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The Valley of Silent Men: A Story of the Three River Country, a novel by James Oliver Curwood |
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Chapter 24 |
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_ CHAPTER XXIV Kent had not forgotten that he was an outlaw, but he was not afraid. Now that he had something new and thrilling to fight for, he fell back again upon what he called "the finesse of the game." He approached Chippewyan cautiously, although he was sure that even his old friends at the Landing would fail to recognize him now. His beard was four or five inches long, and his hair was shaggy and uncut. Picard had made him a coat, that winter, of young caribou skin, and it was fringed like an Indian's. Kent chose his time and entered Chippewyan just before dusk. Oil lamps were burning in the Hudson's Bay Company's store when he went in with his furs. The place was empty, except for the factor's clerk, and for an hour he bartered. He bought a new outfit, a Winchester rifle, and all the supplies he could carry. He did not forget a razor and a pair of shears, and when he was done he still had the value of two silver fox skins in cash. He left Chippewyan that same night, and by the light of a Winter moon made his camp half a dozen miles northward toward Smith Landing. He was on the Slave River now and for weeks traveled slowly but steadily northward on snowshoes. He avoided Fort Smith and Smith Landing and struck westward before he came to Fort Resolution. It was in April that he struck Hay River Post, where the Hay River empties into Great Slave Lake. Until the ice broke up, Kent worked at Hay River. When it was safe, he started down the Mackenzie in a canoe. It was late in June when he turned up the Liard to the South Nahani. "You go straight through between the sources of the North and the South Nahani," Marette had told him. "It is there you find the Sulphur Country, and beyond the Sulphur Country is the Valley of Silent Men." At last he came to the edge of this country. He camped with the stink of it in his nostrils. The moon rose, and he saw that desolate world as through the fumes of a yellow smoke. With dawn he went on. He passed through broad, low morasses out of which rose sulphurous fogs. Mile after mile he buried himself deeper in it, and it became more and more a dead country, a lost hell. There were berry bushes on which there grew no berries. There were forests and swamps, but without a living creature to inhabit them. It was a country of water in which there were no fish, of air in which there were no birds, of plants without flowers--a reeking, stinking country still with the stillness of death. He began to turn yellow. His clothing, his canoe, his hands, face--everything turned yellow. He could not get the filthy taste of sulphur out of his mouth. Yet he kept on, straight west by the compass Gowen had given him at Hay River. Even this compass became yellow in his pocket. It was impossible for him to eat. Only twice that day did he drink from his flask of water. And Marette had made this journey! He kept telling himself that. It was the secret way in and out of their hidden world, a region accursed by devils, a forbidden country to both Indian and white man. It was hard for him to believe that she had come this way, that she had drunk in the air that was filling his own lungs, nauseating him a dozen times to the point of sickness. He worked desperately. He felt neither fatigue nor the heat of the warm water about him. Night came, and the moon rose, lighting up with a sickly glow the diseased world that had swallowed him. He lay in the bottom of his canoe, covering his face with his caribou coat, and tried to sleep. But sleep would not come. Before dawn he struck on, watching his compass by the light of matches. All that day he made no effort to swallow food. But with the coming of the second night he found the air easier to breathe. He fought his way on by the light of the moon which was clearer now. And at last, in a resting spell, he heard far ahead of him the howl of a wolf. In his joy he cried out. A western breeze brought him air that he drank in as a desert-stricken man drinks water. He did not look at his compass again, but worked steadily in the face of that fresh air. An hour later he found that he was paddling again a slow current, and when he tasted the water it was only slightly tainted with sulphur. By midnight the water was cool and clean. He landed on a shore of sand and pebbles, stripped to the skin, and gave himself such a scouring as he had never before experienced. He had worn his old trapping shirt and trousers, and after his bath he changed to the outfit which he had kept clean in his pack. Then he built a fire and ate his first meal in two days. The next morning he climbed a tall spruce and surveyed the country about him. Westward there was a broad low country shut in fifteen or twenty miles away by the foothills. Beyond these foothills rose the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies. He shaved himself, cut his hair, and went on. That night he camped only when he could drive his canoe no farther. The waterway had narrowed to a creek, and he was among the first green shoulders of the hills when he stopped. With another dawn he concealed his canoe in a sheltered place and went on with his pack. For a week he picked his way slowly westward. It was a splendid country into which he had come, and yet he found no sign of human life. The foothills changed to mountains, and he believed he was in the Campbell Range. Also he knew that he had followed the logical trail from the sulphur country. Yet it was the eighth day before he came upon a sign which told him that another living being had at some time passed that way. What he found were the charred remnants of an old camp-fire. It had been a white man's fire. He knew that by the size of it. It had been an all-night fire of green logs cut with an axe. On the tenth day he came to the westward slope of the first range and looked down upon one of the most wonderful valleys his eyes had ever beheld. It was more than a valley. It was a broad plain. Fifty miles across it rose the towering majesty of the mightiest of all the Yukon mountains. And now, though he saw a paradise about him, his heart began to sink within him. It seemed to him inconceivable that in a country so vast he could find the spot for which he was seeking. His one hope lay in finding white men or Indians, some one who might guide him. He traveled slowly over the fifty-mile plain rich with a verdure of green, covered with flowers, a game paradise. Few hunters had come so far out of the Yukon mountains, he told himself. And none had come from out of the sulphur country. It was a new and undiscovered world. On his map it was a blank space. And there were no signs of people. Ahead of him the Yukon mountains rose in an impenetrable wall, peak after peak, crested with snow, towering like mighty watchdogs above the clouds. He knew what lay beyond them--the great rivers of the Western slope, Dawson City, the gold country and its civilization. But those things were on the other side of the mountains. On his side there was only the vast and undisputed silence of a paradise as yet unclaimed by man. As he went on into this valley there grew upon him a strange and comforting peace. Yet with it there was a steadily increasing belief that he would not find that for which he had come in search. He did not attempt to analyze this belief. It became a part of him, just as his mental tranquillity had grown upon him. His one hope of success was that nearer the mountains he might find white men or Indians. He no longer used his compass, but guided himself by a cluster of three gigantic peaks. One of these was taller than the other two. As he journeyed, his eyes were always returning to it. It fascinated him, impinged itself upon him as the watcher of a million years, guarding the valley. He began to think of it as the Watcher. Each hour of his progress seemed to bring it a little more intimately to his vision. From his first night's camp in the valley he saw the moon sink behind it. Within him a voice that never died kept whispering to him that this mountain, greater than all the others, had been Marette's guardian. Ten thousand times she must have looked at it, as he had looked at it that day--if her home was anywhere this side of the Campbell Range. A hundred miles away she could have seen the Watcher on a clear day. On the second day the mountain continued to grow upon Kent. By mid-afternoon it began to take on a new character. The peak of it was in the form of a mighty castle that changed as he advanced. And the two lesser peaks were forming into definite contours. Before the haze of twilight dimmed his vision, he knew that what he had seen was not a whimsical invention of his imagination. The Watcher had grown into the shape of a mighty human head facing south. A restless excitement possessed him, and he traveled on long after dusk. At dawn he was on the trail again. Westward the sky cleared, and suddenly he stopped, and a cry came from him. The Watcher's head was there, as if chiseled by the hands of giants. The two smaller peaks had unveiled their mystery. Startling and weird, their crests had taken on the form of human heads. One of them was looking north. The other faced the valley. And Kent, his heart pounding, cried to himself, "The Silent Men!" He did not hear himself, but the thought itself was a tumultuous thing within him. It came upon him like an inundation, a sudden and thrilling inspiration backed by the forces of a visual truth. THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN. He repeated the words, staring at the three colossal heads in the sky. Somewhere near them, under them, --one side or the other--was Marette's hidden valley! He went on. A strange joy consumed him. In it, at times, his grief was obliterated, and it seemed to him in these moments that Marette must surely be at the valley to greet him when he came to it. But always the tragedy of the Death Chute came back to him, and with it the thought that the three giant heads were watching-- and would always watch--for a beloved lost one who would never return. As the sun went down that day, the face bowed to the valley seemed alive with the fire of a living question sent directly to Kent. "Where is she?" it asked. "Where is she? Where is she?" That night Kent did not sleep. The next day there lay ahead of him a low and broken range, the first of the deeper mountains. He climbed this steadily, and at noon had reached the crest. And he knew that at last he was looking down into the Valley of Silent Men. It was not a wide valley, like the other. On the far side of it, three or four miles away, rose the huge mountain whose face was looking down upon the green meadows at its foot. Southward Kent could see for a long distance, and in the vivid sunlight he saw the shimmer of creeks and little lakes, and the rich glow of thick patches of cedar and spruce and balsam, scattered like great rugs of velvety luster amid the flowering green of the valley. Northward, three or four miles away the range which he had climbed made a sharp twist to the east, and that part of the valley--following the swing of the range--was lost to him. He turned in this direction after he had rested. It was four o'clock when he came to the elbow in the valley, and could look down into the hidden part of it. What he saw at first was a giant cup hollowed out of the surrounding mountains, a cup two miles from brim to brim, the end of the valley itself. It took him a few moments to focus his vision so that it would pick up the smaller and more intimate things half a mile under him, and yet, before he had done this, a sound came up to him that set aquiver every nerve in his body. It was the far-down, hollow-sounding barking of a dog. The warm, golden haze that precedes sunset in the mountains, was gathering between him and the valley, but through this he made out after a time evidences of human habitation almost straight under him. There was a small lake out of which ran a shimmering creek, and close to this lake, yet equally near to the base of the mountain on which he was standing, were a number of buildings and a stockade which looked like a toy. He could see no animals, no movement of any kind. Without seeking for a downward trail he began to descend. Again he did not question himself. An overwhelming certainty possessed him. Of all places in the world this must be the Valley of Silent Men. And below him, flooded and half-hidden in the illusive sun-mist, was Marette's old home. It seemed to him now that it belonged to him, that he was a part of it, that in going to it he was achieving his last great resting place, his final refuge, his own home. And the thought became strangely a part of him that a welcome must be waiting for him there. He hurried until his breath came pantingly between his lips and he was forced to rest. And at last he found himself where his progress was made a foot at a time, and again and again he was forced to climb back and detour around treacherous slides and precipitous breaks which left sheer falls at his feet. The mist thickened in the valley. The sun sank behind the western peaks, and swiftly after that the gloom of twilight deepened. It was seven o'clock when he came to the edge of the plain, at least a mile below the elbow which shut out the cup in the valley. He was exhausted. His hands were bruised and bleeding. Darkness shut him in when he went on. When he rounded the elbow of the mountain, he did not try to keep back the joyous cry that came to his lips. Ahead of him there were lights. A few of them were scattered, but nearest to him he saw a cluster of them, like the glow that comes from a number of illumined windows. He quickened his pace as he drew nearer to them, and at last he wanted to run. And then something stopped him, and it seemed to him that his heart had risen into his throat and was choking him until he could not breathe. It was a man's voice he heard, calling through the twilight gloom a name. "Marette--Marette--Marette--" Kent tried to cry out, but his breath came only in a gasp. He felt himself trembling. He reached out his arms, and a strange madness rushed like fire into his brain. Again the voice called, "Marette--Marette--Marette--" The cup in the valley echoed the name. It rolled softly up the mountainside. The air trembled with it, whispered it, passed it on--and suddenly the madness in Kent found voice, and he shouted, "Marette--Marette--" He ran on. His knees felt weak. He shouted the name again, and the other voice was silent. Things loomed up out of the mist ahead of him, between him and the glowing windows. Some one--two people-- were advancing to meet him, doubtfully, wonderingly. Kent was staggering, but he cried the name again, and this time it was a woman's cry that answered, and one of the two came toward him swift as a flash of light. Three paces apart they stood, and in that gloom of the after- twilight their burning eyes looked at each other, while for a space their bodies remained stricken in the face of this miracle of a great and merciful God. The dead had risen. By a mighty effort Kent reached out his arms, and Marette swayed to him. When the other man came up, he found them crumpled to their knees on the earth, clasped like children in each other's arms. And as Kent raised his face, he saw that it was Sandy McTrigger who was looking down at him, the man whose life he had saved at Athabasca Landing. _ |
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