Judith of Blue Lake Ranch
J >> Jackson Gregory >> Judith of Blue Lake Ranch"I will have a man on the ledge outside night and day," went on
Trevors. "But we cannot be so sure of others as we are of ourselves,
Ruth. You know that, don't you?"
"Oh, yes, I know," she answered quickly. As she spoke she suddenly
shot out her long arm so that her great, bony hand fastened like a big
claw on the girl's shoulder. "I have got her again! She is mine, all
mine. Oh, I will keep her well."
In a little while Trevors left. He had not returned. Mad Ruth, still
gripping Judith's shoulder, half led her, half thrust her farther back
in the cavern. Judith made no resistance. Always, even when terror
was uppermost she held one thought in mind: "If I can make them think
me a little fool and a weakling, my chance may come after a while."
As the two women passed around a bend in the sinuous tunnel-like cave,
the faint rays of the lantern they had left behind them died out, and
heavy darkness shut them in. Judith could barely make out the huge
form towering over her. But Ruth, whether her eyes were like a cat's
and accustomed to this sombre place, or whether a hand on a rock wall
or a foot on the uneven floor under her told her which way to go, moved
on without hesitation. Judith estimated roughly that they had come
fifty yards from the outside ledge in front of the cave when she was
pushed down and felt the rude bed of fir-boughs under her.
"So," grunted the woman, for the first time removing her hard hand from
the girl's shoulder, "I've got you again, my pretty. And this time you
don't play any more little tricks on your old mother."
She was gone swiftly, all but silently, through the gloom, her form
vaguely outlined against the lantern's glimmer, to bring the food and
water which she had set down when she came in. Judith drank and ate.
It was only little by little, in fragments which she obtained during
the slow days which followed, that she came to understand Trevors's
scheme. And the scheme was in keeping with the man; so far as it was
possible, Bayne Trevors was still playing safe.
Mad Ruth was an odd mixture of crazed suspicion, shrewd cunning,
cruelty, and madness. Perhaps very long ago--Judith came to believe
that it had occurred at the time when she had gone mad, for God knows
what reason--Mad Ruth had had a little daughter. The girl had been
lost to her, whether through death when an infant, or some tragic
accident when a young girl, Judith never knew. But Ruth's heart had
been bound up in that baby of hers; when madness came, it centred and
turned upon the return of her child, "Who had run away from her, but
who would come back some time." Trevors, having learned of her mad
passion, had shaped it to his purpose.
But that was not all. Judith had been brought to the cave early Sunday
morning. Sunday afternoon there came to the cave a well-dressed man
carrying a little black bag in his hand. He talked with Ruth; he took
up the lantern and came to look at Judith.
"So I'll know you again," he laughed. Then he went away. In fragments
which through long, empty hours her busy mind pieced together, bridging
the gaps, she grasped the rest of Trevors's plan. This man was a
physician, sent here from some one of the many mining towns in the
mountains, probably from a camp twenty or thirty miles away. He, too,
was a Trevors hireling. Should Judith ever accuse Trevors of having
brought her here, there was another story to be told. And this man
would tell it: How he had been summoned here to attend a girl who had
had a fall, who had wandered delirious through the mountains until Ruth
had found her; whom he had treated here, not daring at first to move
her for fear of permanent shock to her reason; who could give them no
help to establish her identity; who had a thousand absurd fears and
fancies and accusations to make; who in her babbling had at one time
accused Bayne Trevors of having forcibly abducted her; who at another
had cried that it was a man named Carson, a man named Lee, who had
brought her here.
Judith spent many a long hour exploring her prison, hoping to find a
way out. So far as she knew she had but one person to reckon with, Mad
Ruth. True, Trevors had said that he'd have a man on the ledge outside
day and night; Judith had never seen such a person, had never heard his
voice, and began to believe that it was a bit of bluff on Trevors's
part. But she had never again been where she could look out of the
cave's mouth, since Mad Ruth had her own pallet on the floor at the
narrowest part of the cave where it was like the neck of a monster
bottle, and always at the first sound of the girl's approach, was on
her feet to thrust her back. Clearly there was no way out of this
place of shadows except that through which she had come.
Judith sought an explanation of her imprisonment, and after long
groping she came very near the truth: Trevors would work his will with
Hampton through Hampton's faith in him and admiration for him. And, in
her absence, Hampton was the head of Blue Lake ranch.
Sunday night, hearing Mad Ruth moving cautiously, Judith raised herself
on her elbow, listening. She was confident that the woman was moving
toward the cave's mouth; she hoped wildly that Mad Ruth was tricked
into believing her asleep and was going out. Her shoes in her hands,
her stockinged feet falling lightly, Judith moved toward the mad
woman's couch.
Ruth was going out; was in fact even now slipping out of the narrow
throat of the cave and to the ledge. But Judith could not see her.
For a new, unexpected obstacle was in her way. Her outthrust hands
touched not rock walls but heavy wooden panels; she knew then that the
narrow neck of the cave was fitted with a heavy door and that it had
been drawn shut, fastened from without. In a sudden access of fury and
despair she beat at it with her two hands, crying out bitterly.
It was so dark, so inky black, and as still, save for her own outcry,
as a tomb sealed and forgotten. Such darkness, smothering hope,
suddenly was filled with vague terrors; for one worn-out and nervous as
Judith was, the darkness seemed to harbor a thousand ugly things which
watched her and mocked at her despair and reached out vile hands toward
her. She called loudly, and for answer had the crazed laugh of Mad
Ruth which floated in to her from without, but which seemed to drop
down from the void above.
"Judith, Judith," the girl whispered after the first outburst, when she
found that she was shaking pitifully. "You've got to do better than
this; I'm ashamed of you."
She went back to her couch, where she sat down seeking to hold her
jangling nerves in check. But, despite her intention, she sat shaking,
listening, listening--praying for even the footfall of her jailer.
When Ruth was with her she attempted in a hundred ways to gauge the
woman's warped brain, to seek some way to get the better of her, to
gain her trust and so to slip away. But she found that here was the
usual cunning born of madness, and that Ruth's one idea was to keep the
girl who had escaped her once but who must never escape again. There
were times when suspicion awakened in Ruth's mind, and she broke into
violent rage, so that her big body shook and her eyes in the
lantern-light were cruel and murderous, when Judith shrank back, and
tried to change the woman's thoughts. For more than once had Mad Ruth
cried out:
"I'll kill you! Kill you with my own hands to keep you here. To keep
you mine, mine, mine!"
The woman carried no weapon, but after her two hands had once gripped
the girl's shoulders, shaking her, Judith knew that Ruth needed no
weapon. Hers was a strength greater than Trevors's, greater than two
men's. If Mad Ruth saw fit to kill Judith with her two hands, she
could do it.
Sunday passed and Sunday night; Monday and Monday night. Judith knew
that she had accomplished nothing, except perhaps to make Ruth believe
that she was very much of a coward. In Ruth's mad brain that was
little enough, since this did not allay her cunning watchfulness. Then
Judith began to do something else, something actively. Just to be
occupied, was something. Her fingers selected the largest, thickest
branch from her bed of fir-boughs. It was perhaps a couple of inches
in diameter and heavy, because it was green. Silently, cautious of a
twig snapped, she began with her fingers to strip the branch, tough and
pliable. Then the limb must be cut into a length which would make it a
club to be used in a cramped space. She found a bit of stone, hard
granite, which had scaled from the walls and which had a rough edge.
With this, working many a quiet hour, she at last cut in two the
fir-bough. She lifted it in her hands, to feel the weight of it,
before she thrust it under her bed to lie hidden there against possible
need. Poor thing as it was, she felt no longer utterly defenseless.
Once Mad Ruth, lighting the lantern, had dropped a good match. When
she had gone, Judith secured it hastily, hiding it as if it were gold.
She knew that now and then Mad Ruth went down the cliffs and to the
cabin across the chasm. Always at night and at the darkest hour. When
she heard her go, Judith rose swiftly and went to the heavy door.
Always she found it locked; her shaking at it hardly budged the heavy
timbers. But though she could not see it, she studied it with her
fingers until she had a picture of it in her mind. A picture that only
increased her hopelessness. Barehanded she could never hope to break
it down or push it aside. And above it and below, and on each side,
were the solid walls of stone.
She no longer knew what day it was. She scarcely knew if it were day
or night. But, setting herself something to do so that she would not
go mad, mad as Mad Ruth, she secured for herself another weapon.
Another bit of stone which her groping fingers had found and hidden
with her club; a jagged, ugly rock half the size of a man's head. Some
little scraps of bread and meat, hoarded from her scanty meals, she hid
in her blouse.
"If I could stun her, just stun her," she got into the way of
whispering to herself. "Not kill her outright--just stun her----"
At last, seeing that she must work her own salvation with the crude
weapons given her, Judith told herself that she could wait no longer.
Another day and another and she would be weak from the confinement and
poor food and nervous, wakeful hours. She must act while the strength
was in her. And, if Trevors had spoken the truth, if there were a man
to deal with outside--well, she must shut her mind to that until she
came to it.
Mad Ruth was gone again, and Judith stood by the thick door, her heart
beating furiously while she waited. It seemed to her eager impatience
that Ruth would never come back. Then after a long, long time she
heard a little scraping sound upon the rock ledge outside, the sound of
a quick step. And then, before she heard the snarling, ugly voice
which she had heard once and had never forgotten, she knew that this
time she had waited too long, that it was not Ruth coming.
One man--and there might be others. She stepped back to her bed, hid
the two weapons and waited. She must make no mistakes now.
The door was flung open. Outside it was dark, pitch-dark. But
evidently the man entering had no fear of being seen. He threw down a
bundle of dry fagots, and set fire to them. The blaze, leaping up,
casting wavering gleams to where Judith stood, showed her plainly the
twisted, ugly face of Quinnion, his red-rimmed eyes peering at her,
filled with evil light.
XXVI
JUDITH'S PERIL
"The better to see you by, my dear!" was Quinnion's word of greeting.
Judith made no answer. She drew a little farther back into the
shadows, a little closer to the things she had hidden among the
fir-branches.
"Ho," sneered Quinnion, his mood from the first plain enough to read in
the glimpses of his face and in the added harshness of his voice.
"Timid little fawn, huh? By God, a man would say from the bluff you
put up that it was all a dream about findin' you an' the han'some Lee
in the cabin together! Stan' off all you damn please; I've come to
tame you, you little beauty of the big innocent eyes!"
Not drunk; no, Quinnion was never drunk. But, as he came a step
closer, the heavy air of the cave grew heavier with the whiskey he
carried, whiskey enough to stimulate the evil within him, not to quench
it.
"Stand back!" cried Judith, with a sharp intake of breath. "I want to
talk with you, Chris Quinnion."
"So you know who I am, do you? Well, much good it'll do you."
"I know who you are and what you are," she told him defiantly, suddenly
sick of her long hours of playing baby, knowing at the moment less fear
than hatred and loathing. "Listen to me: Bayne Trevors has come out in
the open at last; he has made his big play and is going to lose out on
it. Your one chance now is to let me go and to go yourself. Go fast
and far, Chris Quinnion. For when the law knows the sort Bayne Trevors
is and how you have worked hand and glove with him, it will know just
how much his word was worth when he swore you were with him when father
was killed! Coward and cur and murderer!"
Quinnion laughed at her.
"Little pussy-cat," he jeered. "You've got claws, have you? And you
spit and growl, do you? Want me to let you go back to that swaggering
lover of yours, do you? Back to Lee----"
"That's enough, Quinnion," she said sharply.
"Is it?" He laughed at her again, and again came on toward her, the
red-rimmed evil of his eyes driving quick fear at last into her.
"Enough? Why, curse you and curse him, I haven't begun yet! When I'm
through with you I'll go fast enough. And he can have you then an'
damn welcome to him!"
"Stop!" cried Judith.
His laughter did not reach her ears now, but as he kicked the fire at
his foot and the flames leaped up and showed his face, she read the
laughter in his soul; read it through the gleaming eyes, the twisted
mouth which showed the teeth at one side in a horrible leer. His long
arms thrust out before him, he came on.
"Oh, my God!" cried Judith. "My God!"
Then suddenly she was silent. She thought that she had known the
uttermost of fear and now for the first time did she fully know what
terror was. His strength was many times her strength, his brutality
was unbounded, she was alone with him. There was no one to call to,
not even Ruth, the mad woman.
She was shaking now, shaking so that she could barely stand. Quinnion
came on, his long arms out. . . .
She felt the strength die out of her body, grew for a moment blind and
dizzy and sick. She tried again to call out to him, to plead with him.
But her voice stuck in her throat.
He was gloating over her, a look strangely like Mad Ruth's in his eyes.
Good God! He was like Mad Ruth; the same eyes, the same long, powerful
arms, the same look of cunning! In a flash there came to her a
suspicion which was near certainty: this man was blood of Mad Ruth's
blood, bone of her bone; her son, and, like her, tainted with madness.
He shot out a long arm, his hand barely brushing her shoulder. She
shrank back. He stood, content to pause a moment, to gloat further
over her.
"You little beauty," he said, panting. "You little white and pink and
brown beauty!"
Judith had shuddered when he touched her. But a strange thing had
happened to her. His touch had angered her so that she almost forgot
to be afraid, angered her so that the loathing was gone in white hot
hatred, giving her back her old strength.
Now, though he had the brutal force of a strong man, Quinnion did not
have the swiftness of movement of an alert, desperate girl. Before he
could grasp her motive she leaped toward him and toward the bed of
boughs, found the ragged stone, and lifting it high above her head
flung it full into his face. The man staggered back, crying out in
throaty harshness, a cry of blind rage. But he did not fall, did not
pause more than a brief instant.
A little dazed, with blood in his eyes, he lunged toward her. She had
found the club now and struck with all her might, again beating into
his face and again and again. He sought to grapple with her and she
beat him back. She saw his hand go to his hip and heard him curse her,
and she leaped in on him and, panting with the blow, struck again. He
flung up his arm. She struck once more. Taking the blow full across
the face, Quinnion reeled back, stumbled at an uneven spot in the rock
floor, balanced, almost falling. . . .
Only a moment he held thus. But there was a chance to pass him in the
narrow way, and she took her chance, her heart beating wildly. And as
she shot by she struck again.
She heard him after her, shouting curses, stumbling a little, coming
on. The door was open, thank God, the door was open! She shot
through. If she could but take time to close it! But there was no
time for that; he was almost at her heels. And outside was the ledge
and the dizzy climb down.
If she slipped, if she fell, well, it would just be a clean death and
nothing more. Quinnion was but a few steps behind her. He had not
fired. Had he perhaps dropped his gun back there in the darkness? Or
was he so sure of taking her, alive and struggling, into his arms in
another moment?
She was on the ledge. It was dark, pitch-dark.
But she found a handhold, threw herself flat down and thrust her feet
out over the edge, less afraid of what lay below than what came on
behind her. She was gripping the ledge now with her hands, already
torn and bleeding, her feet swinging, touching sheer rock wall,
slipping, seeking a foothold. Quinnion was just there, above her. She
must move her hands so that he could not reach her. It seemed an
eternity that she hung there, seeking a place somewhere to set her feet.
She found it, another, lesser ledge which she had almost missed, and
knew that this way she had clambered upward with Bayne Trevors. If she
could only find another step and another before Quinnion came upon her!
She held her club in her teeth; she must not let that go.
Quinnion was over the ledge, following her. She heard his heavy
breathing, heard him cursing her again. She was going so slowly, so
slowly, and Quinnion would know the way better than she. Quinnion
would make better time in the dark.
She moved along this lower ledge. At each instant she wondered if it
were to be her last, if she were going to fall, if a swift drop through
the darkness would be the end of life.
Suddenly there was scarce room in the girl's breast for hatred of Chris
Quinnion, so filled was it with the love of life. She wanted to see
the sun come up again, she wanted the sweet breath of the dawn in her
nostrils, the beauty of a sun-lit world in her eyes. She thought of
Bud Lee.
Clinging to the rocks, hanging on desperately, taking a score of
desperate chances momentarily, she made her way on and down. She found
scant handhold and, almost falling, dropped her club, heard it strike,
strike again. Black as the night was, its gloom was less than that of
the cavern to which Judith had grown accustomed; little by little she
began to make out the broken surface of the cliffs. The chasm below
was a pool of ink; above were the little stars; in the eastern sky, low
down, was a promise of the rising moon.
The surge of quickening hope came into her heart. Had she hurt
Quinnion more than she had guessed? For, slowly as she made her
hazardous way down, it seemed to her that Quinnion came even more
slowly. Could she but once get down into the gorge below, could she
slip along the course of the racing stream, she might run and the sound
of her steps would be lost even to her own ears in the sound of the
water; the sight of her flying body would be lost to Quinnion's eyes.
Then she heard him laughing above her. Laughing, with a snarl and a
curse in his laugh, and something of malicious triumph. Was he so
certain of her then?
"Ruth!" called Quinnion. "Oh, Ruth! The girl's gettin' away. Goin'
down the rocks. Head her off at the bottom."
Judith had found, because her fate was good to her, the long slanting
crack in the wall of rock up which she had come that day with Bayne
Trevors. There was still danger of a fall, but the danger was less now
than it had been ten seconds ago. She could move more swiftly now and
confidence had begun to com to her that she could elude Quinnion. But
now, suddenly, she heard Mad Ruth's voice screaming a shrill answer to
Quinnion's shout; knew that Ruth had been in her cabin across the gorge
and was running to intercept her at the foot of the cliffs.
Well, still there was a race to be run and the odds not entirely
uneven. Ruth must descend the other side of the canon, get down into
the gorge, make the crossing, which, so far as Judith knew, might be
farther up or farther down stream, come to the cliffs below Judith
before Judith herself made her way down.
Again Judith took what risks the night and the rocks offered her and
thanked God in her soul that it was given her to take a chance in the
open, to use her own muscles in her own fight, not to lie longer,
playing the part of a do-nothing. Now and then, across the void, there
floated to her a little moaning cry from the mad woman's lips. Now and
then she heard a curse from Quinnion above; often from above her, from
below her own feet, from across the chasm, dropping stones, falling
almost sheer, told of haste and death which might come from an unlucky
step.
Fast as Judith went now, having a fair sort of cliff trail under her,
Mad Ruth went faster. The gorge measured a scant fifty feet between
them and the girl's alert senses told her that already Ruth was on a
level with her. Ruth was winning in the desperate race. She knew her
way down so perfectly, her heart was so filled with madness, that
danger was nothing to her.
Down and down climbed Judith, caution wedded to haste, as she told
herself that she had a chance yet, that that chance must not be tossed
away in a fall, though it were but a few feet. She must have no
sprained ankle if she meant to see the sun rise to-morrow.
The flush had brightened in the sky where the moon was so near the
ridge. The moon, too, had joined in the race; with one quick glance
toward it, Judith again discarded caution for haste. She must get down
into the floor of the canon before the moonlight did; she must be
running before its radiance showed her out to Quinnion and Ruth.
Her hands were cut and bleeding, her heart was beating wildly, already
her body was sore and bruised. But these things she did not know. She
only knew that Quinnion was still coming on above her, and coming more
swiftly now, quite as swiftly as she herself moved, since his feet,
too, were in the better trail; that Mad Ruth had completed the descent
across the chasm and by now must be crossing the stream upon some
fallen log or rude bridge; that one minute more, or perhaps two, would
decide her fate.
She could see the stream, glinting palely in the starlight. It seemed
very near; its thunder filled her ears. Down she went and down, down
until at last she was not ten feet above its surface, with a strip of
gently sloping bank just under her. She stooped, took firm hold upon a
knob of boulder, prepared to swing down and drop to the bottom. And,
as she stooped, she heard a little whining moan just under her and
straightened up, tense and terrified. Mad Ruth was there before her.
Mad Ruth was waiting.
XXVII
ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS
And Quinnion was coming on. She was trapped, caught between the two of
them. She heard Quinnion laugh again; he, too, had heard Ruth.
"Oh, God help me!" whispered Judith. "God help me now!"
There was no time to hesitate. If she stood here, Quinnion would in a
moment wrap his arms about her; if she dropped down, she would be in
the frenzied clutch of Mad Ruth.
A second she crouched, peering down into the gloom below her, seeking
to make out the form of the mad woman. Then she did not merely drop,
but jumped, landing fair upon the waiting figure, striking with her
boots on Mad Ruth's ample shoulders. A scream of rage from Ruth, a
little, strangling cry from Judith, and the two fell together. Ruth
clutched as she went down and a hand closed over the girl's ankle.
Judith rolled, struck again with the free boot, twisted sharply and
felt the grip torn loose from her ankle. She was free.
She jumped up and ran and knew that Ruth was running just behind her,
screaming terribly. Judith fell, and her heart grew sick within her.
But again she was up just as Ruth's hand clutched at her skirt,
clutched and was torn away as Judith ran on. Quinnion cursed from
above as she had not yet heard him curse. Ruth reviled both her and
Quinnion for having let her go.
Judith was running swiftly and felt that she could get the better of
the heavier, older woman in a race of this sort. She stumbled and
fell, and fear again gripped her; it seemed so long before she could
rise and clamber over a fallen log and race on. But the darkness which
tricked her protected her at the same time, playing no favorites now.
Ruth, too, had fallen; Ruth, too, was frenzied at the brief delay.