CHAPTER X
HOLLISTER
What elements combine to make a "bad man"? Science would hold him not entirely responsible. Three-quarters of his human equation results from heredity and environment. Impure blood feeding fibers and tissues prenatally disposed to laxness, supplymg degraded nerve centers. Selfishness innate in all of us, the giving way to every evil impulse that panders to demoralized appetites, gradual accentuation of greed and lust and bullying tendency. Conditions inherited as well as physical negations, bad breeding, the faults and sins and diseases of past generations. Those, and a will unable to restrain the wild horses that tug and pull and chafe against all restraint and moderation until, given free rein at last, they run away with the driver who lashes them on, and who must, in our social order, be held primarily responsible. Human justice deals little in psychology, nor is this a brief for Hollister. Yet such congenital faults and personal follies—evil company, slack women, strong liquors, had made him the utter blackguard that he was.
He had carried off Mary Burrows to satisfy a lust composed of physical perversion and the wish to humiliate her gentility, her poise that had made a mockery of his first visit to Ghost Mountain. Also, he would even matters with Sheridan. He guessed that Sheridan was in love with her, it suited him to believe it. He meant to leave her a broken thing from which even a lover must turn away, wilfully to destroy the white flower of her innocence and trample it underfoot; unless he should decide to wear it for a while, a besmirched and wilted trophy to his prowess.
And he was half crazed with the last brewing of Vasquez, a brew no longer distilled by that Mexican scoundrel, but crudely mixed in laziness and the desire for quick returns.
Hollister foresaw the certainty of pursuit, the possibility of Sheridan striking his trail, though he held such a possibility remote, sure that he had drugged Juanita deep enough to hold her insensible for twenty-four hours. But he had made assurance doubly sure by posting Pedro and Ramon Guiterrez in ambush by the mountain gap. The two other members of his abduction party had departed for Pioche with enough money to still their tongues, bound to plunge into a debauch.
So he rode on with Mary Burrows confidently, towards the Painted Rocks. Her wrists were still bound, and their lashing was attached to the horn of her saddle over which her reins were draped. He had attached a leading rein to her horse's bridle. His face was still tender from the removal of the tar with which Sheridan had smeared it, inflamed by liquor, the sun and the hellish furnace stoking within his soul. He regarded his captive with a gloating grin that faded gradually, giving place to fury, as she absolutely disregarded him, his taunts, his threats. The glance she occasionally gave him seared him with its steady flame of purity and disdain.
For Mary Burrows steadily fought down the terror that occasionally rose in a wave that threatened to overwhelm her spirit. Where Hollister had inherited to his disadvantage she had been bequeathed the attributes of clean-minded, clean-living ancestors. She was as different from him as a shining shield differs from a tarnished sheet of base metal. She knew what might lie at her journey's end, faced it and dismissed it, knowing that way lay panic and disaster. She meant to use her wits and, to that end, she managed to retreat within herself, deaf and blind to her captor while she revolved possibilities of escape.
She believed that Thora would ultimately free herself from her bonds but she realized also that by the time she was able to signal to the Circle S interpreting the last glance that had passed between them, Sheridan and his outfit might be well away on outdoor duties. But she would not allow herself to see the hopelessness of her case.
Once Hollister turned aside from his direct trail at the brackish spring. He refilled the canteens and offered her a drink from a small cup. He cringed before her look of utter loathing though he tried to turn it into a shrug and then bathed his overheated face before watering both horses.
As they advanced into the desert portion of the mesa the girl's vitality lowered. The mere thought of the drink she had refused tortured her. The pitiless sunrays smashed down, drying the tissues of her mouth, burning her exposed wrists. Her lips began to crack and her tongue to swell. Lack of food assailed her. Hope began to dwindle. She knew every swallow Hollister took of the liquor in his flask added fuel to the fire of his intentions. He seemed hardened against the stuff and the possibility of his collapse under its influence became remote. She concentrated every failing faculty in petition to her God, for a way of escape to open, even if it had to lead through the gate to death. She lost all sense of pain, of outward things, in the merciful hypnosis of prayer, maintaining her balance on the plodding horse automatically.
It was close to noon when his harsh chuckle and his words broke through the shell of her weariness. Her concentrated prayer had numbed her spirit and her body reacted. If God had listened, he had heard.
"Look ahead, pretty," jeered Hollister. "'Pretty' was what that fat Swedish pig called you, an' it suits you. There's where we're goin' to stay till mornin', you an' me."
She gazed under the rim of her hat with sun-scorched eyes at a rainbow dazzle of cliffs that lifted suddenly from the desert. But she was indifferent to their beauty, too exhausted to take in the details of the wonderful place. Knowing that here she must rally her forces, she tried to clear her jaded energies, finding a reserve of force that promised help, striving to clear her wits for the final issue.
The Painted Rocks, El Pueblo del Silencio, thrust up from the sands in two walls of miraculous form and color, a ravine between escarpments of dazzling white, of pinkish grey, orange, salmon; capped here and there by dark red lava, cliffs caverned and indented by purple and mauve hollows where the shadows quivered in the fierce sunlight. They rose five hundred feet and more in great ledges piled with debris, where tons upon tons of burned clay had avalanched down, weathered and leavened by changing temperatures, lying like broken bricks upon the terraces of an American Babylon.
The great marvel of the City of Silence was the startling semblance of ruins, at the base of the cliffs, perched on the slopes and terraces. Here were arcades, castles, palaces, cathedrals, towers and domes, a bewildering fantasy of Oriental and Gothic forms, spires, gargoyles, pedestalled sphinxes, mutilated statues set in niches. There were walls, pierced with doors and windows, of a masonry that appeared to have defied Time, to be allied exactly with the fragments of burned clay heaped all about them.
Four hundred feet up on a grey, ribbed slope stood a citadel, a fortress of castellated ramparts, steep, buttressed, dreamy in the sun like a stronghold of Granada. Below, at half the height, were columns of stately symmetry. To the left, on the summit of the cliff, colossal, supremely dignified in a thousand-foot façade, ran a replica of the Acropolis.
They entered the ravine, treeless, waterless, though everywhere the place showed evidences of floods of torrents born of cloudbursts, the chief cause of the sculpturing and the smooth, clean lines of the mock buildings. There were Joshua trees, clumps of greasewood and silver sage. Banks were splotched with vivid bloom, like the scraping of a Futurist's palette; magenta Mariposa tulips, scarlet Indian Painter's-brush, baby-blue-eyes, wide cupped, staring innocently up at the masses of clay and gravelly sand and silica, bound with a cementing substance here and there that preserved the architectural shapes.
There was one apparent edifice that resembled a cathedral so exactly it seemed impossible that it had not been actually designed and raised by man, then ruined by Huns and the devastation softened by time. It showed even the suggestion of a stained-glass window, cracked across its front, mullioned, corbelled, colored in vivid hues. The entrance was twenty-five feet high, Gothic pointed, solidly blocked twelve feet in as if to preserve the shrine from further desecration. The mutilated images of saints appeared to be set in niches all about the portal. There was a structure like a heavily buttressed Spanish Mission, of white stone, with an entrance fissure that aped a ruined doorway and spaces where bells might have hung. Everywhere was inspiration for architect, despair for artist.
A side ravine opened to the left and they turned into it.
"Bonanza Canyon, pretty," announced Hollister. "A lucky guy turned up a six-hundred dollar nugget in this place one time. Me, I'm bringing in my own treasure," he added with a drunken chuckle.
It was a box-canyon, with lesser monuments, lower walls, pitted with caves. A tiny, crystal stream wandered through a grassy meadow, lost in the sands of the main canyon. The turf was starred with flowers. Hollister reined in the horses, dismounted, staggering towards her. He untied the leather thong from the horn and released her swollen wrists.
"If you'll promise not to run away from me, pretty, you can get a drink and wash up a bit in the creek. I'll have to tie you up again presently. I ain't worryin' about being followed and I'm dead on my feet for sleep. I'm going to put the horses in a hideout where I've got a cache of grub, an' then, after I've tucked you away in a spot I know, I'm goin' to turn in for a nap till supper time. Will you behave? I'll promise not to look. Not now."
She ignored his leer, she barely sensed anything he said save that he was going to give her a respite. She looked at him closely and marked the fact that sleep was threatening him with blinking eyes and wide yawns. He had been up all night and he was sodden with liquor. He might sleep for hours. Surely in that time she could devise something?
She nodded her parole and he let her go to the brook. The horses were already muzzling at the water until Hollister jerked them away, and they fell to grazing while she knelt and drank, swallowing painfully, intensely grateful for the cool water that gave her back some measure of strength. She rolled up her sleeves and turned down the collar of her waist, laving her wrists in the current, ridding herself of the desert dust as best she could, drying her skin with her handkerchief.
She rose and walked back to him. To attempt to run was useless. She was stiff from the saddle, weak from need of nourishment. Hollister was yawning prodigiously, fighting sleep. Her eyes wandered to the butt of his gun. If she could grab it—a shot at him—or herself?
He snickered.
"You're like a third-rate boxer, pretty. You telegraph what you aim to do. I ain't asleep yet. Hold out your hands. We'll let grub go till later. I ain't hungry myself. Unless you want a bite?"
She resigned herself to be rebound, standing with closed eyes, not to see his face. He tied her wrists, stooped and bound her ankles. Then he picked up her light weight in his arms, while she shuddered and turned away her face, fearing a caress. But he was too dull with lack of sleep to think of anything else. Stumbling a little, he bore her to the side hill, up a slope into a narrow vaulted place that had a floor of sand. He lifted her and set her up in a niche. Then he gagged her with her own handkerchief, tying his bandanna on top of it. The contact with the fabric, warm and moist from his neck, sickened her.
"I'll be back after a while, pretty," he mocked and she heard his footsteps gritting on the silt as he went out. It was dusky and cool in the cavern, the air was sweet and dry. And her bed was water-smoothed. He had bound her hands in front of her and she lay with some measure of comfort. In the absence of Hollister a measure of peace came to her. Over and over she revolved possible plans, rejecting them, fighting against despair. At last, from sheer exhaustion of mind and body, she relapsed into a coma that was half swoon, half sleep.
She awoke to the fragrance of coffee, of crisping bacon and the flicker of a fire. Wavering rays javelined up through the twilight of the cave towards a roof that she could not determine. She saw the entrance as a jagged line of orange light. Sunset had come.
The smell of the food tugged at her. Her mouth watered, her stomach clamored for sustenance. She had resolved already, nauseating as was the idea of accepting food prepared by Hollister, to share the meal he had mentioned. It would give her strength. He would have to unbind her. She might find some weapon, perhaps a loose stone, if she could not snatch his gun. She turned on her side, peering down.
Hollister was bending above a snapping fire set between stones. On it was a blackened coffee pot, bacon was frying in a pan. He held this by the handle and, as she gazed, drew back, rubbing his eyes, swearing at the smoke. Then he looked up and saw her by the glow of the fire.
"Supper's nigh ready, pretty," he said. "Kisses for dessert."
The smoke seemed to bother him again. He cursed it viciously and set down the pan, standing to empty his flask, throwing it into the back of the cave to smash and tinkle against the rock. As he stooped again for the pan she saw him fumble for it uncertainly, groping in the dirt. His fingers came in contact with the hot ashes and he withdrew them with a string of oaths.
He straightened up once more, his face showing drawn and puzzled, pressing his fingertips closely to his eyeballs, the wonder on his features changing to dismay, to fear. The girl held her breath. Something was happening.
A broken cry came from him. He staggered back, drawing his hands away slowly from his face, extending them gropingly at arms' length. He took uncertain steps forward and walked fairly into the fire, knocking over the coffee pot. His repeated cry, shrill, tremulous, held the swift horror of a wild thing that has stepped into a trap.
"God! I'm blind. Blind!"
He had sprung back from the hot ashes, losing his bearings, retreating out of the zone of firelight into the shadows, where she could see him only as a vague and wavering figure, coming back again into her view, his jaw fallen, his eyes crimsonly reflecting the fire, horror stamped on his face while her own heart leaped. Hollister was blind. His corrupt habits had defeated his more evil purposes. The crude, undistilled brew had paralyzed his optic nerves. Frenzied rage, coupled to fear, possessed him.
"Where are you?" he cried. "Damn you, slide out of that and come down to me. You can't get away. Come down!"
Some feel of draught from the entrance gave him its direction and he made his way uncertainly towards it. She saw him outlined against the dying light, his fingers making sure of the exit. Then he blocked it.
"Come down," he cried again. "Curse you for a jade, speak up!" His voice faltered, whimpered like a child in the dark. Even if she obeyed him, unless he was guided by the sound of her voice he could not find her. So she prayed and believed. Bound as her ankles were, she could not do more than wriggle from the niche to the floor and this she determined not to do. Her silence and his own impotence drove him to wild fury and he snatched out his gun.
"Think you've got the best of me, do you?" he yelled and fired, to right, to left. The spurts of fire stabbed the dusk, the bullets spent themselves against the walls. One entered the hollow where she flattened and she felt it drop, its energy baffled, upon her body. The narrow rift was filled with the acrid gases of the exploded powder. That mingled with a musty odor and, down from the top of the cave, fluttered a mass of bats, making for the entrance, flapping about Hollister, clinging to him like moths to a sweetened tree. He fought them off in a panic and, as they crowded down, fled from the cave.
She heard him stumble down the slope, thought that he fell, heard him cursing as he seemed to be trying to find his way back, and prayed that he might not do so. Nor did he, but shuffled off, direction lost.
Silence came. The mouth of the cave darkened, the fire flared and died, while she crouched, hardly daring to breathe.
With the ending of the major suspense and dread the faculty of co-ordination came fully back to her. She breathed freely, despite the gag in her mouth, she thought clearly. She had tugged vainly through the afternoon at her bonds, made with leather thongs taken from Hollister's saddle, craftily moistened before using. They refused to loosen though she had chafed her wrists raw and lacerated her gums trying to bite through the seasoned stuff of rawhide. The thongs were so wrapped about her wrists that she could barely touch the knots in the handkerchiefs tied at the back of her neck, knotted so closely that her aching jaws seemed dislocated, and she could form no idea of which twist to work at. Often she had thought she only tightened the ligatures.
Now she made fresh effort. The horror of Hollister possibly finding his way back to the cave and finding her there was a vivid one. She could fancy him groping along the face of the cliffs until he found the opening. This and the steadily increasing chill of the night spurred her to fresh efforts. By an inspiration that had been lacking to her tired, scared brain, she crooked her legs, doubling them close to her slender body, squatting in the niche, head bowed to avoid its roof.
And she found that she could slip her bound hands down towards her feet over her knees, far enough to pluck at the ankle knots. They were stubborn. The shrunken leather was almost as tough as metal and the fastenings were both intricate and sunken into each other in the drying process. For hours, with intervals where she lay back exhausted, wet with the perspiration of her efforts that, drying, chilled her to the bone in the low temperature, she worked until her fingertips were sore and bleeding, her nails torn and broken.
Once a rumbling roar sounded overhead and her overstrung nerves quivered until she shook like a leaf in a gale, cowering, dreading the unknown. It increased, fragments leaped beyond the black entrance and she knew it for an avalanche of the crumbled clay, loosened by the reaction of the temperature after the heat of the day. It might have walled her in. She shivered to a lively sense of her still present weakness.
At last the leather yielded, loosened, looped and unlooped. Her ankles were free though her legs were numb to the knees, cramped in the muscles of her calf with spells of agony until she managed to chafe out the contractions. Half hysterically now, she attacked the gag and at last she got it clear of her jaws, slipped it down to her neck, and drew in deep breaths to her lungs. There had been no place on the water-washed rock against which she could rub the thongs with any hope of severing them. The hide was tougher than the sandrock. For the present her hands had to remain tied until she could discover some flinty edge. She swung her legs over the edge of the niche and then a sudden faintness swooped down upon her and she had to battle it off before she half slid, half dropped to the ground, landing clumsily on all fours in the sand.
She knew what was the chief matter. She needed food. The memory of the bacon was keen and she dragged herself about in the cold dark until she found the pan and then, one by one, the half-cooked strips, carrying them to her eager mouth. She found the coffee pot, managed to grip the handle and found it not quite empty. There was grit on the bacon, the little coffee left was thick with grounds, but she munched and swallowed all as manna from the wilderness, finding fresh strength running through her.
As she straightened up from her meal, she saw something that made her shrink back against the wall of the cave, horror tingling over her scalp and down her spine, seeming to bristle the soft hairs of her neck. Two greenly lambent eyes glowed in the dark entrance, she caught the inquisitive sniff of some wild beast that had scented the bacon, or her. Her hands were tied. She was utterly defenceless against claws and fangs. The eyes lowered and she imagined the head of a mountain lion sinking as the brute crouched for a spring. To move was to invite destruction. For seconds she waited in an agony of apprehension. The brute sniffed again. The thought came to her, welcome as a drawn sword, that lions did not sniff. They growled. This was a cowardly coyote, disturbed perhaps by the falling rockslide, seeking a refuge or tempted by the bacon with which she had forestalled it. If it scented her it was with doubt and fear. Even if it was a lion she could not stand the suspense. She summoned her bravery to moisten her parching throat and suddenly shouted. The echoes of the cave multiplied her voice and, instantly, the eyes vanished. She fancied that she caught the soft pad of retreating paws, the phantom of a slinking body. And then she saw that the fissure entrance was slowly revealing itself. Its black void became deep purple, then grey. Little by little it changed until she could see the opposing cliffs glowing rose and orange, harbingers of hope.
The light beckoned her. The cave was filled with terrors, past, overcome, but leaving the stamp of ordeal. Nor could she endure the bare thought of remaining in a cave where Hollister might find her, blind as he was. The memory of the spurts of fire from his gun, the spatter of bullets, the thud of the spent missile against the inner side of the niche, was too real. She went to the entrance, craning out, looking for Hollister. He might be hiding near. A sound, the scuffle of loosened shale, might give him what he was waiting for, some sense of her whereabouts and direction.
There was no man in sight. A rock-rabbit scudded across from a cranny and started nibbling at the herbage before the dew went off. A lizard flitted out from a crevice and halted, surveying her with doubtful beady eyes, while its jeweled throat palpitated in waves of green and crimson. High up, two buzzards were wheeling in opposing circles. She ventured out, careful of her balance under her handicap of bound hands. She thought of the horses but, even if she found them, she could not saddle nor manage them. And the place was seeped with the threat of Hollister. She must get away. Away.
She reached the turfy strip, treading lightly, kneeled by the brook and drank her fill. Then she got up and went on down to the main canyon, turning east towards the sunrise and the desert, towards the way by which she must return, looking here and there for some sharp-edged rock, fearful every moment of a shout from Hollister, a volley of shots.
She tried to remember what she had heard of such blindness. She believed it to be alcoholic, but she could not be sure how long it might last and she could conceive with what diabolical cunning Hollister might wait for his revenge after she had failed to answer him in the cave.
She was almost out of the canyon of the Painted Rocks when she found a large fragment of lava capping fallen from some pillar or pyramid that had succumbed to the weather. The stuff was flinty and she placed herself on one knee beside it, chafing the thongs at her wrists against its edges. It was clumsy work and the sides of her hands were soon bleeding. But it was effective and, finally, she was free. She could walk, could climb, could choose and hurl a stone for a weapon, at need. But she could not rid herself, overwrought as she was, of the suggestion that some one was following her, dogging her footsteps, hidden behind rock masses, coming ever closer. It drove her out of the City of Silence, out into the desert, plodding through the shifty sand.