The Furnace of Gold. Philip Verrill Mighels
he would burst into flame and consume himself utterly to ashes.
The great canyon yawned prodigiously where its rock gates stood open to grant the party admission to the sanctum of the hills. Sheer granite walls, austere and frowning, rose in sculptured immensity on either side, but the trail under foot was scored between some scattered wild-peach shrubs, interspersed with occasional bright-green clumps of manzanita. The air was redolent of warmth and fragrance that might with fitness have advertised the presence in the hills of some glorified goddess of love—some lofty, invisible goddess, guarded by her mountain snows, yet still too languorous and voluptuous to pass without at least trailing on the summery air the breath that exhaled from her being. It was all a delight, despite vague alarms, and the promise ahead was inviting.
Van continued straight onward, with never so much as a turn of his head, to the horses in the rear. He seemed to have quite forgotten the two half-frightened women in his wake. Beth had ample opportunity for observing again the look of strength and grace upon him. However, she found her attention very much divided between tumultuous joyance in the mountain grandeur, bathed in the marvelously life-exciting air, and concern for the outcome of the day. If a faint suggestion of pique at the manner in which the horseman ignored her presence crept subconsciously into all her meditations, she did not confess it to herself.
Elsa's horrid little habit of accepting anything and everything with the most irresponsible complacency rendered the situation aggravating. It was so utterly impossible to discuss with such a being even such of the morning's developments as the relationship of mistress and maid might otherwise have permitted.
A mile beyond the mouth of the canyon the slight ascent was ended, the chasm widened, rough slopes succeeded the granite walls, and a charming little valley, emerald green and dotted with groups of quaking aspen trees, stretched far towards the wooded mountain barriers, looming hugely ahead. It was like a dainty lake of grass, abundantly supplied with little islands.
The sheer enchantment of it, bathed as it was in sun-gold, and sheltered by prodigious, snow-capped summits, so intensely white against the intensity of azure, aroused some mad new ecstacy in all Beth's being. She could almost have done something wild—she knew not what; and all the alarm subsided from her thoughts. As if in answer to her tumult of joy, Van spurred his pinto to a gallop. Instantly responding to her lift of the reins, Beth's roan went romping easily forward. The bay at the rear, with Elsa, followed rhythmically, pounding out a measure on the turf.
A comparatively short session of this more rapid locomotion sufficed for the transit of the cove—that is, of the wide-open portion. The trail then dived out of sight in a copse where pine trees were neighbors of the aspens. Van disappeared, though hardly more than fifty feet ahead. Through low-hanging boughs, that she needs must push aside, Beth followed blindly, now decidedly piqued by the wholly ungallant indifference to her fate of the horseman leading the way.
She caught but a glimpse of him, now and again, in the density of the growth. How strange it was to be following thus, meekly, helplessly, perforce with some sort of confidence, in the charge of this unknown mountain man, to—whatsoever he might elect! The utterly absurd part of it all was that it was pleasant!
At length they emerged from the shady halls of trees, to find themselves confronted by the wall of mountains. Already Van was riding up the slope, where larger pines, tall thickets of green chincopin, and ledges of rock compelled the trail to many devious windings. Once more the horseman was whistling his Toreador refrain. He did not look back at his charges. That he was watching them both, from the tail of his eye, was a fact that Beth felt—and resented.
The steepness of the trail increased. At times the meager pathway disappeared entirely. It lay upon rocks that gave no sign of the hoofs that had previously rung metallic clinks upon the granite. How the man in the lead discerned it here was a matter Beth could not comprehend. Some half-confessed meed of admiration, already astir in her nature for the horseman and his way, increased as he breasted the ascent. How thoroughly at home—how much a part of it all he appeared, as he rode upon his pony!
Two hours of steady climbing, with her mare oblique beneath her weight, and Beth felt an awe in her being. It was wonderful; it was almost terrible, the fathomless silence, the altitudes, this heretofore unexperienced intimacy with the mountains' very nakedness! It was strange altogether, and impressive, the vast unfolding of the world below, the frequency with which the pathway skirted some dark precipice—and the apparent unconcern of the man ahead, now so absolutely master. And still that soul-inviting exhilaration of the air aroused those ecstacies within her spirit that she had not known were there.
They were nearing the summit of the pass. It was still a thousand feet below the snow. To the left a mighty chasm trenched the adamant, its bottom lowered away to depths of mysterious blue. Its side, above which the three stout ponies picked their way, was a jagged set of terraces, over the brink of which the descents were perpendicular.
Rising as if to bar the way, the crowning terrace apparently ended the trail against all further advance. Here Van finally halted, dismounted, and waited for the advent of his charges.
Beth rode up uncertainly, her brown eyes closely scrutinizing his face. It appeared as if they had come to the end of everything—the place for leaping off into downward space.
"Let me see if the cinches are tight," said the horseman quietly, and he looked to the girth of her saddle.
It was found to be in a satisfactory condition. The girth on the bay he tightened, carelessly pushing Elsa's foot and the stirrup aside for the purpose.
His own horse now showed unmistakable signs of weariness. He had traveled some twenty odd miles to arrive at Dave's before undertaking this present bit of hardship. Since then Van had pushed him to the limit of his strength and speed, in the effort to reach Goldite with the smallest possible delay.
If a sober expression of sympathy came for a second in the horseman's steady eyes, as he glanced where his pony was standing, it quickly gave way to something more inscrutable as he looked up at Beth, in advancing once more to the fore.
"Both of you give them the reins," he instructed quietly. "Just drop them down. Let the bronchos pick the trail." He paused, then added, as if on second thought, "Shut your eyes if you find you're getting dizzy—don't look down."
Beth turned slightly pale, in anticipation of some ordeal, undoubtedly imminent, but the light in her eyes was one of splendid courage. She might feel they were all at the gate of something awful, but her nature rose to meet it. She said nothing; she simply obeyed directions and looked with new emotions on the somewhat drooping mare to whom her own safety was entrusted.
Van was once more in his saddle. He started, and the ponies behind resumed their faithful plodding at his heels.
A few rods ahead they encountered a change, and Beth could scarcely repress a gasp of surprise and apprehension. The trail was laid upon the merest granite shelf, above that terrible chasm. She was terrified, frankly. The man and pony in the lead were cut with startling sharpness against the gray of the rock—the calico coloring, the muscular intensity, the bending of the man to every motion—as they balanced with terrifying slenderness above the pit of death.
For a moment the girl thought nothing of herself and of how she too must pass that awful brink, for all her concern was focused on the man. Then she realized what she must do—was doing—as her roan mare followed on. She was almost upon it herself!
Her hand flew down to the reins to halt the pony, involuntarily. A wild thought of turning and fleeing away from this shelf of destruction launched itself upon her mind. It was folly—a thing impossible. There was nothing to do but go on. Shutting her eyes and holding her breath she felt the mare beneath her tremulously moving forward, smelling out the places of security whereon to rest her weight.
Elsa, sublimely unresponsive, alike to the grandeur or the danger of the place, rode as placidly here as in the valley.
They passed the first of the shelf-like brinks, traversed a safer contour of the wall, and were presently isolated upon the second bridge of granite, which was also the last, much longer than the first,