The dogs led the descent; then came Bess leading her burro; then Venters leading his. Bess kept her eyes bent downward. Venters, however, had an irresistible desire to look upward at Balancing Rock. It had always haunted him, and now he wondered if he were really to get through the outlet before the huge stone thundered down. He fancied that would be a miracle. Every few steps he answered to the strange, nervous fear and turned to make sure the rock still stood like a giant statue. And, as he descended, it grew dimmer in his sight. It changed form; it swayed it nodded darkly; and at last, in his heightened fancy, he saw it heave and roll. As in a dream when he felt himself falling yet knew he would never fall, so he saw this long-standing thunderbolt of the little stone-men plunge down to close forever the outlet to Deception Pass.
And while he was giving way to unaccountable dread imaginations the descent was accomplished without mishap.
“I’m glad that’s over,” he said, breathing more freely. “I hope I’m by that hanging rock for good and all. Since almost the moment I first saw it I’ve had an idea that it was waiting for me. Now, when it does fall, if I’m thousands of miles away, I’ll hear it.”
With the first glimpses of the smooth slope leading down to the grotesque cedars and out to the Pass, Venters’s cool nerve returned. One long survey to the left, then one to the right, satisfied his caution. Leading the burros down to the spur of rock, he halted at the steep incline.
“Bess, here’s the bad place, the place I told you about, with the cut steps. You start down, leading your burro. Take your time and hold on to him if you slip. I’ve got a rope on him and a half-hitch on this point of rock, so I can let him down safely. Coming up here was a killing job. But it’ll be easy going down.”
Both burros passed down the difficult stairs cut by the cliff-dwellers, and did it without a misstep. After that the descent down the slope and over the mile of scrawled, ripped, and ridged rock required only careful guidance, and Venters got the burros to level ground in a condition that caused him to congratulate himself.
“Oh, if we only had Wrangle!” exclaimed Venters. “But we’re lucky. That’s the worst of our trail passed. We’ve only men to fear now. If we get up in the sage we can hide and slip along like coyotes.”
They mounted and rode west through the valley and entered the canyon. From time to time Venters walked, leading his burro. When they got by all the canyons and gullies opening into the Pass they went faster and with fewer halts. Venters did not confide in Bess the alarming fact that he had seen horses and smoke less than a mile up one of the intersecting canyons. He did not talk at all. And long after he had passed this canyon and felt secure once more in the certainty that they had been unobserved he never relaxed his watchfulness. But he did not walk any more, and he kept the burros at a steady trot. Night fell before they reached the last water in the Pass and they made camp by starlight. Venters did not want the burros to stray, so he tied them with long halters in the grass near the spring. Bess, tired out and silent, laid her head in a saddle and went to sleep between the two dogs. Venters did not close his eyes. The canyon silence appeared full of the low, continuous hum of insects. He listened until the hum grew into a roar, and then, breaking the spell, once more he heard it low and clear. He watched the stars and the moving shadows, and always his glance returned to the girl’s dimly pale face. And he remembered how white and still it had once looked in the starlight. And again stern thought fought his strange fancies. Would all his labor and his love be for naught? Would he lose her, after all? What did the dark shadow around her portend? Did calamity lurk on that long upland trail through the sage? Why should his heart swell and throb with nameless fear? He listened to the silence and told himself that in the broad light of day he could dispel this leaden-weighted dread.
At the first hint of gray over the eastern rim he awoke Bess, saddled the burros, and began the day’s travel. He wanted to get out of the Pass before there was any chance of riders coming down. They gained the break as the first red rays of the rising sun colored the rim.
For once, so eager was he to get up to level ground, he did not send Ring or Whitie in advance. Encouraging Bess to hurry pulling at his patient, plodding burro, he climbed the soft, steep trail.
Brighter and brighter grew the light. He mounted the last broken edge of rim to have the sun-fired, purple sage-slope burst upon him as a glory. Bess panted up to his side, tugging on the halter of her burro.
“We’re up!” he cried, joyously. “There’s not a dot on the sage. We’re safe. We’ll not be seen! Oh, Bess—”
Ring growled and sniffed the keen air and bristled. Venters clutched at his rifle. Whitie sometimes made a mistake, but Ring never. The dull thud of hoofs almost deprived Venters of power to turn and see from where disaster threatened. He felt his eyes dilate as he stared at Lassiter leading Black Star and Night out of the sage, with Jane Withersteen, in rider’s costume, close beside them.
For an instant Venters felt himself whirl dizzily in the center of vast circles of sage. He recovered partially, enough to see Lassiter standing with a glad smile and Jane riveted in astonishment.
“Why, Bern!” she exclaimed. “How good it is to see you! We’re riding away, you see. The storm burst – and I’m a ruined woman! … I thought you were alone.”
Venters, unable to speak for consternation, and bewildered out of all sense of what he ought or ought not to do, simply stared at Jane.
“Son, where are you bound for?” asked Lassiter.
“Not safe – where I was. I’m – we’re going out of Utah – back East,” he found tongue to say.
“I reckon this meetin’s the luckiest thing that ever happened to you an’ to me – an’ to Jane – an’ to Bess,” said Lassiter, coolly.
“Bess!” cried Jane, with a sudden leap of blood to her pale cheek.
It was entirely beyond Venters to see any luck in that meeting.
Jane Withersteen took one flashing, woman’s glance at Bess’s scarlet face, at her slender, shapely form.
“Venters! is this a girl – a woman?” she questioned, in a voice that stung.
“Yes.”
“Did you have her in that wonderful valley?”
“Yes, but Jane—”
“All the time you were gone?”
“Yes, but I couldn’t tell—”
“Was it for her you asked me to give you supplies? Was it for her that you wanted to make your valley a paradise?”
“Oh – Jane—”
“Answer me.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, you liar!” And with these passionate words Jane Withersteen succumbed to fury. For the second time in her life she fell into the ungovernable rage that had been her father’s weakness. And it was worse than his, for she was a jealous woman – jealous even of her friends. As best he could, he bore the brunt of her anger. It was not only his deceit to her that she visited upon him, but her betrayal by religion, by life itself.
Her passion, like fire at white heat, consumed itself in little time. Her physical strength failed, and still her spirit attempted to go on in magnificent denunciation of those who had wronged her. Like a tree cut deep into its roots, she began to quiver and shake, and her anger weakened into despair. And her ringing voice sank into a broken, husky whisper. Then, spent and pitiable, upheld by Lassiter’s arm, she turned and hid her face in Black Star’s mane.