the spring sailed by like a full-rigged ship on a windy sea, bright with sun, sweet with surging airs, a thing of swiftness and delight.
on the rich flats of nameless, nance allison tilled her soil and her blue eyes caressed the land. she loved every sparkling ripple of the whispering stream, every cloud-shadow on the austere slopes, each jutting shoulder of ridge and spine. the homestead was a fetish with her. it had been her pappy’s dream of empire. it was hers. he had stuck by and toiled, had secured his patent, made the good start.
she asked nothing better than to carry on, to see it prosper and endure.
but strange disasters had befallen her, one after the other—first and bitterest, the hidden rope stretched in a cattle trail two years back, just after john allison’s mysterious death, which sent young bud’s pony tumbling to the gulch below and left the boy to walk lopsided ever after.
at that the girl had almost weakened in her stubborn purpose. she had held the young head in her arms many a weary hour when the pain was worst, and tried to build a plan of a future away from nameless valley, but bud would not listen. the bare thought made him fret and toss, sent the red blood burning in his cheeks.
“we’ll never let ’em beat us out, nance,” he would pant with his hot breath, “the land is ours, safe and legal, and no bunch o’ cut-throats is goin’ to get it from us. not while we can stand—not while we can ride or plow—or use a gun!”
but nance would stop him always there.
“‘thy rod and thy staff they comfort me,’” she would say gently, “we have no need of guns, bud.”
however, as the seasons passed, each with its promise and its inevitable blight, her face had became graver, less smiling. there had been the hay fire then—the fire in the night where no fire was or had been. there had been the six fat steers that disappeared from the range and were never heard of, though bud rode buckskin to a lather in a fruitless search for them. there had been the good harness cut to pieces one night when bud had forgotten to lock it up.
all these had been disasters in a real sense to these people living so meagerly with their scant possessions.
and this year they were more than poor, they were in debt to mckane for the new harness that had to be bought to replace the other. but nance looked at her field of corn coming in long rows of tender green on the brown floor of the well worked land and hoped. she was prone to hope. it was part of her equipment for the battle of life, her shield before the lance of her courage, her buckler of energy.
“it looks like a heavy crop, mckane,” she told the trader honestly, “and i’ll have far and away more than enough for you—i think i’ll have enough left for my winter stake.”
“hope you do,” said mckane, for though he was none too scrupulous where his own interests were concerned, he felt a vague admiration for the game girl working her lonely homestead in her dead father’s place.
so, with the crop spreading its four delicate blades to the coaxing sun and the hay knee-deep in the big fenced flat across the river, nance allison laid by her labors for a while to rest her body and refresh her soul.
“i’ve just got to ride the hills, mammy,” she said smiling, “got to fish the holes in blue stone cañon, to climb the slopes for a little while. it will be my only chance, you know—there’s the hay to cut soon and the corn to cultivate, and the cattle to look after later. i can’t work all the year, mammy, without a little play.”
at which the mother’s tragic eyes filled with tears—this for her daughter’s only play—the riding in the lonesome hills—the fishing for trout in a shadowed cañon—when her young feet should have been tripping to the lilt of fiddles—when she should have had ribbons and muslin flounces, and a sweetheart—the things of youth ere her youth should pass! pass, toiling at the handles of a plow! it was a poignant pain indeed, that brought those insistent tears, that withheld the fear-urged protest.
so, in the golden mornings, nance began to saddle buckskin and ride away, a snack of bread and bacon tied behind the cantle, to come ambling home at dusk happy, sweet, filled with the joy of life, sometimes a string of speckled beauties dangling at her knee, sometimes empty handed.
sometimes bud went with her, but it was not fair to dan and molly, the heavy team, to cheat them of their share of rest, since bud must ride one or the other of them, and so nance rode for the most part alone.
she “lifted up her eyes to the hills” in all truth and drew from them a very present strength. the dark, blue-green slopes of the tumbling ridges, covered with a tapestry of finely picked out points of pine and fir-trees, filled her with the joy of the nature lover, the awed humility of the humble heart which considers the handiwork of god.
she lay for hours on some bleached log high in a sunny glade, her hands under her fair head, her lips smiling unconsciously, her long blue eyes dreaming into the cloud-flecked heavens, and sometimes she wondered what the future held for her after the fashion of maids since the world began. she recalled the restless wanderings of the family in her early years, remembered vaguely the home and the school in old missouri, her father’s ceaseless urge for travel. and then had come their journey’s end, here in the austere loneliness of nameless valley, where his nomad heart had settled down and had been at home. she thought of these familiar things, and of others not familiar, such as picturing the house she and bud would one day build on the big meadow, with running water piped from the rushing stream itself, with carpets—mrs. allison was already sewing interminable balls of “rags” for the fabric—and with such simple comforts as seemed to her nothing short of luxuries. she knew of a woman in bement who wove carpets, a mrs. porter, at the reasonable price of thirty cents a yard, warp included. the warp should be brown-and-white, she decided—at least she had so decided long back after many conferences with her mother.
brown and white running softly through the dim colors of the rags—nothing new enough to be bright went into the balls, though there would be a soft golden glow all through the hit-and-miss fabric from the “hanks” dyed with copperas—brown and white, nance thought, would make it seem like the floor of the woods in fall, weathered and beautiful.
she could scarcely wait the time of the fulfillment of this dress, when the cabin floors should be soft under foot.
longing for the refinements was strong in her, though limited painfully to such simple scope as cordova supplied, or as she remembered dimly from the days of her childhood in missouri.
but the glory of the land was too compelling for idle dreams of the future. here at hand were carpets of brown pine needles, shot through with scarlet bleeding hearts.
here were mosses soft and wonderful when one bent close enough to study their minute and intricate patterns. here were vast distances and dropping slopes, veiled in pale blue haze so delicate as to seem an hallucination.
here also, were the mysterious fastnesses of blue stone cañon, its perpendicular walls of eroded rock cut by seam and fissure, its hollow aisles resonant always of the murmurous stream that tumbled through them.
nance loved the cañon. she liked to climb among its boulders, to whip its frequent pools for the trout that hung in their moving smoothness, to listen to the thousand voices that seemed always whispering and talking. they were made of fairy stuff and madness, these voices. if one sat still and listened long enough he could swear that they were real, that strange concourses discussed the secrets of the spheres. on the hottest days of summer the cañon was cool, for a wind drew always through it from its unknown head somewhere in the deep hearts themselves far to the north and east. buckskin felt the mysterious influence of the soundful silence, pricking his ears, listening, holding his breath to let it out in snorts, and nance laughed at his uneasiness.
“buckskin,” she said one day, as she lay stretched at length on a flat rock beside a boiling riffle, “you’re a bundle of nerves, a natural-born finder of fears. there isn’t a thing bigger or uglier than yourself in all the cañon—unless it’s a panther skulking up in the branches, and he wouldn’t come near for a fortune—though what could be fortune to a cougar, i wonder?” she went on to herself, smiling at the strip of sky that topped the frowning rimrock, “only a full belly, i guess—the murderer.”
she lay a long time basking in the sun that shone straight down, for it was noon, revelling in the relaxation of her young body, long worked to the limit and frankly tired.
she took her bread and bacon from a pocket and ate with the relish which only healthy youth can muster, clearing up the last crumb, drank from the stream, her face to the surface, and finally rose with a long breath of satisfaction.
“you can stay here, you old fraid-cat,” she said to the pony, dropping his rein over his head, “it’s hard on your feet, anyway. me—i’m going on up a ways.”
buckskin looked anxiously after her, but stayed where he was bid, as a well-trained horse should do, and the girl went on up the cañon, her fair head bare, her hands on her hips.
she drank in the sombre beauty of the dull blue walls, hung to their towering rims with coruscation and prominence carved fantastically by the erosion of uncounted years—listened, lips apart the better to hear, to the deep blended monotone of the talking voices.
she skirted great boulders fallen from above, waded a riffle here, leaped a narrow there, and always the great cut became rougher, wilder, more forbidding and mysterious.
she stood for a long time beside a pool that lay, still-seeming and dark, behind a huge rock, but in whose shadowed depths she could see the swirling of white sand that marked its turmoil.
the cañon widened here a bit, its floor strewn with jumbled boulders, its walls honeycombed with water-eaten caves.
when the snows melted in the high gulches of the deep hearts a little later, this place would be a roaring race. she thought of its foamy volume pouring from the cañon’s mouth to swell the flood of the nameless a bit below her southern boundary. but it was a lone and lovely spot now, what with its peopled silence and its blue-toned walls.
these things were passing through her mind as she watched the swirling sand, when all of a sudden, as if an invisible hand had brushed her, she became alert in every fibre.
she had heard nothing new in the murmurous monotone, seen no shadow among the pale shadows about her, yet something had changed. some different element had intruded itself into the stark elements of the place.
her skin rose in tiny prickles, she felt her muscles stiffen. she had lived in the face of menace so long that she was super-sensitive and had developed a seventh sense that was quick to the nth degree.
she stood for a moment gathering her powers, then she whirled in her tracks, sweeping the cañon’s width with eyes that missed nothing.
they did not miss the movement which was almost too swift for sight—the dropping of some dark object behind a rock, the passing of a bit of plumy tail.
the rock itself was between her and the broken foot of the wall, one of a mass that had tumbled from the weathered face. for a long time she stood very still, waiting, watching with unwinking eyes. then, at the rock’s edge, but farther away, she caught another glimpse of that tail-tip. its wearer was making for the wall-foot, keeping the rock between. a wolf would do so—but there was something about that bit of plume which did not spell wolf. it was tawny white, and it was more loosely haired, not of the exact quality of a wolf’s brush. once more a tiny tip showed—and on a sudden daring impulse nance allison leaped for the rock, caught its top with both hands and peered over.
with a snarl and a whirl the owner of the tail faced her in the low mouth of a cave, his pointed ears flat to his head, his feet spread wide apart, his back dropped, his jaws apart and ready, and round his outstretched neck there stood up in quivering defiance, the broad white ruff of a pure-bred collie dog!
the girl stared at him with open-mouthed amazement—and at the more astonishing thing which lay along the pebbled earth beneath him—for this was the thin little leg and foot of a small child.
in utter silence and stillness she stood so, her hands on the rock’s top, and for all the length of time that she watched there was not a tremor of the little leg, nor a movement of the dog’s crouching body. the only motion in the tense picture was the ripple of the stream, the quiver of the lips drawn back from the gleaming fangs.
when the tension became unbearable nance spoke softly.
“come, boy,” she said, “come—boy—come.”
she ventured a hand across the rock, but the quivering lips drew back a trifle more, the big body crouched a bit lower—and the little bare leg draw out of sight behind the edge of the cave.
carefully the girl slipped back from the rock toward the pool, gained its lip, and dropped swiftly away down the cañon.
at a little distance she drew a deep breath and looked back.
the blue cañon lay still under the filtered rays of the noon sun, empty, murmurous, enchanted.
the mouth of the cave was black and vacant.
there was no sign of fiery eyes and slavering jaws, of a thin little leg under a fringe of blue jeans rags!
with eyes dilated and lips closed in amazed silence nance allison made her way back to buckskin, mounted and returned to the flats of nameless.
she had found mystery with a capital, but she knew that she must wait with patience its unravelling.
those pale eyes between the flat ears held a challenge which only a fool would disregard—it would take time and patience.
but, for the love of humanity, why was a child hiding like a fawn in blue stone cañon—with only a dog to guard it—and with no sign of camp or people?
