Riders of the Silences

by Max Brand

The broad, sandy bottom changed and contracted until the channel was scarcely wide enough for the meager stream of water, and beside it she picked her way along a narrow bridle-path with banks on either side, which became with every mile more like cliffs, walling her in and dooming her to a single destination.

It was evening before she came to the headwaters of the Old Crow, and rode out into the gorge between the two mountains. The trail failed her here. There was no semblance of a ravine to follow, except the mighty gorge between the two peaks, and into the dark throat of this pass she ventured, like some maiden of medieval romance riding through a solemn gate with the guarding towers tall and black on either side.

The moment she was well started in it and the steep shadow of the evening fell across her almost like night from the west, her heart grew cold as the air of that lofty region. A sense of coming danger filled her, like a little child when it passes from a lighted room into one dark and still. Yet she kept on, holding a tight rein, throwing many a fearful glance at the vast rocks which might have concealed an entire army in every mile of their extent.

When she found the cabin she mistook it at first for merely another rock of singular shape. It was at this shape that she stared, and checked her horse, and not till then did she note the faint flicker of a light no brighter or more distinct than the phosphorescent glow of the eyes of a hunted beast.

All her impulse was to drive her spurs home and pass that place at a racing gallop, but she checked the impulse sharply and began to reason. In the first place, it was doubtless only the cabin of some prospector, such as she had often heard of. In the second place, night was almost upon her, and she saw no desirable camping-place, or at least any with the necessary water at hand.

What harm could come to her? Among Western men, she well knew a woman is safer than all the law and the police of the settled East can make her, so she nerved her courage and advanced toward the faint, changing light.

The cabin was hidden very cunningly. Crouched among the mighty boulders which earthquakes and storms of some wilder, earlier epoch had torn away from the side of the crags above, the house was like another stone, leaning its back to the mountain for support.

When she drew very close she knew that the light which glimmered at the window must come from an open fire, and the thought of a fire warmed her very heart. She hallooed, and receiving no answer, fastened the horses and entered the house. The door swung to behind her, as if of its own volition it wished to make her close prisoner.

The place consisted of one room, and not a spacious one at that, but arranged as a shelter, not a home. The cooking, apparently, was done over the open hearth, for there was no sign of any stove, and, moreover, on the wall near the fireplace hung several soot-blackened pans and the inevitable coffee-pot.

There were two bunks built on opposite sides of the room, and in the middle a table was made of a long section split from the heart of a log by wedges, apparently, and still rude and undressed, except for the preliminary smoothing off which had been done with a broad-ax.