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and steady blow all the time, and violent puffs at intervals, and sudden
whirling currents. The clouds spread over the valley, rolling swiftly and low,
and twilight faded into a sweeping darkness. Then the singing of the wind in
the caves drowned the swift roar of rustling leaves; then the song swelled to
a mourning, moaning wail; then with the gathering power of the wind the wail
changed to a shriek. Steadily the wind strengthened and constantly the strange
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sound changed.
The last bit of blue sky yielded to the on-sweep of clouds. Like angry surf
the pale gleams of gray, amid the purple of that scudding front, swept beyond
the eastern rampart of the valley. The purple deepened to black. Broad sheets
of lightning flared over the western wall. There were not yet any ropes or
zigzag streaks darting down through the gathering darkness. The storm center
was still beyond Surprise Valley.
Listen! & Listen! cried Bess, with her lips close to Venters s ear. You ll
hear Oldring s knell!
What s that?
Oldring s knell. When the wind blows a gale in the caves it makes what the
rustlers call Oldring s knell. They believe it bodes his death. I think he
believes so, too. It s not like any sound on earth& It s beginning. Listen!
The gale swooped down with a hollow unearthly howl. It yelled and pealed and
shrilled and shrieked. It was made up of a thousand piercing cries. It was a
rising and a moving sound. Beginning at the western break of the valley, it
rushed along each gigantic cliff, whistling into the caves and cracks, to
mount in power, to bellow a blast through the great stone bridge. Gone, as
into an engulfing roar of surging waters, it seemed to shoot back and begin
all over again.
It was only wind, thought Venters. Here sped and shrieked the sculptor that
carved out the wonderful caves in the cliffs. It was only a gale, but as
Venters listened, as his ears became accustomed to the fury and strife, out of
it all or through it or above it pealed low and perfectly clear and
persistently uniform a strange sound that had no counterpart in all the sounds
of the elements. It was not of earth or of life. It was the grief and agony of
the gale. A knell of all upon which it blew!
Black night enfolded the valley. Venters could not see his companion, and
knew of her presence only through the tightening hold of her hand on his arm.
He felt the dogs huddle closer to him. Suddenly the dense, black vault
overhead split asunder to a blue-white, dazzling streak of lightning. The
whole valley lay vividly clear and luminously bright in his sight. Upreared,
vast and magnificent, the stone bridge glimmered like some grand god of storm
in the lightning s fire. Then all flashed black again blacker than pitch a
thick, impenetrable coal-blackness. And there came a ripping, crashing report.
Instantly an echo resounded with clapping crash. The initial report was
nothing to the echo. It was a terrible, living, reverberating, detonating
crash. The wall threw the sound across, and could have made no greater roar if
it had slipped in avalanche. From cliff to cliff the echo went in crashing
retort and banged in lessening power, and boomed in thinner volume, and
clapped weaker and weaker till a final clap could not reach across the waiting
cliff.
In the pitchy darkness Venters led Bess, and, groping his way, by feel of
hand found the entrance to her cave and lifted her up. On the instant a
blinding flash of lightning illumined the cave and all about him. He saw
Bess s face white now with dark, frightened eyes. He saw the dogs leap up, and
he followed suit. The golden glare vanished; all was black; then came the
splitting crack and the infernal din of echoes.
Bess shrank closer to him and closer, found his hands, and pressed them
tightly over her ears, and dropped her face upon his shoulder, and hid her
eyes.
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Then the storm burst with a succession of ropes and streaks and shafts of
lightning, playing continuously, filling the valley with a broken radiance;
and the cracking shots followed each other swiftly till the echoes blended in
one fearful, deafening crash.
Venters looked out upon the beautiful valley beautiful now as never before
mystic in its transparent, luminous gloom, weird in the quivering, golden
haze of lightning. The dark spruces were tipped with glimmering lights; the
aspens bent low in the winds, as waves in a tempest at sea; the forest of oaks
tossed wildly and shone with gleams of fire. Across the valley the huge cavern
of the cliff-dwellers yawned in the glare, every little black window as clear
as at noonday; but the night and the storm added to their tragedy. Flung
arching to the black clouds, the great stone bridge seemed to bear the brunt
of the storm. It caught the full fury of the rushing wind. It lifted its noble
crown to meet the lightnings. Venters thought of the eagles and their lofty
nest in a niche under the arch. A driving pall of rain, black as the clouds,
came sweeping on to obscure the bridge and the gleaming walls and the shining
valley. The lightning played incessantly, streaking down through opaque
darkness of rain. The roar of the wind, with its strange knell and the
re-crashing echoes, mingled with the roar of the flooding rain, and all
seemingly were deadened and drowned in a world of sound.
In the dimming pale light Venters looked down upon the girl. She had sunk
into his arms, upon his breast, burying her face. She clung to him. He felt
the softness of her, and the warmth, and the quick heave of her breast. He saw
the dark, slender, graceful outline of her form. A woman lay in his arms! And
he held her closer. He who had been alone in the sad, silent watches of the
night was not now and never must be again alone. He who had yearned for the
touch of a hand felt the long tremble and the heart-beat of a woman. By what
strange chance had she come to love him! By what change by what marvel had
she grown into a treasure!
No more did he listen to the rush and roar of the thunder-storm. For with the
touch of clinging hands and the throbbing bosom he grew conscious of an inward
storm the tingling of new chords of thought, strange music of unheard,
joyous bells sad dreams dawning to wakeful delight, dissolving doubt,
resurging hope, force, fire, and freedom, unutterable sweetness of desire. A
storm in his breast a storm of real love.
Chapter 14
West Wind
When the storm abated Venters sought his own cave, and late in the night, as
his blood cooled and the stir and throb and thrill subsided, he fell asleep.
With the breaking of dawn his eyes unclosed. The valley lay drenched and
bathed, a burnished oval of glittering green. The rain-washed walls glistened
in the morning light. Waterfalls of many forms poured over the rims. One, a
broad, lacy sheet, thin as smoke, slid over the western notch and struck a
ledge in its downward fall, to bound into broader leap, to burst far below
into white and gold and rosy mist.
Venters prepared for the day, knowing himself a different man.
It s a glorious morning, said Bess, in greeting.
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