CHAPTER XXV
A TIMELY DELIVERANCE
How long she lay there Beth could never have known. It seemed a time interminable, with the horror of the storm in all the universe. It was certainly more than an hour before the end began to come. Then clouds and the blizzard of sand and dust, together with all the mighty roaring, appeared to be hurled across the firmament by the final gust of fury and swept from the visible world into outer space.
Only a brisk half-gale remained in the wake of the huger disturbance. The sky and atmosphere cleared together. The sun shone forth as before—but low to the mountain horizon. When even the clean wind too had gone, trailing behind its lawless brother, the desert calm became as absolute as Beth had beheld it in the morning.
She crept from her shelter and looked about the plain. Her eyes were red and smarting. She was dusted through and through. In all the broad, gray expanse there was not a sign of anything alive. Her mare had vanished. Beth was lost in the desert, and night was fast descending.
Deliverance from the storm, or perhaps the storm's very rage, had brought her a species of calm. The fear she had was a dull, persistent dread—an all-pervading horror of her situation, too large to be acute. Nevertheless, she determined to seek for the road with all possible haste and make her way on foot, as far as possible, towards the Starlight highway and its possible traffic.
She was stiff from her ride and her cramped position on the earth. She started off somewhat helplessly, where she felt the road must be.
She found no road. Her direction may have been wrong. Possibly the storm of wind had swept away the wagon tracks, for they had all been faint. It had been but half a road at best for several miles. Her heart sank utterly. She became confused as to which way she had traveled. Towards a pass in the hills whence she felt she must have come she hastened with a new accession of alarm.
She was presently convinced that she had chosen entirely wrong. A realizing sense that she was hopelessly mixed assailed her crushingly. To turn in any direction might be a grave mistake. But to stand here and wait—do nothing—with the sun going down—this was preposterous—suicidal! She must go on—somewhere! She must find the road! She must keep on moving—till the end! Till the end! How terrible that thought appeared, in such a situation!
She almost ran, straight onward towards the hills. Out of breath very soon, she walked with all possible haste and eagerness, all the time looking for the road she had left, which the storm might have wiped from the desert. She was certain now that the mountains towards which she was fleeing were away from the Goldite direction.
Once more she changed her course. She realized then that such efforts as these must soon defeat themselves. At least she must stick to one direction—go on in a line as straight as possible, till she came to something! Yet if she chose her direction wrong and went miles away from anything——
She had to go on. She had to take the chance. She plodded southwestward doggedly, for perhaps a mile, then halted at something like a distant sound, and peered towards the shadows of the sunset.
There was nothing to be seen. A hope which had risen for a moment in her breast, at thought of possible deliverance, sank down in collapse, and left her more faint than before. The sun was at the very rim of the world. Its edge began to melt its way downward into all the solid bulk of mountains. It would soon be gone. Darkness would ensue. The moon would be very late, if indeed it came at all. Wild animals would issue from their dens of hiding, to prowl in search of food. Perhaps the sound she heard had been made by an early night-brute of the desert, already roving for his prey!
Once more she went on, desperately, almost blindly. To keep on going, that was the one essential! She had proceeded no more than a few rods, however, when she heard that sound again—this time more like a shout.
Her heart pounded heavily and rapidly. She shaded her eyes with her hand, against the last, slanted sun-rays, and fancied she discerned something, far off there westward, in the purples flung eastward by the mountains. Then the last bit of all that molten disk of gold disappeared in the summits, and with its going she beheld a horseman, riding at a gallop towards herself.
The relief she felt was almost overwhelming—till thoughts of such an encounter came to modify her joy. She was only an unprotected girl—yet—she had no appearance of a woman! This must be her safeguard, should this man now approaching prove some rough, lawless being of the mines.
She stood perfectly still and waited. A man would have hurried forward to meet this deliverance, so unexpectedly vouchsafed. But she was too excited, too uncertain—too much of a girl. Then presently, when the horseman was still a hundred yards away, her heart abruptly turned over in her bosom.
The man on the horse was Van. She knew him—knew that impudent pose, that careless grace and oneness with his broncho! She did not know he was chasing that flying roof which had frightened her horse from her side; that he had bought an old cabin, far from his claim, to move it to the "Laughing Water" ground—only to see it wrenched from his hold by the mighty gale and flung across the world. She knew nothing of this, but she suddenly knew how glad was her whole tingling being, how bounding was the blood in her veins! And she also knew, abruptly, that now if ever she must play the man. She had all but forgotten she was angry with Van. That, and a hundred reasons more, made it absolutely imperative now that he should not know her for herself!
She made a somewhat wild attempt at a toilet of her hair—in case the wind had ripped the tell-tale strands from beneath her hat. Then with utter faintness in her being, and weakness in her knees, she prepared to give him reception.
He had slowed his horse to a walk. He rode up deliberately, scrutinizing in obvious puzzlement the figure before him in the sand.
"Hullo," he said, while still a rod away, "what in blazes are you doing here, man—are you lost?"
Beth nodded. "I'm afraid I am." Her utterance was decidedly girlish, and quavering.
"Lost your voice somewhere, too, I reckon," said Van. "Where are you going? Where are you from?"
"Starlight," answered Beth, at a loss for a better reply, and making an effort to deepen her tones as she talked. "I lost my horse in the storm."
Van looked around the valley.
"Did, hey? Didn't happen to see a stray roof, anywhere, did you? I lost one."
"I—haven't seen anything," faltered Both, whose only wish was to have him say something about her escape from this terrible place. "But something frightened my pony."
"I was curious to see how far that roof would hike, that's all," he told her by way of explanation of his presence here on his horse, and he turned to look at her again. "Didn't you know this so-called cut-off to Starlight would take you more time than the road?"
"No, I—I didn't know it," said Beth, afraid he must presently penetrate her masquerade if he looked like that upon her. "What do you advise me to do?"
He ignored her question, demanding:
"Say, is your name Kent?—Glenmore Kent?"
Beth felt her heart begin new gymnastics. This was her cue.
"Why, yes. But—how did you know—know me?"
"I've met your sister, in Goldite. You can't get to Starlight to-night."
She had passed muster! A herd of wild emotions were upon her. But first here was her predicament—and what he said was not at all reassuring. Certain alarms that his coming had banished returned in a vague array.
She showed her dread in her eyes. "Perhaps I could get to Goldite."
"How?" He was half unconsciously patting Suvy, the horse, whose ecstasy thereat was not to be concealed.
Beth knew not how. She wished Van would cease that study of her face. Perhaps she could think more clearly.
"Why—I suppose I could walk—if I knew the way," she said. "Is it very far? I admit I'm bewildered. I was lost."
"It would be a long ride," he told her. "A lost man is hopeless. I couldn't even show you the way so you could keep it—especially at night."
New fears came surging upon her in all their force and numbers.
"But—what shall I do?"
Van reflected.
"My claim is the nearest camp from here, since the wind took down that shack. And that was abandoned anyway. Can you hike some twenty-odd miles?"
Twenty-odd miles!—on foot! For a second she was almost tempted to disclose herself, and beg him, for something a trifle more sympathetic than what he seemed to be offering another fellow man. But that could not be done. And night was descending rapidly. The twilight was brief—and on the wane.
"Why—perhaps so," she answered, attempting to smile. "I'll try."
Something in her smile went straight to his heart—he wondered why. To feel as he did towards this unknown man, even the brother of the girl he madly loved—this was certainly absurd. It was not to be explained; it was simply upon him, that was enough. He dismounted.
"Here, get on my horse and ride. I want to walk and stretch my legs."
Beth all but gasped. She!—ride on Suvy!—the horse she had seen so nearly kill this man!—a horse that might perhaps permit no other living thing upon his back! Yet she knew not how to refuse—and to walk very far would be impossible.
"I'm—afraid I'm a very poor horseman," she admitted guardedly. "If your pony should happen——"
Van had thought that Suvy might resent a stranger's liberties. He turned to the broncho peculiarly.
"How about it, boy?" he asked the horse gravely. "I want you to stand for it, savvy?" He looked at the animal inquiringly. How he knew that Suvy consented was only for him to comprehend. He squared about to Beth, who was watching with wonder, and something far softer, in her heart. "Get on," he said. "He was raised as a cradle for babies."
Beth was pale, but she had to be a man. She stepped to the broncho's side and mounted to the saddle. Suvy trembled in every sinew of his being.
Van gave him a pat on the neck again, turned his back and started straight northward. The pony followed at his heels like a dog with a master he loves.