Lost Pueblo (1992) Page 18

  They promised soberly, and picking up their guns, they led their horses down through the cedars out of sight.

  "Reckon we might as well stay heah fer a day or two, hadn't we?" inquired Bennet of Endicott. "The Indians will look after our horses, an' pack firewood. I can cook."

  "Surely. I want to see this Beckyshibeta. Besides--" replied Endicott, who, happening to glance at Janey, did not complete what had been on his mind to say. Then seeing Randolph returning he advanced to meet him. He certainly got a cold shoulder from that individual. Standing blankly a moment he threw up his hands, then stalked off tragically. Janey had noticed this little by-play. So had Bennet, who was not above chuckling. This and Randolph's reception of her father did much to spur Janey to some semblance of sanity.

  "Wal, lass, it was an awful mess, wasn't it?" said the trader, sympathetically, as he seated himself beside Janey.

  "Mess is the word, Mr. Bennet," replied Janey, finding her voice somewhat strained.

  "Your father had good intentions," went on Bennet. "But jumpin' horn toads! What a damn fool idee! He never told me till it was all done, an' the cowboys on your trail. Shore I could have held them back, or come along. I thought somethin' was kinda queer. Sort of in the air. But, Lord, how could I guess it?"

  "Don't apologize, and please don't be sorry for me," murmured Janey.

  "Aw now--"

  "What this--this mess has done to me I don't realize yet," interrupted Janey. "But today has been terrible... When I--I get my nerve back, I'll be all right... I don't blame Dad. He meant well. He wanted to give me a--a real scare. I'll say he succeeded beyond his wildest hopes... Still, it was my fault, Mr. Bennet. I can't crawl out. I must have driven poor Dad crazy. And that miserable cowboy Ray! I don't know what to say. I--I wanted Phil to kill him. Think of that!"

  "Wal, I'd have shot Ray myself if I hadn't been leary of hittin' Randolph," said Bennet. "Don't you waste too much pity on Ray. He's plain no good. I know a lot of things aboot Ray. He was a good man with hosses an' cattle. An' not a hard drinker. I've gotta say thet fer him. But Ray always was loony aboot girls. He wouldn't up an' marry one. No sir-ee! He always said he didn't want to be hawg-tied... Wal, I reckon he had a genuine case on you."

  "As far as Ray is concerned--and that terrible fight--I am solely to blame," confessed Janey, almost choking. "It makes me deathly sick. Mr. Bennet, I--I made a fool of--"

  "Never mind, lass," interposed the trader, putting a rough kind hand on hers. "I heard what you said to your Dad. You're game, as we say in the West, an' takin' your medicine. You jest didn't savvy cowboys, much less a dangerous hombre like Ray. We're lucky it didn't turn out bad... Randolph shore was chain-lightnin' when he rode up, wasn't he? Wal, I reckon, after all, the most dangerous men are the quiet ones. I'll never get over the surprise he gave me, though... Now, you pull yourself together. Reckon I'd better look up your Dad."

  With that Bennet arose, and giving the Indians some instructions, he strode off in the direction Endicott had taken. Janey felt that she had pulled herself together, in a sense, though she was far too wise to trust herself yet. Still, she had to go about facing things, and she chose the hardest first. She went up to Randolph. He had changed his stained, torn shirt for a clean one, and washed the blood from his cut and bruised face. And he did not appear such an ugly sight as she had anticipated.

  "Phil, it was--fine--wonderful for you to fight that way for me. You--I--I can't fmd words."

  "What I did is nothing compared to the way you stood up before them and lied for me," he said, with deep feeling.

  Janey had forgotten about that. All in a second she felt unaccountably tender and realized she was on most treacherous ground. She had not lied, and she longed to tell him so.

  "Don't look so distressed," he went on. "They all know you lied to save me and they'll think more of you for it."

  "I don't care what they think," returned Janey. "I'm pretty much upset. I just wanted to tell you how I felt--about your fighting for me...and to ask you--please not to quarrel with Dad."

  "Sorry I can't promise. It's certainly coming to that gentleman," said Randolph, grimly.

  Janey was not equal to any more just then; and when she slowly ascended the little rock slope to her retreat she realized how unstrung she was. Once there she lay down on her bed and did not care what happened. She did not quite sleep, but she rested for a couple of hours. Still she did not feel up to the exigencies of this hectic situation. Curiosity, however, was an entering wedge into the chaos of her mind. She sat up and tried to make herself more presentable--thinking, with a wan smile as she saw the havoc in her face, that this was a favorable sign of returning reason.

  The Indians appeared to be busy around the campfire, cleaning the mess left by Black Dick and his partner. Never would she forget them! And pretty soon she would fmd herself in the unique and embarrassing state of inquiring into their wholesome effect upon her. The Durlands were fixing up some kind of a shelter in the cedars, and evidently were quite interested. Janey reflected that an adjustment to their material loss might make considerable difference in their reaction. Randolph and Bennet were nowhere to be seen. But presently Janey saw her father. He had been so near, under the wall in the shade, that she had overlooked him. Hatless, coatless, vestless, collar open at the neck, dejected, he certainly presented a most unusual counterpart of himself. For an instant Janey had a wild start. What if Randolph had chastised him too! But no, that was improbable. Nevertheless something had happened to Mr. Endicott, and seeing him this way revived Janey's spirit. Could she carry on? She would die in the attempt! These two detractors had not been punished enough to satisfy her. Especially Randolph! So after thinking it over for a little longer Janey went down to her father.

  "Well, Dad, you appear to be having a most enjoyable time," she said.

  "Ah!--Hello, Janey. Yes, I'm having a grand time. Ha! Ha!" he replied.

  It was worse than Janey had imagined. She began to soften a little, though she never would let it show.

  "How do you like Beckyshibeta?" she asked.

  "Becky-hell and blazes!"

  "What's happened, Dad?" she went on, quietly.

  "Nothing. I've had the most uncomfortable hour of my life," he rejoined, miserably. She saw that unburdening himself would be well, so she encouraged him.

  "I didn't know that man Randolph at all," he exploded.

  "Neither did I," replied Janey, musingly.

  "Janey, that confounded Westerner came up to me with fire in his eye. And he said: `Damn you, Endicott. I ought to punch you good!' I thought he was going to do it, too. So I made some feeble reply about how sorry I was to place him in such a fix. 'Fix? Hell!' he yelled at me. 'I'm not thinking of myself. It's the fix you've got her in. It's not I who'll have ruined her reputation. It's you! You made a damn fool of me. But you've hurt her. Those Durlands will be nasty. Your own daughter! You made me believe she was wild--going straight to hell!' I yelled back at him that you were. Then he shut me up all right. He shook that big fist under my very nose. He called me a blankety-blank liar!... Then he swore at me. He cussed me. Such profanity I never heard. He must have collected it from every cowboy in the West. He never stopped until he was out of breath. Then he went off somewhere with Bennet."

  "Is that all?" she inquired.

  "All? Good God! What would you want? Have him beat me up like he did that cowboy?"

  "I thought perhaps he might."

  "You'd have been an orphan all right, if he had... Janey, you don't mean you're dead sore at me?"

  "You are an unnatural parent," returned Janey, beginning to revel.

  "Why, I thought I'd been the easiest dad any girl ever had," he protested, not without pain. "Our friends always took me to task for giving you freedom--everything you wanted."

  "Yes. But never the love I was so hungry for," said Janey, cruelly.

  "Janey!" he exclaimed, amazed and shocked. "I always worshiped you--and spoiled you. This miserable trick I played
on you--that's turned out so badly--why it was a proof of--of--"

  "Not of faith, Father," she interrupted, coldly.

  "Faith! Of course it was faith. I swore to myself that our rotten life in the East had not yet ruined you."

  "Please do not argue with me," she returned, sweetly. "The thing's done. You have ruined me, that's certain. And I'll never, never forgive you."

  This so crushed him that she had to leave before she must yield to an irresistible softness. And by way of a counter-irritant she went over to talk to the Durlands. They were cold and reserved at first, but presently her sad face, and the struggle she apparently was making to keep up, quite warmed Mrs. Durland. Her son, however, came around slowly. Finally he broke out in a tirade against Randolph and her father.

  "Yes, I know, Bert, they're all you say and more. But that doesn't help me. I was perfectly innocent. You know what kind of a girl I am."

  "You bet I do. But, Janey, that about coming here willingly? Then you stood up so--so wonderfully and said you loved him!"

  "You ninny. I was trying to save his life," protested Janey.

  "It was great of you, old girl, believe me," replied Bert, fervently. "And I believe you did."

  Janey decided the Durlands would be hard to handle. Under her direct influence they would respond, but once away from it they would be likely to gossip, unless she could make them loyal to her. On the face of it that seemed an impossible task. And she was silly to hope for it, selfish to ask for it. She began to stroll around, hoping to get a peep at Randolph, conscious of a sneaking delight. She saw Bennet returning to camp, but the archaeologist had vanished. Could it be possible that the man was again digging for Beckyshibeta? If so she would have to hand him a laurel wreath. She could not, however, venture to find out, and had to content herself with waiting.

  Out of sight of camp Janey found a lofty perch in the sun and there she succumbed to the glory and dream of this canyon country. There was no sense or use in trying to resist its charm. But it was a way with Janey to try to understand what got the best of her. This place had taken hold of her heart.

  What was the spell of this deep fissure in the rocks? She dreamily attended to her senses. It had such a strange sweet dry fragrance, with sage predominating, but with other perfumes almost as clean and insidious. It was as colorful 'as a rainbow. It changed with the movements of the sun, never very long the same. It had mystic veils of light, rose and pink at dawn, amber and gold at this hour of high noon, and in the afternoon with shadows lengthening, deepening into lilac, purple, black. Then the immensity of the cliffs, the lofty rims, the far higher domes and mesas beyond, the hundreds of inaccessible and fascinating places where only squirrels and birds could rest--these added to the spell. Not a little, too, was the evidence of a wild people once having lived and fought and died here. Perhaps loved! Lastly Janey was discovering the blessedness of solitude, the something leveling in loveliness, the elevating power of the naked sheer walls with their inscrutable meaning.

  All of which led to a consciousness of the thing that had come to her. She called it "thing," when she confessed to her soul that it was new, transforming, exalting love. And she dared not give in to that just yet. When she must, when she could no longer stand the old Janey Endicott, when pride and vanity, and the host of other faults must go by the board, then she would face the truth and its appalling problems. She had a tremendous consciousness that she would engulf all--this marvelous desert, her aging, worrying father, her friends--and Randolph. And it was going to hurt almost mortally.

  Janey returned to camp. Sight of Randolph thrilled yet shocked her. That hour alone in the canyon had transformed him in her mind. And the reality of him was confounding.

  Evidently she had interrupted a conference, or at least an argument. She caught Randolph's slight gesture to enjoin silence.

  "Wal, Randolph," said Bennet. "I reckon Miss Janey needn't be excluded."

  "If I'm intruding," replied Janey, haughtily, turning to go.

  Bennet detained her. "We was jest talkin'," he said, "an' mebbe you might put a word in. Randolph has lost his job. Mr. Elliot, haid of the New York Museum, is now at the post, waitin' for some of his men to come over from New Mexico. 'Pears he's been agin Randolph's explorations out heah. Wants to find Beckyshibeta himself. After Randolph has dug up the desert! Wal, he took this unauthorized trip of Randolph's out heah as an excuse, an' fired him. Your father feels bad aboot bein' to blame, and he offered Randolph substantial means to go on with his explorations on his own hook. Randolph turned it down cold... What do you think aboot it?"

  "I! Oh, I think it very unfortunate and distressing that Phil--Mr. Randolph should be discharged--and disgraced through father's idiotic scheme," replied Janey. "Certainly father could do no less than offer to repair the material loss. And just as certainly Mr. Randolph could not accept it."

  "Why not?" demanded Endicott.

  "Well, Dad, if you're so dense you can't see why--I am not going to enlighten you."

  "Thank you, Miss Endicott," said Randolph. "You understand, at least."

  Endicott might have exploded then, if he had had energy enough left to express himself as he looked. As it was, his first exclamation was unintelligible and scarcely mild. Then he added: "If you temperamental young fools weren't loggerheads I could still save the situation."

  "Yes, you could," declared Randolph, sarcastically. "Endicott, my private opinion is that you might save your face if--"

  "See here, you hot-headed jackanapes!" interrupted Endicott. "You've insulted me enough."

  "I could still add injury to insult," retorted Randolph.

  Here Bennet stepped in and tried his Western common sense and kindliness. Janey had been thinking desperately. What astounded her now was that she simply could not stand Randolph's unhappiness. She, who had wanted to make him writhe and moan and curse himself with remorse!

  "Mr. Randolph, may I have a word with you alone?" she asked, very businesslike. No one could have guessed there was a lump in her throat.

  "Certainly," he said, with freezing politeness, "if you consider it necessary."

  He went aside with her, manifestly with misgivings. Janey heard her father whisper to Bennet, "Now what's she up to? There's no telling about a woman."

  Janey maintained an outward composure. She could rise to the moment and this one was big.

  "Will you make me a promise?" she asked.

  "I couldn't very well be surprised at you. And if you'll pardon my bluntness--no, I won't," he replied.

  Janey was looking with a woman's penetrating intuitive eyes into his face; and what she read there made the ordeal worse, yet gave her a hint of the assurance she needed.

  "Well then, if you make me a promise--will you keep it?" she continued, steadily.

  "Yes. If!"

  "Do you recall the last time I was around where you were digging?"

  "I'm not likely to forget it."

  "I am going to tell you the honest truth."

  "Miss Endicott, are you capable of that?" he asked, acidly.

  "If you were big enough to fight for my honor you can be big enough to give me the benefit of the doubt--when I particularly appeal to you. Will you?"

  That struck him deep. He lost his grim cold look of doubt and became merely wretched.

  "I'm not quite myself. But tell me what you want to."

  "If I reveal something to you will you promise never to tell it to anyone?" she asked, hurriedly and low.

  "I don't see any need of your revealing secrets to me," he replied.

  "Will you promise?" she went on, appealing as well with her eyes.

  "You can trust me," he said, surrendering in spite of himself.

  "Thank you. The secret you have promised to keep is that I have found Beckyshibeta for you," she whispered. "Go at once far beyond that place where I crossed and risked my life--where I taunted you and you told me to go to the devil... Go high up around the great cracked leaning rock. Find a stairway of l
ittle cut steps in the stones. Follow them. They will lead you to Beckyshibeta. Don't doubt. Don't laugh. But go!"

  Janey did not wait to see his incredulity or to hear whatever he might have to say. She hurried away, up to her ledge. When she sank to her knees upon her bed, and looked back, Randolph had disappeared. Soon he would learn that her words had not been idle. The greatest ambition of his life attained! Beckyshibeta! How would he return to her?

  Chapter 12

  Janey had anticipated peace, satisfaction, relief from her whirling thoughts. But she was wrong. Suppose it had not been Beckyshibeta at all? What a horrible mistake! Her eloquence, her exaction of a sacred promise, her cool certainty had convinced Randolph. But she might have been wrong. How could she be sure about cliff dwellings?

  So she was tortured. How to make amends to Randolph if she had blundered! Of course she could give him herself. It did not seem possible that she could rival Beckyshibeta in this mad scientist's valuation; nevertheless she might be some little consolation. That would be what she must do; that was what she had intended for long endless growing hours. Only it would have to be done at once, right there where this catastrophe had happened, instead of waiting until she felt utterly and forever avenged.

  An hour passed, surely an hour Janey would never want to live over. The camp was deserted. She had not heard anyone leave. And presently she felt that she could not lie there any longer, waiting in actionless suspense. She must move around, do something.

  Janey wandered in the opposite direction to the one she was sure the others had taken. She went round under the cliffs farther on that side than she had ever been. But for once the speaking walls had no power of solace. She was not ready to take stock of her own spiritual needs. It was Randolph of whom she was thinking. If she had actually discovered Beckyshibeta she would presently be the most fortunate--the happiest of women. She did not try now to reason out why. It was something she most devoutly believed and prayed for.

  She found a clump of sage and lingered in it, reveling in its fragrance and color. She gathered an armful of the sprigs, meaning to treasure them in a pillow, to have near her a memory-stirring sweetness of the desert. Then she sat down with the sage in her lap, and tried to plan clearly her procedure from this hour. But she could only dream, because everything was uncertain.