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red walls, and deep canyons of mysterious source and outlet. Here the valley
floor was level, and here opened a narrow chasm, a ragged vent in yellow walls
of stone. The trail down the five hundred feet of sheer depth always tested
Venters s nerve. It was bad going for even a burro. But Wrangle, as Venters
led him, snorted defiance or disgust rather than fear, and, like a hobbled
horse on the jump, lifted his ponderous iron-shod fore hoofs and crashed down
over the first rough step. Venters warmed to greater admiration of the sorrel;
and, giving him a loose bridle, he stepped down foot by foot. Oftentimes the
stones and shale started by Wrangle buried Venters to his knees; again he was
hard put to it to dodge a rolling boulder, there were times when he could not
see Wrangle for dust, and once he and the horse rode a sliding shelf of
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yellow, weathered cliff. It was a trail on which there could be no stops, and,
therefore, if perilous, it was at least one that did not take long in the
descent.
Venters breathed lighter when that was over, and felt a sudden assurance in
the success of his enterprise. For at first it had been a reckless
determination to achieve something at any cost, and now it resolved itself
into an adventure worthy of all his reason and cunning, and keenness of eye
and ear.
Piñon pines clustered in little clumps along the level floor of the pass.
Twilight had gathered under the walls. Venters rode into the trail and up the
canyon. Gradually the trees and caves and objects low down turned black, and
this blackness moved up the walls till night enfolded the pass, while day
still lingered above. The sky darkened; and stars began to show, at first pale
and then bright. Sharp notches of the rim-wall, biting like teeth into the
blue, were landmarks by which Venters knew where his camping site lay. He had
to feel his way through a thicket of slender oaks to a spring where he watered
Wrangle and drank himself. Here he unsaddled and turned Wrangle loose, having
no fear that the horse would leave the thick, cool grass adjacent to the
spring. Next he satisfied his own hunger, fed Ring and Whitie and, with them
curled beside him, composed himself to await sleep.
There had been a time when night in the high altitude of these Utah uplands
had been satisfying to Venters. But that was before the oppression of enemies
had made the change in his mind. As a rider guarding the herd he had never
thought of the night s wildness and loneliness; as an outcast, now when the
full silence set in, and the deep darkness, and trains of radiant stars shone
cold and calm, he lay with an ache in his heart. For a year he had lived as a
black fox, driven from his kind. He longed for the sound of a voice, the touch
of a hand. In the daytime there was riding from place to place, and the gun
practice to which something drove him, and other tasks that at least
necessitated action, at night, before he won sleep, there was strife in his
soul. He yearned to leave the endless sage slopes, the wilderness of canyons,
and it was in the lonely night that this yearning grew unbearable. It was then
that he reached forth to feel Ring or Whitie, immeasurably grateful for the
love and companionship of two dogs.
On this night the same old loneliness beset Venters, the old habit of sad
thought and burning unquiet had its way. But from it evolved a conviction that
his useless life had undergone a subtle change. He had sensed it first when
Wrangle swung him up to the high saddle, he knew it now when he lay in the
gateway of Deception Pass. He had no thrill of adventure, rather a gloomy
perception of great hazard, perhaps death. He meant to find Oldring s retreat.
The rustlers had fast horses, but none that could catch Wrangle. Venters knew
no rustler could creep upon him at night when Ring and Whitie guarded his
hiding-place. For the rest, he had eyes and ears, and a long rifle and an
unerring aim, which he meant to use. Strangely his foreshadowing of change did
not hold a thought of the killing of Tull. It related only to what was to
happen to him in Deception Pass; and he could no more lift the veil of that
mystery than tell where the trails led to in that unexplored canyon. Moreover,
he did not care. And at length, tired out by stress of thought, he fell
asleep.
When his eyes unclosed, day had come again, and he saw the rim of the
opposite wall tipped with the gold of sunrise. A few moments sufficed for the
morning s simple camp duties. Near at hand he found Wrangle, and to his
surprise the horse came to him. Wrangle was one of the horses that left his
viciousness in the home corral. What he wanted was to be free of mules and
burros and steers, to roll in dust-patches, and then to run down the wide,
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open, windy sage-plains, and at night browse and sleep in the cool wet grass
of a springhole. Jerd knew the sorrel when he said of him,  Wait till he
smells the sage!
Venters saddled and led him out of the oak thicket, and, leaping astride,
rode up the canyon, with Ring and Whitie trotting behind. An old grass-grown
trail followed the course of a shallow wash where flowed a thin stream of
water. The canyon was a hundred rods wide, its yellow walls were
perpendicular; it had abundant sage and a scant growth of oak and piñon. For
five miles it held to a comparatively straight bearing, and then began a
heightening of rugged walls and a deepening of the floor. Beyond this point of
sudden change in the character of the canyon Venters had never explored, and
here was the real door to the intricacies of Deception Pass.
He reined Wrangle to a walk, halted now and then to listen, and then
proceeded cautiously with shifting and alert gaze. The canyon assumed
proportions that dwarfed those of its first ten miles. Venters rode on and on,
not losing in the interest of his wide surroundings any of his caution or keen
search for tracks or sight of living thing. If there ever had been a trail
here, he could not find it. He rode through sage and clumps of piñon trees and
grassy plots where long-petaled purple lilies bloomed. He rode through a dark
constriction of the pass no wider than the lane in the grove at Cottonwoods.
And he came out into a great amphitheater into which jutted huge towering
corners of a confluences of intersecting canyons.
Venters sat his horse, and, with a rider s eye, studied this wild cross-cut
of huge stone gullies. Then he went on, guided by the course of running water.
If it had not been for the main stream of water flowing north he would never
have been able to tell which of those many openings was a continuation of the
pass. In crossing this amphitheater he went by the mouths of five canyons,
fording little streams that flowed into the larger one. Gaining the outlet
which he took to be the pass, he rode on again under over hanging walls. One
side was dark in shade, the other light in sun. This narrow passageway turned
and twisted and opened into a valley that amazed Venters.
Here again was a sweep of purple sage, richer than upon the higher levels.
The valley was miles long, several wide, and inclosed by unscalable walls. But [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]