that evening ruth sent a boy over to the hotel with a telegram for connor. it announced that trickster, at six to one, came home a winner in the murray. but connor had time for only a grunt and a nod; he was too busy composing a letter to harry slocum, which read as follows:
dear harry:
i'm about to put my head in the lion's mouth; and in case you don't hear from me again, say within three months, this is to ask you to look for my bones. i'm starting out to nail a thousand-to-one shot. working a hunch for the biggest clean-up we ever made. i'm going into the mountains to find a deaf mute negro who raises the finest horses i've ever seen. do you get that? no white man has gone into that valley; at least, no one has come out talking. but i'm going to bring something with me. if i don't come out it'll be because i've been knocked on the head inside the valley. i'm not telling any one around here where i'm bound, but i've made inquiries, and this is what i gather: no one is interested in the mute's valley simply because it's so far away. the mute doesn't bother them and they won't bother him. that's the main reason for letting him alone. the other reasons are that he's suspected of being a bad actor.
but the distance is the chief thing that fences people away. the straight cut is bad going. the better way around is a slow journey. it leads west out of lukin and down into the valley of the girard river; then along the girard to its headwaters. then through the mountains again to the only entrance to the valley. i'm telling you all this so that you'll know what you may have ahead of you. if i'm mum for three months come straight for lukin; go to a telegraph operator named ruth manning, and tell her that you've come to get track of me. she'll give you the names of the best dozen men in lukin, and you start for the valley with the posse.
around lukin they have a sort of foggy fear of the valley, bad medicine, they call it.
i have a hard game ahead of me and i'm going to stack the cards. i've got to get into the garden by a trick and get out again the same way. i start this afternoon.
i've got a horse and a pack mule, and i'm going to try my hand at camping out. if i come back it will be on something that will carry both the pack and me, i think, and it won't take long to make the trip. our days of being rich for ten days and poor for thirty will be over.
hold yourself ready; sharp at the end of ninety days, come west if i'm still silent.
as ever,
ben.
before the mail took that letter eastward, ben connor received his final advice from jack townsend. it was under the hotel man's supervision that he selected his outfit of soft felt hat, flannel shirts, heavy socks, and napatan boots; townsend, too, went with him to pick out the pack mule and all the elements of the pack, from salt to canned tomatoes.
as for the horse, townsend merely stood by to admire while ben connor went through a dozen possibilities and picked a solidly built chestnut with legs enough for speed in a pinch, and a flexible fetlock—joints that promised an easy gait.
"you won't have no trouble," said townsend, as connor sat the saddle, working the stirrups back and forth and frowning at the creaking new leather. "wherever you go you'll find gents ready to give you a hand on your way."
"why's that? don't i look like an old hand at this game?"
"not with that complexion; it talks city a mile off. if you'd tell me where you're bound for—"
"but i'm not bound anywhere," answered connor. "i'm out to follow my nose."
"with that gun you ought to get some game."
connor laid his hand on the butt of the rifle which was slung in a case under his leg. he had little experience with a gun, but he said nothing.
"all trim," continued townsend, stepping back to look. "not a flaw in the mule; no sign of ringbone or spavin, and when a mule ain't got them, he's got nothin' wrong. don't treat him too well. when you feel like pattin' him, cuss him instead. it's mule nature to like a beatin' once in a while; they spoil without it, like kids. he'll hang back for two days, but the third day he'll walk all over your hoss; never was a hoss that could walk with a mule on a long trip. well, mr. connor, i guess you're all fixed, but i'd like to send a boy along to see you get started right."
"don't worry," smiled connor. "i've written down all your suggestions."
"here's what you want to tie on to special," said the fat man. "don't move your camp on fridays or the thirteenth; if you come nigh a town and a black cat crosses your trail, you camp right there and don't move on to that town till the next morning. and wait a minute—if you start out and find you've left something in camp, make a cross in the trail before you go back."
he frowned to collect his thoughts.
"well, if you don't do none of them three things, you can't come out far wrong. s'long, and good luck, mr. connor."
connor waved his hand, touched the chestnut with his heel and the horse broke into a trot, while the rope, coming taut, first stretched the neck of the mule and then tugged him into a dragging amble. in this manner connor went out of lukin. he smiled to himself, as he thought confidently of the far different fashion in which he would return.
the first day gave connor a raw nose, a sunburned neck and wrists, and his supper was charred bacon and tasteless coffee; but the next morning he came out of the choppy mountains and went down a long, easy slope into the valley of the girard. there was always water here, and fine grass for the horse and mule, with a cool wind off the snows coming down the ravine. by the third day he was broken into the routine of his work and knew the most vulnerable spot on the ribs of the mule, and had a pet name for the chestnut. thereafter the camping trip was pleasant enough. it took him longer than he had expected, for he would not press the horse as the pitch of the ravine grew steeper; later he saw his wisdom in keeping the chestnut fresh for the final burst, for when he reached the head-spring of the girard, he faced a confusion of difficult, naked mountains. he was daunted but determined, and the next morning he filled his canteens and struck into the last stage of his journey.
luck gave him cool weather, with high moving clouds, which curtained the sun during the middle of the day, but even then it was hard work. he had not the vestige of a trail to follow; the mountain sides were bare rock. a scattering of shrubs and dwarfed trees found rooting in crevices, but on the whole connor was journeying through a sea of stone, and sometimes, when the sun glinted on smooth surface, the reflection blinded him. by noon the chestnut was hobbling, and before nightfall even the mule showed signs of distress. and though connor traveled now by compass, he was haunted by a continual fear that he might have mistaken his way, or that the directions he had picked up at lukin might be entirely wrong. evening was already coming over the mountains when he rounded a slope of black rock and found below him a picture that tallied in every detail with all he had heard of the valley.
the first look was like a glance into a deep well of stone with a flash of water in the bottom; afterward he sat on a boulder and arranged the details of that big vista. nothing led up to the garden from any direction; it was a freak of nature. some convulsion of the earth, when these mountains were first rising, perhaps, had split the rocks, or as the surface strata rolled up, they parted over the central lift and left this ragged fissure. through the valley ran a river, but water could never have cut those saw-tooth cliffs; and connor noted this strange thing: that the valley came to abrupt ends both north and south. by the slant sunlight, and at that distance—for he judged the place to be some ten or fifteen miles in length—it seemed as if the cliff fronts to the north and south were as solid and lofty as a portion of the sides; yet this could not be unless the river actually disappeared under the face of the wall. still, he could not make out details from the distance, only the main outline of the place, the sheen of growing things, whether trees or grass, and the glitter of the river which swelled toward the center of the valley into a lake. he could discover only one natural entrance; in the nearest cliff wall appeared a deep, narrow cleft, which ran to the very floor of the valley, and the only approach was through a difficult ravine. the sore-footed chestnut had caught the flash of green, and now he pricked his ears and whinnied as if he saw home. connor started down the rocks toward the entrance, leading the horse, while the mule trailed wearily behind. as he turned, the wind blew to him out of the valley a faint rhythmical chiming. when he paused to listen the sound disappeared.
he dipped out of the brighter level into a premature night below; evening was gathering quickly, and with each step connor felt the misty darkness closing above his head. he was stumbling over the boulders, downheaded, hardly able to see the ground at his feet, yet when he reached the bottom of the little ravine which ran toward the entrance, he looked up to a red sky, and the higher mountains rolled off in waves of light. distances were magnified; he seemed to look from the bottom of the world to the top of it; he turned, a little dizzy, and between the edges of the cleft that rose straight as doric pillars, he saw a fire burning at the entrance to the garden of eden. the sunset was above them, but the fire sent a long ray through the night of the lower valley. connor pointed it out to his horse, and the little cavalcade went slowly forward.
