurriedly: “But you! What about your ranch? Your horses? Who will take care of them? Or are you coming right back in an hour or so?”

“We’re going up into the mountains,” he told her. “No chance down the other way where they’ll be on the lookout for you. They’d think nobody would tackle the mountains now.”

She knew what he meant. It was late October; the days had been full and ripe with sunshine, but there was in the air the bitter sting of winter. And when winter came, spring could be very far behind. A sudden storm would choke the mountain passes with snow.

Apprehensively, as though the heavens could assure her, she looked up at the sky. Just now it had been a clear, shiny blue, but in the last few minutes a film had crept over it.

“Yes, it’s apt to snow before morning,” he said indifferently. “We’d better be on our way, hadn’t we?”

“It’s going to storm. If not tonight, then surely tomorrow or next day. And can we ever hope to get through to the other side? The passes are up ten thousand feet!”

“Sure,” he said. “Sure. Let’s ride.”

And so they rode.

Together, they were aloof--she because of her fear, fear of what might be following and fear of him, the unknown; he because of a strange, baffling indifference. Why, she kept asking herself, _why_ did he succor or seem to succor her? She could not at any step make him out. Maybe he, like the others, was out to drag her down. She did not know. She only knew she did not want to think of it. Without his aid she was utterly lost. She merely took the one chance, the one open trail. It might come to a dead end, to a frightful dead end, but it offered her the one chance, and King Cannon’s daughter took it.

Dusk thickened so fast that darkness, like a black blanket, dropped down over their heads within the first half hour. Still, looking up, one could see the frail light clinging like a gossamery mantle to the mountain tops--and she chose to look up. She saw the first star and it heartened her.

“Know your way through the mountains?” he asked her, abrupt, out of a long silence.

“Not very well. It’s been such a long time--not since I was a little girl-- No, I don’t!”

“Neither do I!”

Then he chuckled. That, like the star, somehow put hope into her. When a man chuckled-- It was like a boy whistling. It was too dark to see his face, so she could forget the sinister look of it. She gripped the horn of her saddle with both hands, clung on tight--and inwardly prayed to a merciful God.

Neither spoke again until they came high up on one of the ridges that flowed down from the loftier mountains, and they stopped to blow the horses. Then the girl, feeling strangely light-headed and fearless and utterly indifferent of fate, said unemotionally:

“The storm is sure to catch us. I suppose we’ll starve and freeze to death.”

“We won’t starve,” he said, matter-of-fact about it. “I’ve got a food pack along, you know. And maybe you noticed the extra blanket thickness under your saddle? Extra, doubled blankets there, and under mine, too; so we won’t freeze.”

“You’d thought of all these things!”

“Sometimes it pays to think a couple of jumps ahead,” said Jim Torrance.

“I’ve tried to! I couldn’t. I--I can’t now!”

“Sometimes,” said Jim Torrance, “it pays to do just what you’ve got to do--sail ahead and take on your thinking when you can. Let’s ride some more.”

He led the way and she followed, because it seemed to her that everything had gone out of her, leaving in her breast no will of her own. At every forward step into the ever darkening wilderness her fears mounted, yet like a chip borne along on a black unseen tide she went the way the tide commanded.

Within a couple of hours they came as straight as a string to a little long-deserted cabin neither of them had ever heard about. Whether they were led by chance, by the instinct which guides the wanderer through the proper mountain passes, or by a power she had prayed to, they did not ponder. After all, their horses were largely responsible; in the dark they had followed a trail along the bottom of a vast canyon and had struck into the continuation of that trail across a timbered upland flat. Torrance’s horse came to a dead stop in front of the cabin before either of them saw it.

They went in and he made a fire in a wreck of a rock fireplace.

“It’s early yet, but we can’t see what we’re doing,” he said. “So we stay here over night and step along at daybreak.”

He went out to care for the horses and presently came back with his blankets and food pack. She was crouching by the fire, head down, her face in her hands, her hair down about her shoulders.

“Hungry?” he asked.

“No. I couldn’t eat.”

It was a small one-room place. He arranged her blankets on a strip of canvas in a corner near the fireplace and put his own down in an opposite corner.

“Scared?”

“Yes,” she told him, and looked up then, her eyes full on his. There was a shadow of fright in her eyes, yet somehow they seemed to remain fearless.

He slipped a gun out of its holster and held it out to her.

“Sleep with that in your hand. You’ll get a better rest.”

She shook her head. “No. I have shot one man, God forgive me. I’ll never do it again.”

He slid the gun back into its place, saying lightly: “Bordereau had it coming to him. Don’t let a little thing like that ride you. Good night.”

“Good night,” she said faintly, and went to her corner to lie down and tuck herself into her blankets.

It was bitter cold that night, with the wind howling from midnight on, and putting its fingers like icicles through a hundred cracks in the cabin walls. Jim Torrance kept the fire going, bringing in dead wood for which he had groped in the dark under the pines. When dawn came it was a pale, chill dawn; the ground was white with snow but no snow was falling.

Their breakfast, though the fire served them, was sketchy. The best part of it was the steaming black coffee made in an old tin can. When he brought the horses up she said, “If they come this far they can follow our tracks.”

He didn’t say anything but led the way, steering for a high notched pass in the mountains some miles ahead. On the more gentle slopes they rode swiftly; for the most part the climbing was slow and laborious. The sun rolled up, red and genial, and dissipated some of the morning chill. But soon thereafter a sharp wind began blowing and a thin gray film spread widely across the sky and they saw the gossamery snow wraiths swirling about the higher peaks.

“Our tracks won’t last long,” he said to her over his shoulder. “It’s coming on to snow again.”

She was glad; even now, as through her troubled sleep last night, there was always the haunting dread of a pack of men, like wolves, hunting her down. She had never gotten far enough to think what they would do with her, whether they’d hang her high to some pine tree, as they’d certainly do with a man, or-- But just the thought of their hands on her had grown into a nightmare. And now, if God sent His white snow to cover the earth, she was free!

But when the snow did come and their faint tracks were lost for all time, her moment of exultation was short. For the cold penetrated, biting to the bone, and the mountains grew at every step more rugged and cold and inhospitable. The mountains grew inimical; rather they had always been that way, but she had never thought about it until now. They crushed and killed when they could, which was often enough. Men had their way down in the valleys and foothills, making things over--but let them try their puny hands up here! The stern old mountain straight ahead of them was now as it had been a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand years ago; august, it was an enemy entrenched behind its towers. Nor was it merely passively inimical; at times it poured down torrents of stone and gravel in what folk called landslides, which buried deep the intrepid invader of its kingly solitude. Itself, never stirring, was like a general directing devastating forces. On a day like this it was a simple matter to feel that old mountain’s stubborn hostility.

“It’s going to kill us,” she said. “It’s going to mash us like a worm someone steps on.”

“You’re all on edge,” said Jim Torrance, and they rode on.

The skies thickened; the snow came down at first in chilled pellets, then in fluffy feathers that clung to their shoulders and knees and whitened the ground. Good-by to tracks now!

So for a little while both were content; nothing could be more welcome than a flurry of snow to shut the gate in the face of any possible pursuit. But within another hour, as they climbed together, it became obvious that they had to do with something altogether different from any mere light sifting-down of playful snowflakes. The wind burst storming through a high pass and flung hard frozen pellets in their faces. They spurred on; they came swiftly into a more sheltered region, but here the snow was falling so heavily that the air was gray and thick with it. This, then, was not just the advance notice that winter was on its way; it was winter itself, lionesque and raging.

“You see, I was right,” she said, when they stopped a moment in the lee of a sheltering cliff. “The mountains and the storm are allied against us. It will grow dark, we’ll be lost--there’ll just be smooth white mounds in a day or two for markers, and we’ll be under them.”

“You don’t sound like you cared much.”

“You don’t care either. I could tell when I first saw you.”

But he shook his head, flicking snow right and left from his hat brim.

“You’re dead wrong. I’ve got me a few jobs to do first. And one of them is to get you out of this. Let’s poke along.”

“You _are_ Jim Torrance?”

“That’s what they told me when I was a little shaver. Why?”

“There’s been a lot of talk about you; I suppose you know that. I heard men talking at Steve Bordereau’s place. They said that you came looking for a man named Jim Torrance, and that that’s what you call yourself.”

“Men say lots of things, don’t they?” he said lightly.

“Let’s poke along,” rejoined Sally Dawn.

* * * * *

Hours later--hours of floundering through already accumulated snowdrifts in the higher passes with scarcely a word spoken, head-down hours buffeting the storm--the two came to a spot where it seemed they could go no farther. Iron-flanked mountains, lifting their naked fronts high above timber line, seemed to constitute an impassable barrier; and so heavy were the low skies, so thick the air with storm, that dark was already on its way long before its appointed time. The two wayfarers came to a halt; their knees brushed as their horses pressed close together for warmth and the feel of companionship.

“All I know of this man’s country,” said Torrance, “is from a few words of hearsay that I didn’t pay much attention to at the time. We can’t be very far from Pocket Valley, and we’re headed right as far as general direction goes.”

“Pocket Valley is the first place they’d look for me,” said the girl, “if they ever guessed we’d headed this way at all.”

“Sure. But we needn’t go right into the Valley at first. The man who told me about it said something about the old Red Shirt Mining Camp on the ridge above Pocket.”

“The bottom fell out of it years ago. My father was interested up there when-- There’s not a soul there, now, especially at this time of year.”

“That’s what I meant. Some of the old shacks are still standing, I reckon. We could hole up there a day or two. I could make my way in and out of Pocket for supplies.”

“If we can ever find our way!”

“Sure we can.” She couldn’t be altogether certain, but thought that he was smiling ever so slightly, and that the smile was quite unforced, as he added, “You see, we’ve got to!”

So they rode on, riding this way and that on the steepening slopes, finding a way where none seemed to be, climbing higher and higher in order to attain those vantage points which afforded best views across the broken country and down into any such regions as might prove to be Pocket Valley. They hurried all they could, running a race with the swiftly advancing night. Sudden dark overtook them on one of the high, lonely, storm-battered ridges, in as unlikely a place for a camp on a night like this as could be imagined; and when on the whistling wind there was borne the dismal howl of a hungry timber wolf, the girl’s shoulders twitched with something more than cold, and the man admitted to himself that things could be far better and cheerier. But he said steadily enough: “We’ll make out. We’ll find shelter under a cliff. We’ll get through the night, and in the morning we’ll find Pocket Valley in two shakes. It ought to be just over yonder to the northeast and only a few miles off. If it hadn’t got dark so early--”

“Look!” she exclaimed, and grasped his arm in her eagerness. “A light!”

His hand gave hers a good hearty squeeze; at the moment both were unconscious of their involuntary gestures. He, too, glimpsed the light, weak and wan and seeming far away, somewhere in the black void beyond and far below them.

“It’s the settlement down in Pocket Valley,” he said with assurance. “What we see is the lights shining out of windows. So we must be on the ridge we were heading for, and the old camp must be so close that we could throw a rock and hit it.”

“If we could only see it! But it’s so dark!”

“We’ll take it slow now; we’ve got some sort of trail under foot; our horses will take us right. And if we don’t have any luck, well we can get down to Pocket in no time at all.”

He led the way and she pressed along close behind him, not to lose him in the thick night. Twice his voice was hurled back to her by the wind, but she could not make out his words. Then she almost bumped into him; he had stopped and was dismounting.

“We’re there!” he called triumphantly. “Look sharp and you’ll see a cabin of sorts; it’s so close you could almost reach out and pat it with your hand. We’ve just passed another. Light down and we’ll take stock of our night’s quarters.”

Stiff with cold and weariness she slid down from her saddle; his hand was out to steady her. Then he shoved a sagging door open and she stumbled into the cabin’s pitch-black interior.

“Wait a shake,” he said. “Here are some matches. See what it’s like inside. I’ll tie the horses and you look around. If it’s all right, we’ll stay here. Or I can poke into one of the other shacks. I’ll be back with you in a jiffy.”

Their cold fingers fumbled together as he handed her a half dozen sulphur block-matches. He moved a few steps away in quest of a tree to tie the horses to, lest, seeking shelter from the storm, they wander off. Almost immediately he returned to meet her at the door, and to hear her excited whisper:

“We’re not alone up here! There’s a light in one of the other cabins; I saw it through a back window, and saw a man moving about. Do you think it is some of the men from Sundown, looking for me? They might have ridden ahead and waited here.”

“Did you strike a match?”

“No. I was just trying to--my hands were so cold--and I saw the other light.”

He went with her to the little window. Fifty or perhaps a hundred yards away was the other cabin; it, too, had a small square window, and through this shone glimmeringly the pale light cast by a candle or a glow from a fireplace. Presently he, too, saw a figure moving across the window; he couldn’t see at all clearly, but it seemed to him that the fellow was gesturing as a man might if talking with someone else.

“Of course it might be anybody,” said Torrance, “but the chances are it’s some lone crazy prospector and nobody from Sundown at all. Just the same I’d better step over and take a look-see from close up. And no matter who it is, I think we’d better stick here for the night. We’d have a devil’s own time getting down to Pocket, and when we got there we’d be pretty sure to run into someone that knows about Bordereau. I won’t be long.”

“I’m coming with you!”

“Fair enough. Let’s step.”

So again they went out into the storm to grope their way toward a light which for her might have the least or the greatest significance. They went boldly, since the shrieking wind blotted out any sound they made and since they need have no fear of being seen. They drew close to the lighted window. At one end of the room a candle-end on a box, stuck in its own grease, was guttering out; it left the farther end of the room in wavering gloom. They saw clearly the man who had been moving about so restlessly and who now stood still; they made out indistinctly the form of another man lying on a corner bunk. The two were talking, but not a word was to be overheard. It seemed that the man standing was taking orders; that he didn’t like them; that none the less he was accepting them.

Sally Dawn gasped out, her lips close to Jim Torrance’s ear:

“They’re after me! It’s Clark Murdo, Steve Bordereau’s pardner! I can’t see who the other man is but it’s bound to be another of Bordereau’s men. What are we going to do?”

“Let’s get back to our cabin,” said Torrance. They turned away but he stopped and swung about and seemed tempted to linger. “No use,” he muttered. “That candle will be out in a minute. I’d give my hat though to see that other man’s face. I’ve got me a notion, Sally Dawn! I sure have!”

“What? What is it?”

He hesitated, then said roughly:

“No; I’m crazy, I guess. Come on, let’s get under shelter.”

“But can’t you see--”

“No. Neither can you. It’s too dark to see anything. Maybe daylight will tell us something.”

They made their retreat as hurriedly as they had advanced. Once she spoke, saying in a mystified voice:

“I wonder who that other man was? I can’t understand Clark Murdo being bossed like that. And he was being ordered about, wasn’t he?”

“He sure was; he didn’t like it but was taking it. And that’s what gave me my notion.”

But beyond that cryptic statement he would not go.