The Eye of Dread

by Payne Erskine

The next trail he followed led by a bare and more forbidding route to the place where the big man had rescued him, and he knew it must be the one by which he had come. A sense of what had happened came over him terrifyingly, and he shrank from the abyss, his body quivering and his head reeling. He would not look down into the blue depth, knowing that if he did so, by that way his sanity would leave him, but he crawled cautiously around the projecting cliff and wandered down the stony trail. Now and again he called, “Whoopee! Whoopee!” but only his own voice came back to him many times repeated.

Again and again he called and listened, “Whoopee! Whoopee!” and was regretful at the thought that he did not even know the name of the man who had saved him. Could he also save the others? The wild trail drew him and fascinated him. Each day he followed a little farther, and morning and evening he called his lonely cry, “Whoopee! Whoopee!” and still was answered by the echo in 180 diminuendo of his own voice. He tried to resist the lure of that narrow, sun-baked, and stony descent, which he felt led to the nethermost hell of hunger and burning thirst, but always it seemed to him as if a cry came up for help, and if it were not that he knew himself bound by a promise, he would have taken his horse and returned to the horror below.

Each evening he reasoned with himself, and repeated the big man’s words for reassurance: “I’ll fetch them, do you hear? I’ll fetch them,” and again: “I’m the mountain. Any one I don’t want here I pack off down the trail.” Perhaps he had taken them off to Higgins’ Camp instead of bringing them back with him––what then? Harry King bowed his head at the thought. Then he understood the lure of the trail. What then? Why, then––he would follow––follow––follow––until he found again the woman for whom he had dared the unknown and to whom he had given all but a few drops of water that were needed to keep him alive long enough to find more for her. He would follow her back into that hell below the heights. But how long should he wait? How long should he trust the man to whom he had given his promise?

He decided to wait a reasonable time, long enough to allow for the big man’s going, and slow returning––long enough indeed for them to use up all the provisions he had packed down to them, and then he would break his promise and go. In the meantime he tried to keep himself sane by doing what he found to do. He gathered the ripe corn in the big man’s garden patch and husked it and stored it in the shed which was built against the cabin. Then he stored the fodder in a sort of stable built of logs, one side of 181 which was formed by a huge bowlder, or projecting part of the mountain itself, not far from the spring, where evidently it had been stored in the past, and where he supposed the man kept his horse in winter. He judged the winters must be very severe for the care with which this shed was covered and the wind holes stopped. And all the time he worked each day seemed a month of days, instead of a day of hours.

At last he felt he was justified in trying to learn the cause of the delay at least, and he baked many cakes of yellow corn meal and browned them well on the hearth, and roasted a side of bacon whole as it was, and packed strips of dried venison, and filled his water flask at the spring. After a long hunt he found empty bottles which he wrapped round with husks and filled also with water. These he purposed to hang at the sides of his saddle. He had carefully washed and mended his clothing, and searching among the big man’s effects, he found a razor, dull and long unused. He sharpened and polished and stropped it, and removed a vigorous growth of beard from his face, before a little framed mirror. To-morrow he would take the trail down into the horror from which he had come.

Now it only remained for him to look well to the good yellow horse and sleep one more night in the friendly big man’s bunk, then up before the sun and go.

The nights were cold, and he thought he would replenish the fire on his hearth, for he always had the feeling that at any moment they might come wearily climbing up the trail, famished and cold. Any night he might hear the “Halloo” of the big man’s voice. In the shed where he had piled the husked corn lay wood cut in lengths for the fireplace, and taking a pine torch he stooped to collect a few 182 sticks, when, by the glare of the light he held, he saw what he had never seen in the dim daylight of the windowless place. A heavy iron ring lay at his feet, and as he kicked at it he discovered that it was attached to something covered with earth beneath.

Impelled by curiosity he thrust the torch between the logs and removed the earth, and found a huge bin of hewn logs carefully fitted and smoothed on the inside. The cover was not fastened, but only held in place by the weight of stones and earth piled above it. This bin was half filled with finely broken ore, and as he lifted it in his hands yellow dust sifted through his fingers.

Quivering with a strange excitement he delved deeper, lifting the precious particles by handfuls, feeling of it, sifting it between his fingers, and holding the torch close to the mass to catch the dull glow of it. For a long time he knelt there, wondering at it, dreaming over it, and feeling of it. Then he covered it all as he had found it, and taking the wood for which he had come, he replenished the fire and laid himself down to sleep.

What was gold to him? What were all the riches of the earth and of the caves of the earth? Only one thought absorbed him,––the woman whom he had left waiting for him on the burning plain, and a haunting memory that would never leave him––never be stilled.