Through the Dragon's Valley

by Anna Alice Chapin

 

Through the
Dragon’s Valley

by Anna Alice Chapin
Author of “In the Shadow of the Bat,” “Burning Steel,”
“The Celestial Sphinx,” etc.

TRY as she would, Lois could not move. She tried to look about her, and it was quite dark. And then, motionless, unseeing, she made a supreme effort to think, to remember.

At first this failed, too. She did not know where she was, or what had happened. The most active achievement of which the brain seemed capable was a dim and confused impression of something overwhelmingly distressing—worse, agonizing. Nothing was concrete, nothing clear.

Then, apparently without her own volition or effort, her right leg moved a little, convulsively. And with the movement came a stab of pain so poignant that she gasped out a cry that was cracked and harsh in her own ears.

The pain roused her. Like a dagger thrust it reached her numb and sluggish brain and lashed it into consciousness. The sensation was as horrible as the sudden blaze of light in the eyes of a person who has been blind for years. It was clarifying, but it meant anguish.

She remembered it all now: the little dinner for six at the most popular restaurant in town: then the spin out to the Joybell Amusement Park in Harry Crawford’s big machine; the ridiculous things they had done, each having solemnly vowed at starting to do everything once! She remembered it with growing clearness, and the physical pain grew with her returning faculties, until she seemed to be only one great hurt from head to foot.

She remembered Wanda Herron, Wanda in her pale blue frock like a Botticelli angel. How pretty and gentle she had looked! No wonder her fiancée, Dick Maynard, adored her: she was essentially the type that he would adore—and all other men, doubtless. She was very small and very fair, with a mouth like a flower and eyes like a child’s: and an atmosphere about her suggested something wonderfully fragile and precious which had always been, and must always be, kept safe from the rough and rude jostling of this indubitably rough and rude old world. Lois, who had had to battle with life since early girlhood, and who at twenty-eight was entirely self-reliant, and, outwardly, a little prosaic, had been obliged to crush a good many queer half-sad, half-cynical thoughts anent the difference between her and Wanda.

And Lois was not an envious woman. She did not envy Wanda her sheltered existence, or the comfortable income which kept her exquisitely dressed, exquisitely cared for, and exquisitely protected from all sordid struggle; she would not have envied her if she had owned a crown and throne among her other trinkets; she did not really envy her her beauty, save insomuch as it chanced to be a type more pleasing to Dick Maynard than her own dark and vivid good looks.

There was the whole thing in a nutshell. Lois envied Wanda the possession of Dick’s love. She herself had cared for him for so long now that the caring had become part of her: she worked and ate and moved about with it, lay down with it at night, and rose up with it in the morning. Sometimes she smiled a little secret smile in thinking how amazed people would be if they knew that the conviction inside Lois Cranmer’s well-balanced brain was that there was nothing on earth the least bit important but Dick Maynard!

Her thoughts, and the increasing pain that racked her body with returning life and circulation, became jumbled up together, and a merciful blankness wrapped her once more.

This too passed, after what seemed a century or two. The pain was sharp and steady, now, but she was stronger. Her mind was entirely clear and working normally, save that it insisted on flinging recollections at her spasmodically, in detached scraps. The absence of continuity worried her, for she had a strong, and—save in regard to Dick!—a logical mentality.

She remembered with a sudden flash Ella Minton, the rich widow with the cherubic proportions and the ornate jewels, who had chaperoned them. She had a round pink face and a giggle, and she was wearing diamonds—diamonds at an Amusement Park! And then, hot upon the flashing picture of Mrs. Minton, came another, sudden, startling, a tense, ugly moment balanced on the theme of—what was it that glittered so? Diamonds! That was it—diamonds! They were all at a little table having iced drinks, and Ella Minton was talking:

“I tell you I laid both those pins down on the table while I was fixing my veil after the chutes! Someone has them—I don’t care! Someone.” That memory was going now, she must try very hard to capture it, to fix it before it disappeared perhaps forever. “They are very valuable—my husband gave them to me——” Then came Harry Crawford’s soothing voice: “We’ll go and report it at the police station, Mrs. Minton. Jerry, you’ll stay with the girls, won’t you? We’ll meet you at Anderson’s beer garden in half an hour.” And Jerry Barlow had said: “Sure. Come on, girls, we’ll go and try the prize thriller of the place. It’s called ‘Through the Dragon’s Valley,’ and they say it is a peach.”

All clear now. She and Wanda and Jerry had gone to try the scenic railway known as “Through the Dragon’s Valley.” On the thick black darkness that now surrounded her, Lois could still see mentally the high garish archway with the name in brilliant red letters flaring above it; could see the white ticket-cage with the smiling girl in the gold-braided cap: could see the waiting crowds, the glimpses of huge, cheap scenery that masked the dizzy curves and dips of the railway, the incoming car with its load of screaming, shouting, laughing people, bent on demonstrating how close the extremes of sensation, pleasurable and the reverse, can come to actually meeting. And then the getting in the car herself, with Wanda. Only room for two on the front seat, and they wanted to go there. Jerry Barlow had to squeeze in at the very rear of the car.

Then followed the gliding rush into the first tunnel, the sickening, fascinating plunge downward, the leap up to the crest of that hill of wooden scaffolding, with the stars overhead, a million lights around and beneath them, a silver glimmer of the sea not far away. She recalled that Wanda had clung to her and cried, gasping: “Oh, this is the worst yet. I’m frightened, Lois!” and that at the moment she had been thinking: “It’s got all the excitement of dying! That’s why we like it!”

Then—something had happened to the universe. The sky had cracked asunder, the stars crashed into fragments, there was no more world at all. Only a monstrous, roaring confusion of all things, a return, thunderous and cataclysmic, to the cosmic chaos.

Then nothing more till the pain.

It appeared that she was not the only one in pain. A faint, ceaseless moaning finally made itself heard by her hitherto unheeding ears. When she noticed it at last she knew that she had been hearing it subconsciously for some time. She moistened her lips and tried to call out, but it was only after several vain attempts that she was able to croak harshly: “Who is it?”

A low, sobbing cry—half of pain and half of relief answered her, Then Wanda’s voice, weak and tremulous, came to her from close by: “Oh, Lois—thank Heaven! I thought everyone in the world was dead but me, and that I’d have to die here alone in the dark!”

Lois smiled faintly and a little sardonically. It was so like Wanda to see the situation only as it affected herself! But, still in the painful, hoarse tone which was all her bruised lungs seemed able to emit, she said: “I can’t go to you, Wanda. There’s something big and heavy—part of the car, I think lying across me. Are you badly hurt?”

“I ache all over,” wailed Wanda. “And my arm——”

“Yes, I know,” interrupted the older girl with as much impatience as she had strength for. “The only wonder is that we weren’t both killed instantly. I’m afraid most of the others were, poor souls! I meant are you—crushed, or anything like that? Can you move, do you think?”

“Ye-es—but it hurts.”

“Never mind. Crawl over here, and we’ll see if together we can get this thing off me.”

Wanda crept to her side, stopping often to moan and declare she couldn’t do it. And by the time she had reached Lois, what little nerve and strength she may have had to begin with were gone. She cast herself on the other’s shoulder—causing Lois to wince with shut lips—and gave herself up to pure hysteria.

Sobbing frantically, she clung to Lois and gasped out over and over again: “Oh, Lois—I’m going to die—here in this awful place! I’m going to die—die—die! Oh, I can't die, I shan’t die—Lois, what shall we do if they don’t get us out?”

“You’ve been saying it over several times,” said Lois laconically. “We’ll die. But they’ll get us out; they’ll get you out, anyway. I’ve an idea that my own particular clock has run down.”

Wanda hardly noticed the last words. She was listening eagerly, and her hand closed upon Lois’ arm in a convulsive grip. Through the ruins of the scenic railway they could hear men’s voices shouting and calling excitedly, and there was the sound of heavy blows as though they had begun to clear away the wreckage.

“They’re going to save us!” cried Wanda. “Oh, Lois, Lois! Do you suppose we’ll live till then?”

Lois was feeling rather faint. She had been making repeated efforts to rid herself of the weight that lay upon her, but she knew that her strength must be inadequate and, for that matter, probably Wanda’s, too, even if she had cared to try.

“Lois!” whispered Wanda, close to her ear. “I—I’ve been terribly wicked! It would be awful to die without telling some one how wicked I’d been. Lois, maybe we’ll both be dead in a little while. Anyway——” she hesitated.

“Anyway I probably shall,” said Lois, in a queer, faraway tone. “So I’m quite safe. Tell me!”

"Lois, you know every one thinks we’re so awfully rich, but we aren’t, not really, any longer. We keep up appearances, but for ages it’s been just that with dreadfully little back of it. Mother helps ‘social climbers’ on the quiet for considerations and I—I play bridge, and—nearly always—win.”

Her sad voice dropped till it was nearly inaudible at the last word.

“You mean you cheat?”

"I—yes.” A pause long enough for a breath: then: "But—Lois—that isn’t the worst. I—well, you know people in our set have been—losing things lately.”

“You stole them? Well——”

All at once it came over Lois that in a situation like theirs—waiting there in the darkness, so close to death that they could touch its garments as it stood irresolute beside them—such things as stealing jewelry and cheating at cards were unimportant and uninteresting. Surely there was, out there in eternity, some court of law more nearly sublime than the regulations and standards of earth. Lois knew that stealing and cheating were both wrong, but in this strange and indefinably solemn hour poor Wanda’s confession sounded somehow ridiculous.

“It’s like worrying about what sort of coffin you’ll have,” she murmured aloud. Then: “Don’t mind me, Wanda. I think I’m a little light-headed. Don’t worry; you can give Ella Minton back her diamond pins—for of course you took them—and I’m sure she won’t prosecute or do anything beastly.”

“No, but she’ll talk, in confidence, to every one she knows, or I know, and Dick will hear it—and you know what Dick is about honesty, and all that!” She broke down and wept more heart-brokenly than ever.

Lois felt her whole being whirl with her swift mental adjustment to this new thought. Little Wanda’s sins had become important at last since they affected, or would affect, Dick. No longer were they unimportant or uninteresting. Not death himself could claim the attention of Lois Cranmer when Dick Maynard was involved.

She knew Dick well. They had been faithful friends for many years: and the tie had never been frayed by a suspicion on his part that she loved him. She knew him, and she knew that Wanda was right. Kindly and generous in most of the relations of life, he would have no mercy on dishonesty. He would never marry a girl whom he knew to have been a thief, even if he loved her. And it was more than probable that the knowledge of the fact would kill his love outright. Lois knew that things like that do kill love in a man. Not, in a woman—in fact, as she reflected without bitterness, there are few things that will kill love in women—except, occasionally, starvation! “And usually not even that, poor idiots!” she thought, remembering her own lean but loyal years.

And so to Lois—lying crushed, broken, suffering, and helpless in a darkness that might at any moment merge into that greater and more mysterious darkness which is called the shadow of death—came the great temptation of her life. It was a real temptation even though it was an unworthy one. She could, always granted that she was allowed to live until the rescuers reached them, tell the truth, brand Wanda as a thief—the diamonds would be sure to be upon her person somewhere—and could have the fierce joy of knowing that whether she herself lived or died, Wanda would be out of Dick’s life forever.

There was a deep, Indianlike streak of vengefulness in Lois Cranmer; it is just such natures, with their hard and savage traits, which are often weakest in matters of love. Lois had a heart full of tenderness, but it was all for one person. To the rest of the world she was merely kind and fair.

But Wanda!

All at once the name of this horrible scenic railway flashed across her mind once more. “Through the Dragon’s Valley!” Her brain, half delirious now from long strain and this unexpected crisis, painted the blackness before her with horrors and distortions, visualized the Dragon as her monstrous temptation, the thing she must fight and conquer if she wanted to die clean.

The perspiration poured down her face, not merely from weakness, not merely from pain, not even merely from death. It was her soul's sweat of agony, the sweat of a big fight against an enemy without mercy.

The fantastic vision of the Dragon filled the stuffy darkness—how appallingly close it was getting!—as the noises made by the rescuing party drew nearer.

“What shall I do, Lois?” moaned Wanda, and Lois felt her tremble as she pressed closer. Her own body did not shake: it felt strangely still—almost rigid, in fact. And she was very cold, and found it increasingly difficult to breathe.

The Dragon loomed vast, awful, inconceivably cruel. And then she found she could., move her hand, though with difficulty, until it touched the younger girl’s.

“Give me the diamonds—quick!” she said, and at the same moment they saw a glimmer of light as the débris began to be heaved aside. She grasped two cold, corrugated objects which Wanda’s shaking fingers pressed into her palm. There was no time for any further action, nor for any words. In another moment the men had shouldered and wormed and dug their way down to them. The first was Dick, and by an electric torch the man next him carried, he was ghastly. When he seized Wanda in his arms he could not speak for a minute.

“Thank Heaven!” he said brokenly. “I thought you were dead—my own love! The structure broke, in the deepest tunnel, and two cars—— Oh, it’s too horrible. Poor Jerry Barlow! Ghastly!—I say, where’s Lois? Is she all right?”

“Very fit, thanks, Dicky,” said Lois calmly; “or will be when I am excavated. If you would just——”

When they moved her, she fainted, but she did not die as soon as she had hoped. In fact, after they had gotten her out, and she lay under the glaring festoons of the park lights, the hastily summoned surgeon rather frightened her by telling her she had a chance.

Wanda hung about her, looking terribly frightened. She was not sure, even yet, what Lois meant to do about the diamond pins. Ella Minton, to do her justice, had dismissed the subject, and was really helpful and sympathetic, but Lois knew that the plump widow’s cupidity would reawaken just as soon as this emergency should be past. She lay with closed eyes, holding the pins concealed.

At last Wanda could bear the suspense no longer, and, leaning over her, whispered desperately:

“Lois, are you going to tell?”

Lois opened her eyes and looked at her, then shook her head. Then, in a voice heard only by Wanda, she began to speak.

“I suppose,” she said slowly; “that it would be harder to have to give something up after you’ve had it, than never to have it at all. Yes, I know it would. That ought to be reason enough for me to save you and let you keep—Dick. But that isn’t the reason, not really. I’m a very one-ideaed person, you know. Dick wants you, and he shall have you; that’s all. Nothing and nobody could possibly count for anything with me compared to Dick. And in case I don’t stand the next move so well as the last—I hope you’ll be happy.”

And she meant it, chiefly because with a woman like Wanda, that would mean that Dick would be happy too!

How queer everything was beginning to look! People, and houses, and the stars overhead, all mixed up together, and all out of proportion! There was a barker from one of the side shows, a fat man in yellow livery. He seemed to grow bigger and bigger, till he was as big as the moon!

Then she looked at Dick, let her tired eyes cling to the clean, comely vigor of him, the race-horse build, the cleanly modeled mouth and chin, the steady eyes, grave and sorrowful now. She looked—a long look, then pulled together every last ounce of strength and courage that she had and spoke in a clear steady voice which made the surgeon start, and watch her closely, for so do dying folk sometimes speak just before the end.

“Mrs. Minton,” she said, “I am pretty badly broken up, and perhaps I shan’t get over it. I want to clear something up, first. You diamond pins——”

“Yes?” Even the imminent prospect of Lois’ death could not keep Mrs. Minton from being concerned about her jewels.

“I stole them,” said Lois, without emotion. “I have been hard up lately, and it was so easy to take them when you laid them down on the table, and every one was looking at the procession of camels. I stole them—that’s all!”

Dick Maynard started forward, his face white and shocked.

“Lois!” he exclaimed. “You are wandering; you can’t be speaking the truth. Why, it’s as impossible as that——”

For answer Lois slowly unclenched the stiffening fingers of her right hand. In the multicolored glow of the electric lights that were still turned on, the diamonds glittered coldly and maliciously.

Mrs. Minton moved forward with a suppressed cry, then paused, half ashamed of her eagerness at such a time.

“Take them,” said Lois.

And the widow did so.

Dick Maynard turned without a word, put his arm about Wanda, and drew her away. She looked back, crying silently, but Lois would not meet her eyes.

“Come, dear,” Dick said gently. “I must take you home to your mother. You need rest.”

In a moment they were gone.

Ella Minton suddenly began to cry, her plump white hands spread before her face, and her round shoulders heaving with distress.

“Oh, Lois!” she sobbed, hunting for a handkerchief, while the tears ran frankly down her cheeks. “Why did you do such a dreadful thing? And think of its happening just before you— just before you are going to——”

She found the handkerchief and sobbed again. “I’ve always been so fond of you, Lois,—and—and to steal—Why, it doesn’t seem like you, Lois, somehow!”

Lois smiled somewhat grimly.

“Thanks!” she said, and closed her eyes.