Tharon of Lost Valley

by Vingie E. Roe

He was a little old man, grotesque and misshapen, yet he followed briskly after the burros, which were the fastest travelers of their kind in the land. He rolled on his bandy legs and kept 183 the little animals on a constant trot with the wisp of stick he carried and the deep, harsh cries that heralded his coming for a mile ahead and sent the echoes reverberating between the cañon walls. A little north of Corvan he had followed the Rockface close for a distance, then suddenly turned back on his tracks and disappeared, burros and all. This was the invisible entrance to the Cañon Country, a narrow mouth that opened sidewise into the very breast of the thousand-foot Wall and led back along a thin sheet of rock that stood between the gorge and the Valley. The floor of this cut or cañon, which was so narrow that the laden burros had a “narrow squeak” to pass, as Pete said, lifted sharply. It rose smoothly underfoot in the pitch darkness, for the cut was roofed in the living rock five hundred feet above, and climbed for a mile. It was a dead, flat place, without sound, for the footsteps of the burros and the man fell dully on the soft and sliding floor, and it seemed to have no acoustic properties.

At the end of the mile this snake-like split in the solid rock came suddenly out into a broader, more steeply pitched cañon whose walls went straight up to the open skies above. Here there were heaps and piles and long slides of dead stone, weathered and powdered, that had fallen from 184 time to time from the parent walls. This in turn led up and on to other breaks and splits and cuts, all open, all lifting to the upper world, and all as blind and dangerous to follow as any deathtrap that old Dame Nature ever devised. Here, at any crosscut, any debouching cañon, a man might turn to his undoing, might travel on and up and never reach those beckoning heights, seen clearly from some blind pocket he had wandered into, might never find his way back to the original cañon among the continuous cuts that met and crossed and passed each other among the towering points and sheets.

But Old Pete knew where he was going. Not for nothing had he threaded these passages for fifteen years. He knew the Cañon Country for the lower part better than any man in the Valley, if Courtrey be excepted.

So this night he climbed and shouted to his burros and thought no more of the sounding splits, for here the echoes raved, than he would have thought of the open plains below.

He passed on and up to where a certain cut lay full, year after year, of packed and hardened snow. For fifteen years Old Pete had visited this cut, a deeper drop into the nether world of rock, and cut his supplies from its surface. Every season he took what he needed, leaving a widening 185 circle at the edge from which he worked, where the cut he traveled passed the mouth of the pent cañon, and every year the snows, sifting from high above, leveled it again. There was no known outlet for this glacier-like pack, no sliding chance, yet it was always on a certain level––each summer seeming to lose just what it gained in winter. It lay level at the mouth of the passing cut, was never filled higher.

Starting at dusk from Corvan, Pete reached his destination around two o’clock, filled his sacks, tied them on his mules and started down, coming out of the Rockface in time to meet the dawn that quivered on the eastern ramparts.

But this night Old Pete, sturdy, fearless, unarmed, was not to see the accustomed pageant of the rising sun, the fleeing veils of shadows shifting on the Valley floor that he had watched with silent joy for all these years.

This night he was well down along his backward way, shouting in the darkness, for the slim moon had dropped down behind the lofty peaks above, when all the echoes in the world, it seemed, let loose in the cañons and all the weight of the universe itself came pressing hard upon his dauntless heart with the crack of a gun.

“Th’ price!” whispered Old Pete as he fell sprawling on his face, “fer pure flesh!” With 186 which cryptic word he bade farewell to the sounding passes, the tenets of manhood as he conceived them, the valour, and the grumbling at life in general.

The little burros, placid and faithful, went on and saw the pageant of the dawn from the hidden gateway in the Wall, crept down the Rockface, single file, and at their accustomed hour stood at their accustomed place before the Golden Cloud.