The Emigrant Trail by Geraldine Bonner (most read books TXT) 📕

caked in the loose soil. There was nothing to break the eye-sweep but the cones of rusted buttes, the nearer ones showing every crease and shadow thread, the farther floating detached in the faint, opal shimmer of the mirage.

One afternoon, in a deep-grassed meadow they came upon an encamped train outflung on the stream bank in wearied disarray. It was from Ohio, bound for California, and Glen and Bella decided to join it. This was what the doctor's party had been hoping for, as the slow pace of the McMurdo oxen held them back. Bella was well and the doctor could conscientiously leave her. It was time to part.

Early in the morning the two trains rolled out under a heavy drizzle. Rain fell within the wagons even as it did without, Susan weeping among the sacks behind Daddy John and Bella with her children whimpering against her sides, stopping in her knitting to wipe away her tears with the long strip of stocking leg. They were to meet again in California--that everyone said. But California looked a long way off, and now.--For some reason or other it did not gleam so magically bright at the limit of their vision. Their minds had grown tired of dwelling on it and sank down wearied to each day's hard setting.

By midday the doctor's wagons had left the others far behind. The rain fell ceaselessly, a cold and penetrating flood. The crowding crowns and crests about them loomed through the blur, pale and slowly whitening with falling snow. Beyond, the greater masses veiled themselves in cloud. The road skirted the river, creeping through a series of gorges with black walls down which the moisture spread in a ripple-edged, glassy glaze. Twice masses of fallen rock blocked the way, and the horses had to be unhitched and the wagons dragged into the stream bed. It was heavy work, and when they camped, ferociously hungry, no fire could be kindled, and there was nothing for it but to eat the hard-tack damp and bacon raw. Leff cursed and threw his piece away. He had been unusually morose and ill-humored for the last week, and once, when obliged to do sentry duty on a wet night, had flown into a passion and threatened to leave them. No one would have been sorry. Under the stress of mountain faring, the farm boy was not developing well.

In the afternoon the rain increased to a deluge. The steady beat on the wagon hoods filled the interior with a hollow drumming vibration. Against the dimmed perspective the flanks of the horses undulated under a sleek coating of moisture. Back of the train, the horsemen rode, heads lowered against the vicious slant, shadowy forms like drooping, dispirited ghosts. The road wound into a gorge where the walls rose straight, the black and silver of the river curbed between them in glossy outspreadings and crisp, bubbling flashes. The place was full of echoes, held there and buffeted from wall to wall as if flying back and forth in a distracted effort to escape.

David was driving in the lead, Susan under cover beside him. The morning's work had exhausted him and he felt ill, so she had promised to stay with him. She sat close at his back, a blanket drawn over her knees against the intruding wet, peering out at the darkling cleft. The wagon, creaking like a ship at sea, threw her this way and that. Once, as she struck against him he heard her low laugh at his ear.

"It's like a little earthquake," she said, steadying herself with a grab at his coat.

"There must have been a big earthquake here once," he answered. "Look at the rocks. They've been split as if a great force came up from underneath and burst them open."

She craned her head forward to see and he looked back at her. Her face was close to his shoulder, glowing with the dampness. It shone against the shadowed interior rosily fresh as a child's. Her eyes, clear black and white, were the one sharp note in its downy softness. He could see the clean upspringing of her dark lashes, the little whisps of hair against her temple and ear. He could not look away from her. The grinding and slipping of the horses' hoofs did not reach his senses, held captive in a passionate observation.

"You don't curl your hair any more?" he said, and the intimacy of this personal query added to his entrancement.

She glanced quickly at him and broke into shamefaced laughter. A sudden lurch threw her against him and she clutched his arm.

"Oh, David," she said, gurgling at the memory. "Did _you_ know that? I curled it for three nights on bits of paper that I tore out of the back of father's diary. And now I don't care what it looks like. See how I've changed!"

And she leaned against him, holding the arm and laughing at her past frivolity. His eyes slid back to the horses, but he did not see them. With a slight, listening smile he gave himself up to the intoxication of the moment, feeling the pressure of her body soft against his arm.

The reins which hung loose suddenly jerked through his fingers and the mare fell crashing to her knees. She was down before he knew it, head forward, and then with a quivering subsidence, prone in a tangle of torn harness. He urged her up with a jerked rein, she made a struggling effort, but fell back, and a groan, singularly human in its pain, burst from her. The wagon behind pounded almost on them, the mules crowding against each other. Daddy John's voice rising in a cracked hail. Courant and Leff came up from the rear, splashing through the river.

"What's happened?" said the former.

"It's Bess," said David, his face pallid with contrition. "I hope to God she's not hurt. Up, Bess, there! Up on your feet, old girl!"

At her master's voice the docile brute made a second attempt to rise, but again sank down, her sides panting, her head strained up.

Leff leaped off his horse.

"Damn her, I'll make her get up," he said, and gave her a violent kick on the ribs. The mare rolled an agonized eye upon him, and with a sudden burst of fury he rained kick after kick on her face.

David gave a strange sound, a pinched, thin cry, as if wrung from him by unbearable suffering, and leaped over the wheel. He struck Leff on the chest, a blow so savage and unexpected that it sent him staggering back into the stream, where, his feet slipping among the stones, he fell sprawling.

"Do that again and I'll kill you," David cried, and moving to the horse stood over it with legs spread and fists clinched for battle.

Leff scrambled to his knees, his face ominous, and Courant, who had been looking at the mare, apparently indifferent to the quarrel, now slipped to the ground.

"Let that hound alone," he said. "I'm afraid it's all up with Bess."

David turned and knelt beside her, touching her with hands so tremulous he could hardly direct them. His breath came in gasps, he was shaken and blinded with passion, high-pitched and nerve-wracking as a woman's.

Leff rose, volleying curses.

"Here you," Courant shifted a hard eye on him, "get out. Get on your horse and go," then turning to Bess, "Damn bad luck if we got to lose her."

Leff stood irresolute, his curses dying away in smothered mutterings. His skin was gray, a trickle of blood ran down from a cut on his neck, his face showed an animal ferocity, dark and lowering as the front of an angry bull. With a slow lift of his head he looked at Susan, who was still in the wagon. She met the glance stonily with eyes in which her dislike had suddenly crystallized into open abhorrence. She gave a jerk of her head toward his horse, a movement of contemptuous command, and obeying it he mounted and rode away.

She joined the two men, who were examining Bess, now stretched motionless and uttering pitiful sounds. David had the head, bruised and torn by Leff's kicks, on his knees, while Courant with expert hands searched for her hurt. It was not hard to find. The left foreleg had been broken at the knee, splinters of bone penetrating the skin. There was nothing to do with Bess but shoot her, and Courant went back for his pistols, while Daddy John and the doctor came up to listen with long faces. It was the first serious loss of the trip.

Later in the day the rain stopped and the clouds that had sagged low with its weight, began to dissolve into vaporous lightness, float airily and disperse. The train debouched from the gorge into one of the circular meadows and here found Leff lying on a high spot on the ground, his horse cropping the grass near him. He made no remark, and as they came to a halt and began the work of camping, he continued to lie without moving or speaking, his eyes fixed on the mountains.

These slowly unveiled themselves, showing in patches of brilliant color through rents in the mist which drew off lingeringly, leaving filaments caught delicately in the heights. The sky broke blue behind them, and clarified by the rain, the shadows brimmed high in the clefts. The low sun shot its beams across the meadow, leaving it untouched, and glittering on the remote, immaculate summits.

In exhaustion the camp lay resting, tents unpitched, the animals nosing over the grass. David and Daddy John slept a dead sleep rolled in blankets on the teeming ground. Courant built a fire, called Susan to it, and bade her dry her wet skirts. He lay near it, not noticing her, his glance ranging the distance. The line of whitened peaks began to take on a golden glaze, and the shadows in the hollow mounted till the camp seemed to be at the bottom of a lake in which a tide of some gray, transparent essence was rising.

"That's where Lucy's gone," he said suddenly without moving his head.

Susan's eyes followed his.

"Poor Lucy!" she sighed.

"Why is she poor?"

"Why?" indignantly. "What a question!"

"But why do you call her poor? Is it because she has no money?"

"Of course not. Who was thinking of money? I meant she was unfortunate to run away to such a life with a half-breed."

"She's gone out into the mountains with her lover. I don't call that unfortunate, and I'll bet you she doesn't. She was brave enough to take her life when it came. She was a gallant girl, that Lucy."

"I suppose that's what you'd think."

And in scorn of more words she gave her attention to her skirt, spreading its sodden folds to the heat. Courant clasped his hands behind his head and gazed ruminantly before him.

"Do you know how she'll live, that 'poor Lucy'?"

"Like a squaw."

He was unshaken by her contempt, did not seem to notice it.

"They'll go by ways that wind deep into the mountains.