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

the grit. He says it's him that made the mistake and it's him that's goin' to get us back on the right road."

"What will he do for water?"

"Take an empty cask behind the saddle and trust to God."

"But there's water in one of our casks yet."

"Yes, he knows it, but he's goin' to leave that for us. And we got to hang on to it, Missy. Do you understand that?"

She nodded, frowning and biting her underlip.

"Are you feelin' bad?" said the old man uneasily.

"Not a bit," she answered. "Don't worry about me."

He laid a hand on her shoulder and looked into her face with eyes that said more than his tongue could.

"You're as good a man as any of us. When we get to California we'll have fun laughing over this."

He gave the shoulder a shake, then drew back and picked up his rifle.

"I'll get you a rabbit for supper if I can," he said with his cackling laugh. "That's about the best I can do."

He left her trailing off into the reddened reaches of the sage, and she went back to the rock, thinking that in some overlooked hollow, water might linger. She passed the mouth of the dead spring, then skirted the spot where David lay, a motionless shape under the canopy of the blanket. A few paces beyond him a buttress extended and, rounding it, she found a triangular opening inclosed on three sides by walls, their summits orange with the last sunlight. There had once been water here for the grasses, and thin-leafed plants grew rank about the rock's base, then outlined in sere decay what had evidently been the path of a streamlet. She knelt among them, thrusting her hands between their rustling stalks, jerking them up and casting them away, the friable soil spattering from their roots.

The heat was torrid, the noon ardors still imprisoned between the slanting walls. Presently she sat back on her heels, and with an earthy hand pushed the moist hair from her forehead. The movement brought her head up, and her wandering eyes, roving in morose inspection, turned to the cleft's opening. Courant was standing there, watching her. His hands hung loose at his sides, his head was drooped forward, his chin lowered toward his throat. The position lent to his gaze a suggestion of animal ruminance and concentration.

"Why don't you get David to do that?" he said slowly.

The air in the little cleft seemed to her suddenly heavy and hard to breathe. She caught it into her lungs with a quick inhalation. Dropping her eyes to the weeds she said sharply, "David's sick. He can't do anything. You know that."

"He that ought to be out in the desert there looking for water's lying asleep under a blanket. That's your man."

He did not move or divert his gaze. There was something singularly sinister in the fixed and gleaming look and the rigidity of his watching face. She plucked at a weed, saw her hand's trembling and to hide it struck her palms together shaking off the dust. The sound filled the silent place. To her ears it was hardly louder than the terrified beating of her heart.

"That's the man you've chosen," he went on. "A feller that gives out when the road's hard, who hasn't enough backbone to stand a few days' heat and thirst. A poor, useless rag."

He spoke in a low voice, very slowly, each word dropping distinct and separate. His lowering expression, his steady gaze, his deliberate speech, spoke of mental forces in abeyance. It was another man, not the Courant she knew.

She tried to quell her tremors by simulating indignation. If her breathing shook her breast into an agitation he could see, the look she kept on him was bold and defiant.

"Don't speak of him that way," she cried scrambling to her feet. "Keep what you think to yourself."

"And what do _you_ think?" he said and moved forward toward her.

She made no answer, and it was very silent in the cleft. As he came nearer the grasses crackling under his soft tread were the only sound. She saw that his face was pale under the tan, the nostrils slightly dilated. Stepping with a careful lightness, his movements suggested a carefully maintained adjustment, a being quivering in a breathless balance. She backed away till she stood pressed against the rock. She felt her thoughts scattering and made an effort to hold them as though grasping at tangible, escaping things.

He stopped close to her, and neither spoke for a moment, eye hard on eye, then hers shifted and dropped.

"You think about him as I do," said the man.

"No," she answered, "no," but her voice showed uncertainty.

"Why don't you tell the truth? Why do you lie?"

"No," this time the word was hardly audible, and she tried to impress it by shaking her head.

He made a step toward her and seized one of her hands. She tried to tear it away and flattened herself against the rock, panting, her face gone white as the alkaline patches of the desert.

"You don't love him. You never did."

She shook her head again, gasping. "Let me out of here. Let go of me."

"You liar," he whispered. "You love me."

She could not answer, her knees shaking, the place blurring on her sight. Through a sick dizziness she saw nothing but his altered face. He reached for the other hand, spread flat against the stone, and as she felt his grasp upon it, her words came in broken pleading:

"Yes, yes, it's true. I do. But I've promised. Let me go."

"Then come to me," he said huskily and tried to wrench her forward into his arms.

She held herself rigid, braced against the wall, and tearing one hand free, raised it, palm out, between his face and hers.

"No, no! My father--I promised him. I can't tell David now. I will later. Don't hold me. Let me go."

The voice of Daddy John came clear from outside. "Missy! Hullo, Missy! Where are you?"

She sent up the old man's name in a quavering cry and the mountain man dropped her arm and stepped back.

She ran past him, and at the mouth of the opening, stopped and leaned on a ledge, getting her breath and trying to control her trembling. Daddy John was coming through the sage, a jack rabbit held up in one hand.

"Here's your supper," he cried jubilant. "Ain't I told you I'd get it?"

She moved forward to meet him, walking slowly. When he saw her face, concern supplanted his triumph.

"We got to get you out of this," he said. "You're as peaked as one of them frontier women in sunbonnets," and he tried to hook a compassionate hand in her arm. But she edged away from him, fearful that he would feel her trembling, and answered:

"It's the heat. It seems to draw the strength all out of me."

"The rabbit'll put some of it back. I'll go and get things started. You sit by David and rest up," and he skurried away to the camp.

She went to David, lying now with opened eyes and hands clasped beneath his head. When her shadow fell across him he turned a brightened face on her.

"I'm better," he said. "If I could get some water I think I'd soon be all right."

She stood looking down on him with a clouded, almost sullen, expression.

"Did you sleep long?" she asked for something to say.

"I don't know how long. A little while ago I woke up and looked for you, but you weren't anywhere round, so I just lay here and looked out across to the mountains and began to think of California. I haven't thought about it for a long while."

She sat down by him and listened as he told her his thoughts. With a renewal of strength the old dreams had come back--the cabin by the river, the garden seeds to be planted, and now added to them was the gold they were to find. She hearkened with unresponsive apathy. The repugnance to this mutually shared future which had once made her recoil from it was a trivial thing to the abhorrence of it that was now hers. Dislikes had become loathings, a girl's whims, a woman's passions. As David babbled on she kept her eyes averted, for she knew that in them her final withdrawal shone coldly. Her thoughts kept reverting to the scene in the cleft, and when she tore them from it and forced them back on him, her conscience awoke and gnawed. She could no more tell this man, returning to life and love of her, than she could kill him as he lay there defenseless and trusting.

At supper they measured out the water, half a cup for each. There still remained a few inches in the cask. This was to be hoarded against the next day. If Courant on his night journey could not strike the upper trail and a spring they would have to retrace their steps, and by this route, with the animals exhausted and their own strength diminished, the first water was a twelve hours' march off. Susan and Courant were silent, avoiding each other's eyes, torpid to the outward observation. But the old man was unusually garrulous, evidently attempting to raise their lowered spirits. He had much to say about California and the gold there, speculated on their chances of fortune, and then carried his speculations on to the joys of wealth and a future in which Susan was to say with the Biblical millionaire, "Now soul take thine ease." She rewarded him with a quick smile, then tipped her cup till the bottom faced the sky, and let the last drop run into her mouth.

The night was falling when Courant rode out. She passed him as he was mounting, the canteen strapped to the back of his saddle. "Good-by, and good luck," she said in a low voice as she brushed by. His "good-by" came back to her instilled with a new meaning. The reserve between them was gone. Separated as the poles, they had suddenly entered within the circle of an intimacy that had snapped round them and shut them in. Her surroundings fell into far perspective, losing their menace. She did not care where she was or how she fared. An indifference to all that had seemed unbearable, uplifted her. It was like an emergence from cramped confines to wide, inspiring spaces. He and she were there--the rest was nothing.

Sitting beside David she could see the rider's figure grow small, as it receded across the plain. The night had come and the great level brooded solemn under the light of the first, serene stars. In the middle of the camp Daddy John's fire flared, the central point of illumination in a ring of fluctuant yellow. Touched and lost by its waverings the old man's figure came