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Page 26
Or less than an hour. For now again, wandering out far across the open
lands, came the heavy mourning of the bell.
"How far can one hear it?" she asked, surprised that from so far its
ringing came so clearly.
"I don't know how many miles," he answered. "We'll hear it from the
mountain. I should have heard it to-day, long before I met you by the
arroyo, had I not been travelling through two big bands of Engle's
sheep."
Behind them San Juan drawn into the shadows of night but calling to
them in mellow-toned cadences of sorrow, before them the sombre canons
and iron flanks of Mt. Temple, and somewhere, still several hours away,
Brocky Lane lying helpless and perhaps hopeless; grim by day the earth
hereabouts was inscrutable by night, a mighty, primal sphinx,
lip-locked, spirit-crushing. The man and girl riding swiftly side by
side felt in their different ways according to their different
characters and previous experience the mute command laid upon them, and
for the most part their lips were hushed.
There came the first slopes, the talus of strewn, broken,
disintegrating rock, and then the first of the cliffs. Now the sheriff
rode in the fore and Virginia kept her frowning eyes always upon his
form leading the way. They entered the broad mouth of a ravine, found
an uneven trail, were swallowed up by its utter and impenetrable
blackness.
"Give Persis her head," Norton advised her. "She'll find her way and
follow me."
His voice, low-toned as it was, stabbed through the silence, startling
her, coming unexpectedly out of the void which had drawn him and his
horse gradually beyond the quest of her straining eyes. She sighed,
sat back in her saddle, relaxed, and loosened her reins.
For an hour they climbed almost steadily, winding in and out. Now,
high above the bed of the gorge, the darkness had thinned about them;
more than once the girl saw the clear-cut silhouette of man and beast
in front of her or swerving off to right or left. When, after a long
time, he spoke again he was waiting for her to come up with him. He
had dismounted, loosened the cinch of his saddle and tied his horse to
a stunted, twisted tree in a little flat.
"We have to go ahead on foot now," he told her as he put out his hand
to help her down. And then as they stood side by side: "Tired much?"
"No," she answered. "I was just in the mood to ride."
He took down the rope from her saddle strings, tied Persis, and, saying
briefly, "This way," again went on. She kept her place almost at his
heels, now and again accepting the hand he offered as their way grew
steeper underfoot. Half an hour ago she knew that they had swerved off
to the left, away from the deep gorge into whose mouth they had ridden
so far below; now she saw that they were once more drawing close to the
steep-walled ca�on. Its emptiness, black and sinister, lay between
them and a group of bare peaks which stood up like cathedral spires
against the sky.
"This would be simple enough in the daytime," Norton told her during
one of their brief pauses. "In the dark it's another matter. Not
tired out, are you?"
"No," she assured him the second time, although long ago she would have
been glad to throw herself down to rest, were their errand less urgent.
"We've got some pretty steep climbing ahead of us yet," he went on
quietly. "You must be careful not to slip. Oh," and he laughed
carelessly, "you'd stop before you got to the bottom, but then a drop
of even half a dozen feet is no joke here. If you'll pardon me I'll
make sure for you."
With no further apology or explanation he slipped the end of a rope
about her waist, tying it in a hard knot. Until now she had not even
known that he had brought a rope; now she wondered just how hazardous
was the hidden trail which they were travelling; if it were in truth
but the matter of half a dozen feet which she would fall if she
slipped? He made the other end of the short tether fast about his own
body, said "Ready?" and again she followed him closely.
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