The Project Gutenberg eBook, Nameless River, by Vingie E. (Vingie Eve) Roe This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: Nameless River Author: Vingie E. (Vingie Eve) Roe Release Date: September 9, 2020 [eBook #63164] Most recently updated November 2, 2020 Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NAMELESS RIVER*** E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/namelessriver00roev NAMELESS RIVER BY VINGIE E. ROE Author of “Tharon of Lost Valley,” “Val of Paradise,” etc. NEW YORK DUFFIELD AND COMPANY 1923 Copyright, 1923, by THE McCALL COMPANY Copyright, 1923, by DUFFIELD & COMPANY Printed in U. S. A. CONTENTS I. “Fight for a Woman? Hell! If ’twas th’ Horse, Now—” II. The Homestead on Nameless III. The Iron Hand of Sky Line IV. The Mystery of Blue Stone Cañon V. What Nance Found VI. Shadows in the Sheriff’s Glass VII. The Shadows Thicken VIII. Brand Fair IX. Golden Magic X. The Seventh Sense XI. The Ashes of Hope XII. “Get-out-of-that-Door!” XIII. “We’re Our Pappy’s Own—and we Belong on Nameless.” XIV. Light on the Sheriff’s Shadows XV. The Flange in Rainbow Cliff XVI. The Ancient Miracle XVII. The Face in the Package XVIII. The Fighting Line at Last XIX. Riders of Portent XX. Conclusion NAMELESS RIVER CHAPTER I “FIGHT FOR A WOMAN? HELL! IF ’TWAS TH’ HORSE NOW—” It was Springtime in the Deep Heart country. On the broad slopes, the towering slants of the hills themselves, the conifers sang their everlasting monotone, tuned by the little winds from the south. On the flaring fringes of their sweeping skirts where the streams ran, maples trembled in the airy sun and cottonwoods shook their thousand palms of silver. Great cañons cut the ridges, dark and mysterious, murmuring with snow water, painted fantastically in the reds and browns and yellows of their weathered stone. Pine trees grew here, and piñons, hemlock and spruce, all the dark and sombre people of the forest, majestic and aloof. But in the sweet valleys that ran like playful fingers all ways among the hills, where lay tender grass of a laughing brightness, flowers nodded thick in the drowsy meadows. It was a lonesome land, set far from civilization, but beautiful withal, serene, silent, wild with crag and peak and precipice. Deer browsed in its sheltered places, a few timber wolves preyed on them, while here and there a panther screamed to the stars at night. For many years a pair of golden eagles had reared their young on the beetling escarpment that crowned Mystery Ridge. It was a rich land, too, for many cattle ran on its timbered slants and grew sleek and fat for fall along the reaches of the river. On a day when all the world seemed basking in the tempered sun, a horse and rider came down along the slopes heading toward the west. On the broad background of this primeval setting they made a striking picture, one to arrest the eye, for both were remarkable. Of the two, perhaps the horse would first have caught the attention of an observer, owing to its great stature and its shining mouse-blue coat. Far off, also, the prideful grace of its carriage, the lightness, the arrogance of its step, would have been noticeable. But as they drew near, one looked instinctively to see what manner of rider bestrode so splendid a fellow, and was not disappointed —for the rider was a woman. She was a gallant woman, if one could so describe her, not large but built with such nicety of line, of proportion, as best to show off the spirit in her—and that was a thing which might not be described. Under her sombrero, worn low on her brow and level, one got the seeming of darkness shot with fire—the black eyes and bit of dusky hair above cheeks brightly flushed. She rode at ease, her gauntleted hands clasped on her pommel, her reins swinging. A blue flannel shirt, gay with pearl buttons, lay open at the throat and bloused a trifle above a broad leather belt, well worn and studded with nickel spots. A divided skirt of dark leather, precisely fitted and deeply fringed at the bottom, concealed the tops of high laced boots. All her clothing betokened especial make, and very thorough wear. As the blue horse sidled expertly down the slope a loose stone turned under his shod hoof, causing him to stumble ever so slightly, though he caught himself instantly. As instantly the woman’s spurred heel struck his flank, her swift tightening of the rein anticipated his resultant start. “Pick up your feet, you!” she said sharply, frowning. The stallion did pick up his feet, for he was intelligent, but he shook his proud head, laid his ears back on his neck, and the sweat started on his sensitive skin at the needless rake of the spur. The great dark eyes in his grey-blue face shone for a time like fox-fire in the dark, twin sparks beneath the light of his tossing silver forelock. He choose his footing more carefully, though he was an artist in hill climbing at all times, for the woman on his back was a hard task-master. Caught as a colt in the high meadows of the Upper Country beyond the Deep Heart hills, the horse had served her faithfully for four of his seven years of life, and hated her sullenly. There was mixed blood in his veins—wild, from the slim white mother who had never felt a rope, patrician, gentle, tractable, from the thoroughbred black father lost from a horse-trader’s string eleven years back and sought for many bootless moons because of his great value. Swayed by the instincts of these two strains the superb animal obeyed this woman who was unquestionably his master, though rebellion surged in him at every chastisement. The sun was at the zenith, marking the time of short shadows, and its light fell in pale golden washes over the tapestried green slopes. Tall flowers nodded on slim stalks in nook and crevasse—frail columbine and flaming bleeding hearts—and mosses crept in the damp places. For an hour the two came down along the breast of a ridge, dropping slowly in a long diagonal, and presently came out on a bold shoulder that jutted from the parent spine. Here, with the thinning trees falling abruptly away, a magnificent view spread out below. For a long time there had been in the rider’s ears a low and heavy murmur, a ceaseless sound of power. Now its source was visible—the river that wound between wide meadows spread like flaring flounces on either side—broad, level, green stretches that looked rich as a king’s lands, and were. The woman reined up her horse and sitting sidewise looked down with moody eyes. A frown drew close the dark brows under the hat brim, the full sensuous lips hardened into a tight line. Hatred flamed in her passionate face, for the smiling valley was tenanted. At the far edge of the green floor across the river there nestled against the hills that rose abruptly the small log buildings of a homestead. There was a cabin, squarely built and neat, a stable, a shed or two, and stout corrals, built after the fashion of a stockade, their close-set upright saplings gleaming faintly in the light. And on the green carpet a long brown line lay stretched from end to end, straight as a plumb-line, attesting to the accuracy of the eye that drew it. A team of big bay horses even now plodded along that line, leaving behind them a tiny addition in the form of a flange of new turned earth, the resistless effect of the conquering plow. The plow, hated of all those who follow the fringe of the wilderness, savage, trapper, and cattleman. In the furrow behind walked the owner of the accurate eyes—deep, wide, blue eyes they were, set beautifully apart under calm brows of a golden bronze which matched exactly the thick lashes and the heavy rope of hair braided and pinned around the head hidden in an old-fashioned sunbonnet—for this only other figure in the primeval picture was a woman also. She was young by the grace of the upright carriage, strong by the way she handled her plow, confident in every movement, every action. She stood almost as tall as the average man, and she walked with the free swing of one. For a long time the rider on the high shoulder of the ridge sat regarding these tiny plodders in the valley. Then she deliberately took from its straps the rifle that hung on her saddle, lifted it to her shoulder, took slow aim and fired. It was a high-power gun, capable of carrying much farther than this point of aim, and its bullet spat whiningly into the earth so near the moving team that one of the horses jumped and squatted. The woman lowered the gun and watched. But the upright figure plodding in its furrow never so much as turned its head. It merely pulled the lines buckled about its waist, thereby steadying the frightened horse back to its business, and crept ahead at its plowing. “Damn!” said the woman. She laid the rifle across her pommel, reined the blue stallion sharply away and went on her interrupted journey. Two hours later she rode into the shady, crooked lane that passed for a street in Cordova. Composed of a general store, a blacksmith-shop, a few ancient cabins, the isolated trading point called itself a town. McKane of the store did four-ply business and fancied himself exceedingly. As the woman came cantering down the street between the cabins he ceased whittling on the splinter in his hands and watched her. She was well worth watching, too, for she was straight as an Indian and she rode like one. Of the half-dozen men lounging on the store porch in the drowsy afternoon, not one but gazed at her with covetous eyes. A light grew up in McKane’s keen face, a satisfaction, an appreciation, a recognition of excellence. “By George!” he said softly. “Boys, I don’t know which is the most worth while—the half-breed Bluefire or Kate Cathrew on his back!” “I’ll take the woman,” said a lean youth in worn leather, his starved young face attesting to the womanless wilderness of the Upper County from whence he hailed. “Yea, Lord—I’ll take the woman.” “You mean you would,” said McKane, smiling, “if you could. Many a man has tried it, but Kate rides alone. Yes, and rules her kingdom with an iron hand—that’s wrong—it’s steel, and Toledo steel at that, tempered fine. And merciless.” “You seem to know th’ lady pretty well.” “All Nameless River knows her,” said the trader, lowering his voice as she drew near, “and the Deep Hearts, too, as far as cattle run.” “Take an’ keep yer woman—if ye can—” put in a bearded man of fifty who sat against a post, this booted feet stretched along the floor, “but give me th’ horse. I’ve loved him ever sence I first laid eyes on him two years back. “He’s more than a horse—he’s got brains behind them speakin’ eyes, soft an’ black when he’s peaceful, but burnin’ like coals when he’s mad. I’ve seen him mad, an’ itched to own him then. Kate’s a brute to him—don’t understand him, an’ don’t want to.” McKane dropped his chair forward and rose quickly to his feet as the woman cantered up. “Hello, Kate,” he said, as she sat a moment regarding the group, “how’s the world at Sky Line Ranch?” “All there,” she said shortly, “or was when I left.” She swung out of her saddle and flung her reins to the ground. She pulled off her gloves and pushed the hat back from her forehead, which showed sweated white above the tan of her face. She passed into the store with McKane, the spurs rattling on her booted heels. Left alone the big, blue stallion turned his alert head and looked at the men on the porch, drawing a deep breath and rolling the wheel in his half-breed bit. It was as the bearded man had said—intelligence in a marked degree looked out of the starry eyes in the blue face. That individual reached out a covetous hand, but the horse did not move. He knew his business too well as Kate Cathrew’s servant. Inside the store the woman took two letters which McKane gave her from the dingy pigeonholes that did duty as post office, read them, frowned and put them in the pocket of her leather riding skirt. Then she selected a few things from the shelves which she stowed in a flour-sack and was ready to go. McKane followed her close, his eyes searching her face with ill-concealed desire. She did not notice the men on the porch, who regarded her frankly, but passed out among them as though they were not there. It was this cool insolence which cleared the path before her wherever she appeared, as if all observers, feeling the inferiority her disdain implied, acknowledged it. But as she descended the five or six steps that led down from the porch, she came face to face with a newcomer, one who neither gaped nor shifted back, but looked her square in the face. This was a man of some thirty-four or five, big, brawny, lean and fit, of a rather homely countenance lighted by grey eyes that read his kind like print. He looked like a cattleman save for one thing—the silver star pinned to the left breast of his flannel shirt, for this was Sheriff Price Selwood. “Good day, Kate,” he said. A red flush rose in the woman’s face, but it was not set there by any liking for the speaker who accosted her, that was plain. “It’s never a good day when I meet you,” she said evenly, “it’s a bad one.” The Sheriff smiled. “That’s good,” he answered, “but some day I’ll make it better.” McKane, his own face flushed with sudden anger, stepped close. “Price,” he said thinly, “you and I’ve been pretty fair friends, but when you talk to Miss Cathrew like that, you’ve got me to settle with. That sounded like a threat.” “Did it?” said Selwood. “It was.” The trader was as good as his word. With the last syllable his fist shot out and took the speaker in the jaw, a clean stroke, timed a half-second sooner than the other had expected, though he had expected it. It snapped his head back on his shoulders, but did not make him stagger, and the next moment he had met McKane half-way with all the force of his two hundred pounds of bone and muscle. In the midst of the whirlwind fight that followed, Kate Cathrew, having pulled on her gloves and coolly tied her sack in place on her saddle, mounted Bluefire and rode away without a backward look. Twenty minutes later the Sheriff picked up the trader and rolled him up on the porch. He stood panting himself, one hand on the worn planking, the other wiping the blood and dirt from his face. “Get some water, boys,” he said quietly, “and when he comes around tell him I’ll be back tomorrow for my coffee and tobacco—five pounds of each—and anything more he wants to give me.” He picked up his wide hat, brushed it with his torn sleeve, set it back on his head precisely, walked to his own horse, which was tied some distance away, mounted and rode south toward the more open country where his own ranch lay. “I’m damned!” said the bearded man softly, “it didn’t take her long to stir up somethin’ on a peaceful day! If it’d been over Bluefire, now—there’s somethin’ to fight for—but a woman; Hell!” “But—Glory—Glory!” whispered the lean boy who had watched Kate hungrily, “ain’t she worth it! Oh, just ain’t she! Wisht I was McKane this minute!” “Druther be th’ Sheriff,” said the other enigmatically. CHAPTER II THE HOMESTEAD ON NAMELESS When the sun dropped over the western ridge, the girl in the deep sunbonnet unhitched her horses from the plow. She looped her lines on the hames, rubbed each sweated bay head a moment, carefully cleaned her share with a small wooden paddle which she took from a pocket in her calico skirt, and tipped the implement over, share-face down. Then she untied the slatted bonnet and took it off, carrying it in her hand as she swung away with her team at her heels, and the change was marvelous. Where had been a somewhat masculine figure, plodding at man’s work a few moments before, was now a young goddess striding the virgin earth. The rose glow of coming twilight in the mountains bathed the stern slants with magic, fell on her bronze head like ethereal dust of gems. All in a moment she had become beautiful. The golden shade of her smooth skin was put a tint above that of her hair and brows and lashes, a blend to delight an artist, so rare was it—though her mother said they were “all off the same piece.” There was red in her makeup, too, faint, thinned, beneath the light tan of her cheeks, flaming forth brightly in the even line of her full lips. Out of this flare of noon-day color her blue eyes shone like calm waters under summer skies. Some of the men of the country had seen John Allison’s daughter, but not one of them would have told you she was handsome—for not one of them had seen her without the disfiguring shelter of the bonnet. She went with the weary horses to the edge of the river, flat here in the broad meadows, and stood between them as they drank. She raised her head and looked across the swift water-stream to the high shoulder of the distant ridge, but there was no fear in the calm depths of her eyes. She stood so, quiet, tired, at ease, until the horses had drunk their fill and with windy breaths of satisfaction were ready to go on across the flat to the stable and corral. Here she left them in the hands of a boy of seventeen, very much after her own type, but who walked with a hopeless halt, and went on to the cabin. “Hello, Mammy,” she said, smiling—and if she had been beautiful before she was exquisite when she smiled, for the red lips curled up at the corners and the blue eyes narrowed to drowsy slits of sweetness. But there was no answering smile on the gaunt face of the big woman who met her at the door with work-hardened hands laid anxiously on her young shoulders. “Nance, girl,” she said straightly, “I heard a shot this afternoon—I reckon it whistled some out there in th’ field?” “It did,” said Nance honestly, “so close it made Dan squat.” In spite of her courage the woman paled a bit. “My Lord A’mighty!” she said distressedly, “I do wish your Pappy had stayed in Missouri! I make no doubt he’d been livin’ today—and I’d not be eating my heart out with longin’ for him, sorrow over Bud, an’ fear for you every time you’re out of my sight. And th’ land ain’t worth it.” But Nance Allison laid her hand over her mother’s and turned in the doorway to look once again at the red and purple veils of dusk-haze falling down the mountain’s face, to listen to the song of Nameless River, hurrying down from the mysterious cañons of the Deep Heart hills, and a sort of adoring awe irradiated her features. “Worth it?” she repeated slowly. “No—not Papp’s death—not Bud’s lameness—but worth every lick of work I ever can do, worth every glorious hour I spend on it, worth every bluff I call, every sneak-thief enemy I defy—and some day it will be worth a mint of gold when the cattle grow to herds. And in the meantime it’s—why, Mammy, it’s the anteroom of Heaven, the fringes of paradise, right here in Nameless Valley.” The mother sighed. “You love it a lot, don’t you?” she asked plaintively. “I think it’s more than love,” said the big girl slowly as she rolled her faded sleeves higher along her golden arms preparatory to washing at the well in the yard, “I think it’s principle—a proving of myself—I think it’s a front line in the battle of life—and I believe I’m a mighty fighter.” “I know you are,” said the woman with conviction, faintly tinged with pride, “but—there’ll be few cattle left for herds if things go on the way they have gone. Perhaps there’ll be neither herds nor herders——” But her daughter interrupted. “There’ll be a fight, at any rate,” she said as she plunged her face, man fashion, into the basin filled with water from the bucket which she had lifted, hand over hand—“there’ll be a fight to the finish when I start—and some day I’m afraid I’ll start.” She looked at her mother with a shade of trouble on her frank face. “For two years,” she added, “I’ve been turning the other cheek to my enemies. I haven’t passed that stage, yet. I’m still patient—but I feel stirrings.” “God forbid!” said the older woman solemnly, “it sounds like feud!” “Will be,” returned the girl shortly, “though I pray against it night and day.” The boy Bud came up from the stable along the path, and Nance stood watching him. There was but one thing in Nameless Valley that could harden her sweet mouth, could break up the habitual calm of her eyes. This was her brother, Bud. When she regarded him, as she did now, there was always a flash of flame in her face, a wimple of anguish passing on her features, an explosion, as it were, of some deep and surging passion, covered in; hidden, like molten lava in some half-dead crater, its dull surface cracking here and there with seams of awful light which drew together swiftly. Now for the moment the little play went on in her face. Then she smiled, for he was near. “Hello, Kid,” she said, “how’s all?” The boy smiled back and he was like her as two peas are like each other—the same golden skin, the same mouth, the same blue eyes crinkling at the corners. But there the likeness ended, for where Nance was a delight to the eye in her physical perfection, the boy hung lopsided, his left shoulder drooping, his left leg grotesquely bandied. But the joy of life was in him as it was in Nance, despite his misfortune. “Whew!” he said, “it’s gettin’ warm a-ready. Pretty near melted working in th’ garden today. Got three beds ready. Earth works up fine as sand.” “So it does in the field,” said Nance as she followed the mother into the cabin, “it’s like mould and ashes and all the good things of the land worked in together. It smells as fresh as they say the sea winds smell. Each time I work it, it seems wilder and sweeter—old lady earth sending out her alluring promise.” “Land sakes, girl,” said Mrs. Allison, “where do you get such fancies!” “Where do you suppose?” said Nance, “out of the earth herself. She tells me a-many things here on Nameless—such as the value of patience, an’ how to be strong in adversity. I’ve never had the schools, not since those long-back days in Missouri, but I’ve got my Bible and I’ve got the land. And I’ve got the sky and the hills and the river, too. If a body can’t learn from them he’s poor stuff inside. Mighty poor.” She tidied her hair before the tiny mirror that hung on the kitchen wall, a small matter of passing her hands over the shining mass, for the braids were smooth, almost as they had been when she pinned them there before sun-up, and rolling down her sleeves, sat down to the table where a simple meal was steaming. She bowed her head and Mrs. Allison, her lean face gaunt with shadows of fear and apprehension, folded her hard hands and asked the customary blessing of that humble house. Humble it was in every particular—of its scant furnishings, of its bare cleanliness which was its only adornment, of the plain food on the scoured, clothless table. These folk who lived in it were humble, too, if one judged only by their toil-scarred hands, their weary faces. But under the plain exterior there was something which set them apart, which defied the stamp of commonplace, which bid for the extraordinary. This was the dominant presence of purpose in the two younger faces, the spirit of patient courage which shone naked from the two pairs of blue eyes. The mother had less of it. She was like a war-mother of old—waiting always with a set mouth and eyes scanning the distances for tragedy. That living spirit of stubborn courage had come out of the heart and soul of John Allison, latter day pioneer, who for two years had slept in a low, neat bed at the mountain’s foot beyond the cabin, his end one of the mysteries of the wild land he had loved. His wife had never ceased to fret for its unravelling, to know the how and wherefore of his fall down Rainbow Cliff —he, the mountaineer, the sure, the unchancing. His daughter and son had accepted it, laid it aside for the future to deal with, and taken up the work which he had dropped—the plow, the rope and the cattle brand. It was heavy work for young hands, young brains. The great meadow on the other side of Nameless was rich in wild grass, a priceless possession. For five years it had produced abundant stacks to feed the cattle over, and the cutting and stacking was work that taxed the two to the very limit of endurance. And the corn-land at the west—that, too, took labor fit for man’s muscles. But there were the hogs that ran wild and made such quick fattening on the golden grain in the early fall. It was the hogs that paid most of the year’s debt at the trading store, providing the bare necessities of life, and Nance could not give up that revenue, work or no work. Heaven knew, she needed them this year more than ever—since the fire which had flared in a night the previous harvest and taken all three of the stacks in the big meadow. That had been disaster, indeed, for it had forced her to sell every head of her stock that she could, at lowest prices, leaving barely enough to get another start. McKane had bought, but he had driven a hard bargain. This was another spring and hope stirred in her, as it is ever prone to do in the heart of youth. Tired as she was, the girl brought forth from the ancient bureau in her own room beyond, a worn old Bible, and placing it beneath the lamp, sat herself down beside the table to the study of that Great Book which was her classic and her school. Mrs. Allison had retired into the depths of the cabin, from the small room adjoining, Nance could hear the regular breathing of Bud, weary from his labors. For a long time she sat still, her hands lying cupped around the Book, her face pensive with weariness, her eyes fixed unwinking on the yellow flame. Then she turned the thin pages with a reverent hand and at the honeysweet rhythms of the Psalms, stopped and began to read. With David she wandered afar into fields of divine asphodel, was soon lost in a sea of spiritual praise and song. Her young head, haloed with a golden spray in the light of the lamp, was bent above the Bible, her lashes lay like golden circles, sparkling on her cheeks, her lips were sweetly moulded to the words she unconsciously formed as she read. For a long time she pored over the ancient treasure of the Scriptures, and in all truth she was innocent enough, lovely enough to have stirred a heart of stone. It was warm with the breath of spring outside. Window and door stood open and no breeze stirred the cheap white curtain at the sill. Peace was there in the lone homestead by the river, the security that comes with knowledge that all is looked to faithfully. Nance knew that the two huge padlocks on the stout log barn that housed the horses and the two milk cows, were duly fastened, for their keys hung on the wall beside the towel-roller. She knew that the well-board was down, that the box was filled with wood for the early breakfast fire. “‘In Thee, Oh, Lord, do I put my trust,’” she read in silence. “‘Let me never be ashamed, deliver me in Thy righteousness ——’” She laid her temples in her palms, her elbows on the table, and her blue eyes followed the printed lines with a rapt delight. Suddenly she sat upright, alert, her face lifted like that of a startled creature of the wild. She had heard no sound. There had been no tremor of the earth to betray a step outside, and yet she felt a presence. She did not look toward the openings, but stared at the wall before her with its rows of shelves behind their screened doors where her mother kept her scoured pans. And then, suddenly, there came a thin, keen whine, a little clear whistle, and a knife stood quivering between her dropped hands, its point imbedded deep in the leaves of the old Bible. For a moment she sat so, while a flush of anger poured up along her throat to flare to the roots of her banded hair. With no uncertain hand she jerked the blade from the profound pages, leapt to her feet, snatched a stub of pencil from a broken mug on a shelf, tore a fly-leaf from the precious Book, and, bending in the light, wrote something on it. She folded the bit of paper, thrust the knife point through it and, turning swiftly, flung them viciously through the window where the thin curtain had been parted. She stood so, facing the window defiantly, scorning to blow out the light. Then she dropped her eyes to the desecrated Word and they were flaming—and this is what she had written on the fly- leaf: “The Lord is the strength of my life—of whom shall I be afraid? Though a host shall encamp against me, my heart shall not fear.” Very deliberately she closed the door and window, turned locks on both, picked up her lamp and Bible and went into her own room beyond. Serene in the abiding faith of those divine words she soon forgot the world and all it held of work and care, of veiled threat and menace. At daybreak she opened the window and scanned the ground outside. There was no thin-bladed knife in sight, no folded bit of paper with its holy defiance. The whole thing might have been a dream. CHAPTER III THE IRON HAND OF SKY LINE Kate Cathrew—Cattle Kate Cathrew—lived like an eagle, on the crest of the world looking down. She looked down along the steep slopes of Mystery Ridge, dark with the everlasting green of conifers, speckled with the lighter green of glade and brush patch, the weathered red of outcropping stone—far down to the silver thread of Nameless River flowing between its grass-clad banks, the fair spread of the valley with its priceless feeding land. The buildings of Sky Line Ranch lay nestled at the foot of Rainbow Cliff, compact, solid, like a fortress, reached only by cattle trails, for there was no wagon road. There could have been none on these forbidding steeps. The buildings themselves were built of logs, but all that was within them had come into the lonesome country on pack-mules, even to the big steel range in the kitchen. The house itself was an amazing place, packed with all necessities, beautiful with luxuries, its contents worth a fortune. It had many rooms and a broad veranda circled it. Pine trees stood in ranks about it, and out of the sheer face of Rainbow Cliff at the back a six-inch stream of crystal water shot forth in a graceful arc from the height of a man’s shoulder, to fall into a natural basin in the solid rock by its own ceaseless action. And stretching out like widespread wings on either side this majestic cliff ran crowning the ridge for seven miles, a splendid escarpment, straight up-and-down, averaging two hundred feet from its base in the slanting earth to the sharp line of its rimrock. Rainbow Cliff, grim guardian of the Upper Country and the Deep Heart hills themselves, supposed to be impassable in all its length, dark in the early day but gleaming afar with all the colors of the spectrum when the sun dropped over toward the west at noon. It was this gorgeous radiance, caused by the many shades of the weathered stone, which had given the battlement its name. No man was ever known to have scaled the cliff—save and except John Allison, found dead at its foot two years back—for the giant spine was alike on both sides. Men from the Upper Country had penetrated the Deep Hearts to its northern base, but there they had stopped, to circle its distant ends, void of the secrets they had hoped to wrest from it. And Kate Cathrew lived under it, a strange, half-sybaritic woman, running her cattle on the slopes of Mystery, riding after them like any man, standing in at round-up, branding, beef-gathering, her keen eyes missing nothing, her methods high- handed. Her riders obeyed her lightest word, though they were mostly of a type that few men would care to handle, hard- featured, close-lipped, sharp-eyed, hard riders and hard drinkers, as all the world of the Deep Hearts knew. Once in a blue moon they went to Bement, the town that lay three days’ ride to the north beyond the hills, and what they did there was merely hinted at. They drank and played and took possession of its four saloons, and when they finally reared out of it to go back to their loneliness and work, the town came out of its temporary retirement, breathing again. Yet Kate Cathrew handled these men and got good work out of them, and she belonged to none of them. Not but what there were hot hearts in the outfit and hands that itched for her, lips that wet themselves hungrily when she passed close in her supreme indifference. But Rio Charley carried a bullet-scar in his right shoulder, and Big Basford walked with a slight limp—yet they both stayed with her. “Sort of secret-society stuff,” said Price Selwood once, “Kate is the Grand Vizier.” There was no other white woman at Sky Line. She would have none. Minnie Pine, a stalwart young Pomo half-breed, and old Josefa, brown as parchment and non-committal, carried on the housework under her supervision, and no one else was needed. At noon of the day after Kate’s visit to the store at Cordova, she sat in the big living-room at Sky Line looking over accounts. An observer having seen her on the previous occasion, would hardly have recognized her now. Gone were the broad hat, the pearl-buttoned shirt, the fringed riding skirt and the boots. The black hair was piled high on her head, its smooth backward sweep crinkled by the tight curl that would not be brushed out. There was fragrance about her, and the dress she wore was of dark blue flowered silk, its clever draping setting off her form to its best advantage, which needed no advantage. Silk stockings smoothed themselves lovingly over her slender ankles, and soft kid slippers, all vanity of cut and make and sparkling buckle, clothed her feet in beauty. She was either a fool or very brave, for she was the living spirit of seduction. But the sombre eyes she turned up from her work to scan the rider who came to her, his hat in his hands, were all business, impersonal. “Well?” she said impatiently. The man was young, scarce more than a boy, of a devil-may-care type, and he looked at her fearlessly. “Here’s something for you, Boss,” he said grinning, as he handed her a soiled bit of paper. It was thin, yellowed with age, and it seemed to have been roughly handled. The mistress of Sky Line spread it out before her on the top of the dark wood desk. “The Lord is the strength of my life,” she read, “of whom shall I be afraid? Though an host shall encamp against me, my heart shall not fear.” It was unsigned and the characters, while hurriedly scrawled, were made by bold strokes, as if a strong heart had, indeed, inspired them, a strong hand penned them. With a full-mouthed oath Kate Cathrew crumpled the bit of paper in her hand and flung it in the waste-basket against the wall. “How did you get that?” she demanded. “On the point of the knife you sent th’ girl,” he answered soberly, “an’ right near the middle of my stomach.” For a considerable space of time the woman sat regarding him. “I sent you to help in the breaking of morale,” she said coldly, “not to bring me back defiance. Next time I’ll send a more trustworthy man.” She nodded dismissal, and the youth went quickly, his face burning. At the far end of the veranda he almost ran into Big Basford, whose huge, gorilla-like shape was made more sinister and repellant by the perceptible limp. Basford was always somewhere near, if possible, when men talked with Kate Cathrew. His great strength and stature, his small eyes, black and rimmed with red, his unkempt head and flaring black beard, everything about him suggested a savagery and power with which few men cared to trifle. He scanned the boy’s flushed face with swift appraising. “I take it,” he said grinning, “that the boss wasn’t pleased with you?” “Take it or leave it,” said the other with foolhardy daring, “is it any of your business?” With a smothered roar Big Basford leaped for him, surprisingly nimble on his lamed foot, surprisingly light. He caught him by the throat and bore him backward across the veranda’s edge, so that both bodies fell heavily on the boards of the floor. “You’ll find what’s my business, damn you,” gritted Big Basford; “you——!” He got to his knees and straddling the lad’s body came down on his throat with all his weight in his terrible grip. At the sound of the fall Minnie Pine leaped to a window. “That black devil is killing the Blue Eyes,” she said in patois Spanish to Josefa. “Give me that knife——” But there was no need of Minnie’s interference. Kate Cathrew had heard that heavy thunder of falling bodies on boards and she was quicker than her half-breed, for she was up and away from the desk before Big Basford had risen on his knees, and as she rose her left hand swept down the wall, taking from its two pegs the heavy quirt that always hung there. With the first jab of the boy’s head back on the floor, she was running down the veranda, her arm raised high. With the second she was between Big Basford and the light like a threat of doom. As he surged forward once more above the blackening face in his throttling fingers, she flung her body back in a stiff arc to get more impetus—and drove the braided lash forward and down like a fury. It circled Big Basford’s head from the back, the bitter end snapping across his face with indescribable force. It curled him away from his victim, tumbling back on his heels with his murderous hands covering his cheeks. For a moment he hung on the veranda’s edge, balanced, then slipped off, lurching on his lame foot. He held his hands over his face for a tense moment. Then he looked up through his fingers, where the blood was beginning to ooze, straight at the woman. The red-rimmed eyes were savage with rage and hurt, but behind both was a flaming passion which seemed to swell and burgeon with a perverted admiration. “I’ve told you before, Basford,” said Kate Cathrew, “that I will deal with my men myself. I don’t need your overly zealous aid. Get out of my sight—and stay out till you can heed what I say. Minnie, take this fool away—pump some wind into him. Give him some whiskey.” She touched the boy contemptuously with the toe of her buckled slipper. He was weakly trying to get up and the Pomo girl unceremoniously finished the effort, lifting him almost bodily in her arms and supporting him through the door into the kitchen. The look she turned over her shoulder at Big Basford was venomous. The owner of Sky Line walked down the veranda to her living-room door. At its lintel she stopped and stood, drawing the heavy quirt through her fingers, looking back at Big Basford. He had watched her progress and now the hard, bright, sparkling gaze of her dark eyes seemed to force him to movement, so that he picked up his hat, set it on his head and turned away toward the corrals at Rainbow’s foot, swinging with a rolling gait that further made one think of jungle folk. But the lips in the flaring beard were twitching. Kate Cathrew went in and hung the quirt on its smooth pegs, then sat down and took up her interrupted work just where she had left it. “Three hundred head,” she said, “prime on hoof—at thirteen-fifty——” and her pen began to travel evenly across the page before her. CHAPTER IV THE MYSTERY OF BLUE STONE CAÑON The spring sailed by like a full-rigged ship on a windy sea, bright with sun, sweet with surging airs, a thing of swiftness and delight. On the rich flats of Nameless, Nance Allison tilled her soil and her blue eyes caressed the land. She loved every sparkling ripple of the whispering stream, every cloud-shadow on the austere slopes, each jutting shoulder of ridge and spine. The homestead was a fetish with her. It had been her Pappy’s dream of empire. It was hers. He had stuck by and toiled, had secured his patent, made the good start. She asked nothing better than to carry on, to see it prosper and endure. But strange disasters had befallen her, one after the other—first and bitterest, the hidden rope stretched in a cattle trail two years back, just after John Allison’s mysterious death, which sent young Bud’s pony tumbling to the gulch below and left the boy to walk lopsided ever after. At that the girl had almost weakened in her stubborn purpose. She had held the young head in her arms many a weary hour when the pain was worst, and tried to build a plan of a future away from Nameless Valley, but Bud would not listen. The bare thought made him fret and toss, sent the red blood burning in his cheeks. “We’ll never let ’em beat us out, Nance,” he would pant with his hot breath, “the land is ours, safe and legal, and no bunch o’ cut-throats is goin’ to get it from us. Not while we can stand—not while we can ride or plow—or use a gun!” But Nance would stop him always there. “‘Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me,’” she would say gently, “we have no need of guns, Bud.” However, as the seasons passed, each with its promise and its inevitable blight, her face had became graver, less smiling. There had been the hay fire then—the fire in the night where no fire was or had been. There had been the six fat steers that disappeared from the range and were never heard of, though Bud rode Buckskin to a lather in a fruitless search for them. There had been the good harness cut to pieces one night when Bud had forgotten to lock it up. All these had been disasters in a real sense to these people living so meagerly with their scant possessions. And this year they were more than poor, they were in debt to McKane for the new harness that had to be bought to replace the other. But Nance looked at her field of corn coming in long rows of tender green on the brown floor of the well worked land and hoped. She was prone to hope. It was part of her equipment for the battle of life, her shield before the lance of her courage, her buckler of energy. “It looks like a heavy crop, McKane,” she told the trader honestly, “and I’ll have far and away more than enough for you —I think I’ll have enough left for my winter stake.” “Hope you do,” said McKane, for though he was none too scrupulous where his own interests were concerned, he felt a vague admiration for the game girl working her lonely homestead in her dead father’s place. So, with the crop spreading its four delicate blades to the coaxing sun and the hay knee-deep in the big fenced flat across the river, Nance Allison laid by her labors for a while to rest her body and refresh her soul. “I’ve just got to ride the hills, Mammy,” she said smiling, “got to fish the holes in Blue Stone Cañon, to climb the slopes for a little while. It will be my only chance, you know—there’s the hay to cut soon and the corn to cultivate, and the cattle to look after later. I can’t work all the year, Mammy, without a little play.” At which the mother’s tragic eyes filled with tears—this for her daughter’s only play—the riding in the lonesome hills—the fishing for trout in a shadowed cañon—when her young feet should have been tripping to the lilt of fiddles—when she should have had ribbons and muslin flounces, and a sweetheart—the things of youth ere her youth should pass! Pass, toiling at the handles of a plow! It was a poignant pain indeed, that brought those insistent tears, that withheld the fear-urged protest. So, in the golden mornings, Nance began to saddle Buckskin and ride away, a snack of bread and bacon tied behind the cantle, to come ambling home at dusk happy, sweet, filled with the joy of life, sometimes a string of speckled beauties dangling at her knee, sometimes empty handed. Sometimes Bud went with her, but it was not fair to Dan and Molly, the heavy team, to cheat them of their share of rest, since Bud must ride one or the other of them, and so Nance rode for the most part alone. She “lifted up her eyes to the hills” in all truth and drew from them a very present strength. The dark, blue-green slopes of the tumbling ridges, covered with a tapestry of finely picked out points of pine and fir-trees, filled her with the joy of the nature lover, the awed humility of the humble heart which considers the handiwork of God. She lay for hours on some bleached log high in a sunny glade, her hands under her fair head, her lips smiling unconsciously, her long blue eyes dreaming into the cloud-flecked heavens, and sometimes she wondered what the future held for her after the fashion of maids since the world began. She recalled the restless wanderings of the family in her early years, remembered vaguely the home and the school in old Missouri, her father’s ceaseless urge for travel. And then had come their journey’s end, here in the austere loneliness of Nameless Valley, where his nomad heart had settled down and had been at home. She thought of these familiar things, and of others not familiar, such as picturing the house she and Bud would one day build on the big meadow, with running water piped from the rushing stream itself, with carpets—Mrs. Allison was already sewing interminable balls of “rags” for the fabric—and with such simple comforts as seemed to her nothing short of luxuries. She knew of a woman in Bement who wove carpets, a Mrs. Porter, at the reasonable price of thirty cents a yard, warp included. The warp should be brown-and-white, she decided—at least she had so decided long back after many conferences with her mother. Brown and white running softly through the dim colors of the rags—nothing new enough to be bright went into the balls, though there would be a soft golden glow all through the hit-and-miss fabric from the “hanks” dyed with copperas—brown and white, Nance thought, would make it seem like the floor of the woods in fall, weathered and beautiful. She could scarcely wait the time of the fulfillment of this dress, when the cabin floors should be soft under foot. Longing for the refinements was strong in her, though limited painfully to such simple scope as Cordova supplied, or as she remembered dimly from the days of her childhood in Missouri. But the glory of the land was too compelling for idle dreams of the future. Here at hand were carpets of brown pine needles, shot through with scarlet bleeding hearts. Here were mosses soft and wonderful when one bent close enough to study their minute and intricate patterns. Here were vast distances and dropping slopes, veiled in pale blue haze so delicate as to seem an hallucination. Here also, were the mysterious fastnesses of Blue Stone Cañon, its perpendicular walls of eroded rock cut by seam and fissure, its hollow aisles resonant always of the murmurous stream that tumbled through them. Nance loved the cañon. She liked to climb among its boulders, to whip its frequent pools for the trout that hung in their moving smoothness, to listen to the thousand voices that seemed always whispering and talking. They were made of fairy stuff and madness, these voices. If one sat still and listened long enough he could swear that they were real, that strange concourses discussed the secrets of the spheres. On the hottest days of summer the cañon was cool, for a wind drew always through it from its unknown head somewhere in the Deep Hearts themselves far to the north and east. Buckskin felt the mysterious influence of the soundful silence, pricking his ears, listening, holding his breath to let it out in snorts, and Nance laughed at his uneasiness. “Buckskin,” she said one day, as she lay stretched at length on a flat rock beside a boiling riffle, “you’re a bundle of nerves, a natural-born finder of fears. There isn’t a thing bigger or uglier than yourself in all the cañon—unless it’s a panther skulking up in the branches, and he wouldn’t come near for a fortune—though what could be fortune to a cougar, I wonder?” she went on to herself, smiling at the strip of sky that topped the frowning rimrock, “only a full belly, I guess—the murderer.” She lay a long time basking in the sun that shone straight down, for it was noon, revelling in the relaxation of her young body, long worked to the limit and frankly tired. She took her bread and bacon from a pocket and ate with the relish which only healthy youth can muster, clearing up the last crumb, drank from the stream, her face to the surface, and finally rose with a long breath of satisfaction. “You can stay here, you old fraid-cat,” she said to the pony, dropping his rein over his head, “it’s hard on your feet, anyway. Me—I’m going on up a ways.” Buckskin looked anxiously after her, but stayed where he was bid, as a well-trained horse should do, and the girl went on up the cañon, her fair head bare, her hands on her hips. She drank in the sombre beauty of the dull blue walls, hung to their towering rims with coruscation and prominence carved fantastically by the erosion of uncounted years—listened, lips apart the better to hear, to the deep blended monotone of the talking voices. She skirted great boulders fallen from above, waded a riffle here, leaped a narrow there, and always the great cut became rougher, wilder, more forbidding and mysterious. She stood for a long time beside a pool that lay, still-seeming and dark, behind a huge rock, but in whose shadowed depths she could see the swirling of white sand that marked its turmoil. The cañon widened here a bit...