Smoke in the Gulch

by Vingie E. Roe

Illustration: AND THEN THE BOY DID A STRANGE THING. HE LEANED FORWARD AND DROPPED HIS FACE INTO HIS HANDS, SITTING SILENT ON THE RIM.

 

SMOKE IN THE GULCH

By Vingie E. Roe
AUTHOR OF “Monsieur of the Rainbow

ILLUSTRATED BY FRANK STREET

PURTYFACE sat on the corral fence. She was slim as a flower stalk, and her dark red hair shone for all the world like a flower itself, save that it was more restless than any flower, flying this way and that when the wind hit it. There was work going on in the corral. Her father and the boys were breaking a new horse, brought in from the hills for the first time, and things were lively. It was a good horse, five years if a day, and it had never felt a rope.

Purtyface saw him, leaning forward from her perch—the deep chest for wind, the legs long and straight above the knee for speed, the high withers and short-coupled back. She nodded sagely, and definitely settled in her own mind that when he was well-broken she would wheedle him from her father. She liked his big soft eyes and the shining dapples on his silver coat. Half closing her eyes, she looked far across the blue gulf of space that hung before the high ranch where she lived, toward Panther Mountain and the hidden length of The Levels. They were sweet with the winds that swept up from the river and the valleys below, green as a shining carpet with short, thick grass—a paradise for deer and bear that came to gather the berries that grew at its edges. It was a paradise to Purtyface, too. Many an hour she had spent in its heavenly solitude, flat on her back in the grass, her horse grazing near, her blue eyes fixed on the skies that were no whit bluer. Here she dreamed those vague, exciting dreams that maidens dream the whole world over, sometimes with her thumb in her mouth, the dimples pricking at its corners. Yes, nodded Purtyface, that was where she'd take him the very first chance she had. He was a gentle-tempered creature and was already quieting under her father's sensible methods.

Illustration: She Was Slim As A Flower Stalk

“Mother” said the girl in the ranch house later, “we're the luckiest folks on earth. I wouldn't live anywhere in this world but here on Granite Ridge. The new girl from outside, at the dance the other night, said we were 'hicks' and didn't know what life was. I laughed in her face and just said 'you poor kid!' She couldn't see—not really see—the light on Rainbow Cliff when the sun goes west, or feel the fingers of the wind, or smell the breath of the pines in the morning. We're lucky folks.”

Mrs. Garrison closed the oven door and looked at her daughter with a soft crinkling around her eyes. “We're lucky folks, dearest,” she said, “because we have love ever-present with us. Love of home, of life, of honest things, and of each other. Without it our hills would bear down upon us—we could not see their beauty, nor endure their snows in winter. Love is the lever that levels all things—it elevates the low and brings down the high.”

Purtyface nodded her red head vigorously. “'Tis so,” she assented with comical sageness, “yes, 'tis so.”

The summer swung on apace. The beautiful grey dapple was becoming very gentle, and no longer tried to kick a saddle into bits. By the middle of July Sam rode him daily and found him perfect—so perfect that Purtyface began her wheedling in earnest, and her father's life was burdened.

“Young woman,” he said testily, “you're the apple of your father's eye, the core of your mother's heart. There's no grey dapple on earth worth risking your neck on. But—the dapple's the finest horse I've ever met. Ain't a mean trick in him, so far as I can see.”

The girl knew her point was won, and in another week was riding the beautiful creature for the first time.

And when the bleeding hearts dripped their crimson blood along the fern-clad slopes, these two made their first long journey—to the hidden sanctuary of The Levels on the hinter side of Panther Peak. The young horse stepped under her gingerly, sometimes with little tremblings, with little starts and blowings. But finally they came out upon The Levels and here Purtyface began to play a game with him—a wild and heady game of letting him run like the wind straight up the sounding stretch! Grey Dapple's eyes got wild with it. His nostrils shook and he thought he was going clean out to the old loose life, but when the thunder of his flying hoofs had risen to a roar, he felt the strain of the bit at his mouth's sensitive corners, heard the voice of his rider. Purtyface turned him, drew him up and sat stroking his sweating neck.

“Fast!” she exulted, “sweet to the rein—and fast.”

She fondled the shining silver mane and presently her gaze wandered down the great slant of the Panther's sides where the conifers marched in their serried ranks. Up in the soft blue haze that forever drifts in mountain country, a spiral of smoke was winding. Purtyface looked long at it, wondering. There was not a habitation this side the Rocky Roughs, and no one hunted here. Who could be making smoke on the skirts of Panther Mountain? As she watched it, a strange feeling grew in her heart.

It was three days later that she found who made the smoke. Coming up along the slope she caught a glimpse of something moving between the madrone trees, and when she rounded a clump of azalea a man stood there. He was a young man, very young, scarce older than herself, and the girl drew up to look at him in wonder. Never had she seen one like him. His whole being bore the mark of another world, or so it seemed to Purtyface. He looked toward the girl with sombre dark eyes in a face of strange paleness, and Purtyface felt as if she had looked inadvertently into the secret chambers of a soul.

“Hello, mister,” she said, “did I give you a scare?”

Instantly the boy turned and bowed. “Not exactly,” he replied, and Purtyface thought she had never heard so pleasing a voice, “but I wasn't looking for visitors today.”

“And you're not getting them,” she flashed. “I'm at home. This is my Daddy's range.”

“Forgive me,” he said. “Then I'm the visitor—or would you say trespasser?”

“I'd say you're welcome,” said the girl swiftly.

“And I'm happy to be welcomed.”

“Camping?” asked Purtyface.

“Yes. Sort of. Haven't been so very well—doctors and all that. Nerves, I guess.”

Purtyface nodded sagely. “You do look sort—sort of—peaked,” she said, examining him with sympathetic interest. “Aren't you lonesome? Would you like to come along to The Levels and watch Grey Dapple run? He's the prettiest thing in flight! Would you like?” she urged.

“Like?” cried the stranger, “I'd love! This—this camping for the nerves is—isn't what it's cracked up to be.”

“How long you been here?” the girl wanted to know.

“Three months. Here—and other places. But let's go.”

So they climbed the steep side of Panther Mountain and Purtyface trotted Grey Dapple to the far end of The Levels while the boy stood at the rim. He watched while Grey Dapple whirled and went down the sounding stretch like all-possessed. When they came back the girl's blue eyes were alight.

“You ride him,” Purtyface offered and swung from the saddle.

Eagerly the boy went up, turned, trotted to start and came back on the run.

Purtyface clapped her hands as they went by. “You know how to ride!” she told him happily when they returned.

As if by common consent they tied Grey Dapple to a sapling pine, and finding the steepest part of the cliff that rimmed The Levels east, sat down together.

Purtyface told him of her hills and valleys, her own wild land, of her mother and her father—all of her innocent life, and then waited for a like in return. It came after a long interval when the boy looked out across the space with frowning eyes—a tale of life in an Eastern city, of indulgent and loving parents, of college and rowing on the crew. And the sun went grandly over toward the west, while the shadow of old Panther Peak walked up the farther slope. Finally the girl leaped up with a word of astonishment.

“My stars!” she cried contritely, “my mother will be watching the trail! I must be going.”

“Do you come here much?” the boy asked, watching her earnestly. “I hope you will—it's so darned lonesome.”

Purtyface nodded eagerly. “Sure I do,” she said, “this is my own private place of happiness. I'll come again.”

“And—Miss Garrison, if it wouldn't be distasteful—will you mind not mentioning that you found me here? Nerves, you know—I need solitude—and rest.”

There was concern in the girl's eyes. “Of course I won't. Do you think I'd better come—myself?”

“Oh, you—why you rest me!” he cried. “I haven't felt so well in—in months!”

So Purtyface and Grey Dapple went swiftly down into the shadows, and at the first turn of the dim trail the girl stood in her stirrups to wave a hand high in farewell, and the boy waved back.

For three whole days she did not ride. Then she went again to Panther Peak—and the boy was waiting at The Levels' edge.

“I didn't know the hills could be so lonesome!” he said. “I've watched the trail every afternoon!”

They played like children, taking turns riding Grey Dapple up the stretch, and when they tired of that they left him there tied to the sapling, and climbed together high on the peak of Panther. They sat upon a great rock and talked and the enchanted hours passed in majesty.

From that day forth the girl became insatiate of the hills and the horse. She rode more and more, and no matter which way she started out, she always came to the skirts of Panther Peak, to the boy who waited there. There was a trembling in her now, a blurring of her vision when first she caught sight of him. When he touched her hand the heart in her leaped and paused. And the day they stood beside the spring in Two Point Gulch and he had put a hesitant arm around her shoulders, Purtyface had felt as if she could not breathe for the choking in her throat. She had thought about it every day, every night, since, with wonder.

And then, sitting together in their accustomed place at The Levels' rim one day, he took her hand and kissed it. The hungry arm went round her shoulders and the two young heads bent close, the red one and the black, shining in the lonely sun.

And then the boy did a strange thing. He leaned forward and dropped his face in his hands, sitting silent on the rim. He rose abruptly, holding down his hands to lift Purtyface to her feet. He kissed her for the first time, hurriedly, and untied Grey Dapple.

“Forgive me,” he said in an odd, choked voice, “nerves, I guess—and you know I'm lonely.”

The girl whirled away down the dropping flank of Panther, half dazed.

They met next with abashed eyes, but the boy this time took her into his arms, and the girl slipped shy arms about his neck, Purtyface tried to speak something of the abundant joy that filled her.

“Happiness,” she said dreamily, “is a forerunner of the life eternal, my mother says.”

The boy sat very still. He did not reply and she went haltingly on. “You—you have made me see through the Pearly Gates right into Glory Land.”

He made a small despairing gesture. “Please don't speak,” he said, “of—things like that!”

“Happiness? Not happiness?”

“No—that—other.”

“Heaven? Why, it is the end of all good! Why not?”

“Because,” he said thickly, “so darned few will reach it!”

But Purtyface laughed and ran soft fingers through his thick, dark hair.

It seemed somehow after that talk as if something went from the joyous meetings, as if a shadow drifted across the serene heavens. The dark face of the boy became sombre; there was a frown between his brows. But always he was gentleness itself to Purtyface.

“Love,” Purtyface once said profoundly, “is the lever that levels all things. My mother says it brings down the high and lifts up the low. Love of home—and life—and all honest things—”

The boy got up abruptly, walking swiftly out upon The Levels. Then he came back and snatched her to her feet that he might enfold her close. When he raised his head and looked at her there was in his eyes such a deadly sickness that she was terrified.

“What have I said?” she cried. “Oh, Dearest! What have I done to hurt you?”

“Nothing,” he said thickly. “Go home, sweetheart—and—and maybe you'd best not come again.”

“Not come!” cried Purtyface, “not come? Why, I must come forever! I love you. Don't—you—love me—too?”

“Only you—darling,” he whispered and hid his eyes against her throat.

“Then what is there left to say?” she asked sweetly. “We'll be married and live forever in the same house—always against each other's heart.”

It sounded like, and was, a holy covenant, profoundly attested to and witnessed by the eternal forests, the drifting clouds, the silent sun. But presently the girl discovered tears scorching hot against her cheek, and when she pushed his face from her to gaze upon it in amazement, she found it drawn and working.

“I want you,” he said, fumbling in a pocket of his worn clothes, “to take this home and read it—tonight, after dark, somewhere by yourself. Then burn it, and always know,” he finished, swallowing, “that I'll love you to my dying day.”

It was a bit of paper, folded, which he gave to her, and Purtyface held it tightly in her hand all the way down the long trail home. She was late that day and darkness was already falling when she reached her father's house, and she had to wait for lamplight in her own attic room to see what it contained. On the top of the ancient bureau she spread it out—a crumpled clipping from a West Coast paper—and this is what she saw—the face of the boy, lowering, desperate, fear-filled and bewildered, above the caption “ESCAPED CONVICT.” This, Purtyface saw before the raftered room went round and round and blackness descended upon her. A long time afterward she knew that she was sitting on the floor, rocking gently, staring in a strange, cold daze at the leg of her old-fashioned bed with its turned rings.

It was two by the stars when Grey Dapple, snorting softly, stood on the edge of The Levels. Over his shoulder Purtyface leaned, searching the gulch below for a remembered spot. A half hour later she saw the red eye of fire, and when she came to it the boy was standing back by the great bole of a pine tree, and his right hand held an automatic. He had heard the horse's coming far in the still dark.

White faced, trembling, these two looked at each other. Then Purtyface slid down and dropped her rein across a manzanita bush.

“Did you—read that—all of it?” he said thickly.

She nodded.

“Ten years—out of my life! At eighteen! But I was guilty, Purtyface! I—held the horses for Red and Powder Kid while they stuck up the bank. I was to have had my share—a third. I was a robber, too! Three years in stir—and the chance to go—I got away with two others—it's been four months now.... Can you forgive me?”

“No,” she said sweetly, “I can't forgive you because I have nothing to forgive. You only committed that sin against the law and the land you live in, against yourself—not me. I've been thinking hard all night and here is what I think. My mother says that love brings all things level—makes the high low and the low high. Always there has been love on my mother's blood—the family I mean. Always these women have loved early, and one man forever. No woman of my mother's kin has loved two men. It's in the blood to love one man forever. I love you,” said Purtyface simply.

The boy wet his lips. “No,” he said bitterly, “it's not possible. I'm an outcast—will always be—unfit—unclean.”

“Clean or unclean,” said Purtyface, “you're mine. Are you not mine?”

“Yours?” he said desperately, “how far beyond all limits! Signed, sealed, delivered—living or dead—yours.”

“Then,” she said profoundly, “nothing else matters. Now listen. Here's Grey Dapple—fresh and fast. You can make the Border in two weeks' riding. When you are safe I'll come to you and we'll be married. We'll start a new life, right—to make up for the old one. That's one way. Or you can go down tomorrow to the railroad and—go back to prison to serve out the other seven years. I'll be waiting when you come out—free. I will only love one man.”

She stopped and the two poor young faces, drawn and desperate, searched each other. Then the boy slid down along the friendly pine tree, laid his arm against it, laid his forehead on the arm and wept. “A crook—a convict—and you'd make a man of me!” he sobbed.

“No crook,” said Purtyface, courageously, “a human who has blundered. Every day is a new day. Any one who falls has a right to get up, my mother says. I love you .... which do you choose?”

The boy sprang up and caught her to him in a grip that stopped her breath.

“Choose?” he cried through set teeth, “choose? What would any one with a spark of manhood in him choose? I'm going back to stir! I'll come out free and worthy—so help me God! When can I start?”

“Now,” said Purtyface, “we'll go straight to my mother and tell her—she'll understand—and my father will drive us down to the railroad. They'll help us—for my mother knows her blood—and love. Kiss me now,” said Purtyface wistfully, “it will be so long—between.”