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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
In 'The Adventurers' by Ernest Haycox, readers are whisked away on an exhilarating journey through the American West during the 19th century. Haycox expertly weaves together a gripping tale of adventure, danger, and the complexities of human nature. His vivid descriptions and attention to historical detail immerse the reader in the rugged landscapes and vibrant characters of the era, creating a truly immersive reading experience. The book showcases Haycox's talent for storytelling and his ability to capture the essence of the American frontier. With its fast-paced narrative and richly drawn characters, 'The Adventurers' is a must-read for fans of Western literature and historical fiction. Haycox's writing style is both engaging and insightful, offering a nuanced portrayal of the challenges and triumphs faced by those who dared to explore the untamed wilderness of the West. Readers will find themselves drawn into the lives of the characters as they navigate the harsh realities of life on the frontier, ultimately coming to understand the true spirit of adventure.
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The Adventurers
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
AN hour after announced sailing time the shore gangs still worked cargo aboard the Jennie North and the little groups of well-wishers on the dock, having exhausted their stock of pleasantries, began to grow restive. Prolonged farewells were unnatural, Mark Sheridan decided; it was best to say good-by and to turn quickly away. A man in an attractive fawn-brown suit sauntered along the deck and stopped beside him at the ship's railing.
"We're late," said the man.
"That's customary," said Sheridan, and considered the town he had rejected as a place of opportunity. Market Street ran up its easy pitch into a San Francisco which appeared to be taking some sort of shape after careless beginnings.
"A lively place," said the man. "Is it your town?"
"I thought it might be my town," said Sheridan, "but it's too late. The business chances are pretty well taken up. There's nothing much here for me."
"What would be for you?" asked the man.
"Logs—lumber," said Sheridan. "I'm from Michigan."
"Then you want Portland or the Sound."
"I'll look at Portland."
The man extended his hand. "My name's George Revelwood."
Sheridan gave his name and took the hand. Revelwood was of the smiling, easy sort who made something of an art of mixing, possibly too much of an art. He had a long dark face somewhat on the handsome side. His beaver was expensive, his cravat was a flowered pattern and on his hand a substantial diamond stood in the massive gold claws of a dragon-ring. It never occurred to Sheridan to inquire into Revelwood's business or destination; he had not that much curiosity concerning others. Instead he put his glance on a hotel hack running down Market at a rapid clip. He nodded toward it. "Somebody late. That's stretching luck pretty far."
"People who stretch their luck," said Revelwood, "usually come out fine. You can believe the world won't wait for you, in which event it probably won't. Or you can consider it will wait, and likely it will."
The ship's master, Sheridan observed, stood on a wing of the bridge and looked down upon the dock with a bearded, copper-colored face—a master of the taciturn type, bearing the air of strong displeasure; presently he swung about, came down the ladder and made his way through the crowd toward the gangplank.
"A lady," said Revelwood, and brought Sheridan's glance around to the hotel hack, which had reached the dock. The hackman stepped down and offered his hand to a single passenger, a woman; she, giving the ship a single moment of attention, turned her back to it and waited the hackman's recovery of her baggage from the back of the vehicle. She had light-colored hair and she wore a very pretty dress. Revelwood watched her with open admiration and interest. "For a pretty woman the world will not only wait, it will stop dead, it will turn over. Does lunch occur to you?"
Sheridan nodded and turned along the deck with Revelwood. He had a fore-and-aft view of the Jennie North as they went forward. She was a clipper-hulled vessel with three masts which could be hung with canvas in a following wind; otherwise the power came out of engines which passed through a big walking beam amidships to huge side paddles. He stepped through the door, Revelwood courteously insisting on his precedence, and descended a fan-shaped set of stairs to the dining room. It was a room of mahogany and yellowed ivory paint and crystal lamp brackets; but though the shape of luxury remained and the paint was fresh and the glasswork glittered, the original elegance had quietly vanished with the ship's youth.
Captain Powell, descending the gangplank, walked along the dock to the Jennie North's stern; he crouched and had a look at the waterline at the ship's counter, and rose and paced forward to the bow and had another look. His manner grew increasingly dour; his chin whiskers thrust themselves forward and his mouth, half veiled by his mustache, showed an in-pinching. He went over to the company agent superintending the freight load.
"She's got too much in her now," he said. "She'll take no more. She'll ride like a scow all the way."
Basler pointed to the freight standing on the dock. "If I don't load that, what'll the owners say to me?"
"The owners," said Captain Powell, "are doing well enough."
"You get a carriage, Captain, and go uptown and tell 'em that."
"I might," said Powell.
"And they might get another master, too," said Basler.
Captain Powell stared at the agent with his sharp-slicing glance. "What have you got left that's got to go?"
"Mill machinery for Teekelet," said Basler, and waited the captain's further advice.
Powell looked into the heat haze and made his private guesses on the weather. He wanted to say, as he had the power to say, that he would carry no more. Properly, he should have said that six hours before. "Well," he said, "put aboard the machinery and that's all."
Mounting the gangplank, Captain Powell tried not to remember that the Jennie North was a tender, sluggish craft, strained by countless overloadings and started by too many heavy seas. He bowed to the owner's dividends when he ought to be remembering his two hundred passengers; he was afraid of his job. He walked through the scattered passengers on the deck, made taciturn and heavy-footed by his reflections. Looking upon him, the passengers thought him the very picture of rough and competent strength.
Rising from lunch, Sheridan found the Jennie North standing down the bay. The day was windless but the Jennie's speed created a small breeze and coal smoke began to lay its fine grit over the deck. Sheridan went forward with his cigar and watched the town drop back and for a moment wondered if he had been wise to discard San Francisco as a choice. A good deal of luck went into a career, but luck aside, he thought he was fifteen years too late for this country. The men who had come in 1850 were the ones who now in 1865 had collected the business ventures into their hands; the newcomer could only get the scraps they chose to throw away. He had left Michigan because he wanted no scraps; what he wanted was a country where the prime chances remained.
He finished the cigar and walked aft, past groups of people stationed at the rail, past acquaintances forming, past a game of deck horseshoe, past six young women sitting in chairs quite by themselves, accompanied by an older woman with a rough, raddled face. He drew his glance from this group rather suddenly. Near the stern he noticed George Revelwood standing before a woman in a chair—the woman who had arrived late via the hotel hack. He intended going by, but Revelwood stopped him. "Miss Dale," he said, "may I present another ship acquaintance, bound also for Portland, Mr. Mark Sheridan."
She nodded, she smiled. Her eyes were hazel, her lips full-shaped at the centers, her hair was a light brown touched by auburn and the effect of these features was to create the impression of a character pleasing rather than determined. She wore a small hat atop hair swept away from her ears, and in her ears two pearl pendants gracefully displayed themselves. She carried a book in her lap, perhaps to read, perhaps to round out a fashionable effect. Meanwhile Revelwood kept his light conversation going. "We're all for Portland. Miss Dale has not been there. Neither have we."
"Will it be your home?" asked Sheridan.
"No," she said, and nodded toward two nearby vacant chairs.
Revelwood accepted the invitation more promptly than Sheridan. "Well," he said, "we shall all be pilgrims. My mother's first name, by the way, was the same as yours—Clara. She was from Ireland."
Clara Dale gave him her polite interest and, encouraged by this, Revelwood took care of the conversation while Sheridan sat idly by. Now and then the girl turned her glance to him and gave him a moment's smiling attention. It occurred to him presently that Revelwood scarcely needed assurance and, rising, he made his bow to Clara Dale and went on to the saloon.
He found it crowded with the assortment of types common to any ship, any train or any trail—men in search of adventure such as he was, men selling goods, men on business errands, the usual collection of soldiers traveling to new stations, including one brigadier general, a few rough ones up from steerage, and an occasional man who bore no obvious label. They were a cheerful lot; they reached familiarity in short order, used strong voices, asked personal questions without embarrassment, and smoked enormous amounts of tobacco.
He had his drink and joined a poker game on invitation, and found himself waiting for the supper bell with a great appetite. Revelwood came in shortly before the bell and offered him a drink. They stood at the bar, Revelwood in excellent spirits. "She was doubtful of me until you came along. It's always easier for a woman to be friendly to two strangers than to one. You were helpful."
"I judged so," said Sheridan.
"Then that's why you left—to give me a better field?" Revelwood let go with a genuinely hearty laugh. "You're not so dry as I had guessed."
They descended to the dining room. The purser's seating arrangement had separated them; from a corner of the room Sheridan noted Revelwood at the captain's table. In a short while Clara Dale came down and took her place at the same table, the captain rising with gallantry and the other gentlemen following suit. It was an excellent setting for her; she wore evening clothes and her neck and shoulders were coral against the shining of the lamps, and the scene she made was very pretty. Her eyes searched the room and touched Sheridan. He bowed, and her head dipped in response and for a moment she held his attention; perhaps it was a bit of womanly coquetry; perhaps it was nothing more than a nice civility. She didn't look at him again, but he watched her and found pleasure in the watching.
The binnacle light was a small glow before the quartermaster; otherwise the wheelhouse was dark and the shape of the three men—captain, quartermaster and watch officer—were blurred. The horizons closed down and the California coast was a black suggestion four miles to starboard. A ripple of phosphorescence showed off the Jennie North's bows; a flat ground swell slowly raised and slowly dropped her. The captain walked to the barometer and lighted a match to read it; he tapped the glass with his finger and read it again, and pinched out the light. He stood behind the quartermaster. "Wind by morning," he said. "Northwest."
The second watch came up to take his watch and the first officer turned out with the captain's voice following him. "Ask the purser to step here."
The second officer took the first officer's corner, the captain stood silent with his thoughts and was nagged by his conscience. If the owners had known about the overload they would not knowingly have permitted it. But all owners were alike. They didn't want to know things like that. They put the responsibility on their agents and the agents, fearing their jobs, always crowded the line too close. It kept the conscience of the owners quite clear, for if there were disaster it fell on the agents. He should have refused the overloading.
When the purser came up, the captain said: "What's the passenger list?"
"Two hundred and twelve."
"Anybody the company wants particular attention put on?"
"There's a general. He's got something to do about shipping army contract stuff."
"I'll have him up for a visit tomorrow. Tell that madam to keep her six girls where they belong."
"They won't give you any bother, Captain. The professionals never do. When the doors start opening tonight, it'll be the nice ladies looking for a bit of fun away from home."
The captain murmured, "That's all," and freshened the light on his cigar; he stepped to the port wing of the hurricane deck and listened to the washing rhythm of the bow wave. The night, filled with shore smoke, was blind. He found neither sky nor foreground; the familiar headlands were gone and though his course was safe enough, he felt uneasy and decided to haul off. He spoke his orders through the wheelhouse door. "North by west." The wheelsman's small voice came back: "North by west, sir." The captain laid his arms on the hurricane rail. The owners were not unkind. They had children, they went to church; but they didn't see—they didn't want to see. "It's money, of course," thought the captain. "It makes 'em blind. Makes me blind, too, I suppose."
The morning seas came up from the stern, borne in by a strong sou'wester. The heat fog had dissipated and the violent surf broke against the ragged coastal bluffs, exploding into wild white spray. All that coast was sullen-dark with timber and the rain mist crowded it and boiled around it like live steam.
Sheridan walked the deck with little company and watched the deep-gullied waves run by. Wheeling gulls were flung up and down by the air currents; the wind held to its monotonous crying in the rigging. The army general and his wife tramped the deck for a while arm in arm, enjoying the adventure; he was a thin six-foot man with a goatee below a strong mouth and nose; she was scarcely more than five feet and still attractive—a spoiled woman with a clinging manner. During the afternoon Sheridan caught the eye of Clara Dale in the women's parlor, and, since gentlemen seemed permitted in there, he joined her.
She said: "Where are we?"
"I believe we should make the Columbia bar tomorrow afternoon."
She said: "I'm not fond of bad weather," and gave him a sober glance.
"Probably it won't last," he said. The parlor was crowded and the air too warm for his comfort. "Would you like a turn on the deck?"
She settled back into her chair. "I'm not adventurous, Mr. Sheridan." There was lightness about her face, a liking for luxury; her smiling glance had its faint inquisitiveness. He made his bow and left the parlor, and thought about her as he continued his walk. Maybe Revelwood was right about her.
Night came down with a fuller wind; the following daylight arrived in a roar. Sheridan braced himself against the washstand while he shaved. The Jennie North shook when the solid blows struck her; she moved slowly over, and kept rolling until Sheridan found himself waiting the recovery with some concern. He stared through the porthole and saw the ripped-up surface of the ocean directly before him. In this dining room, which had few people, he took his coffee and wanted nothing more.
"Where are we now?" he asked the mess boy.
The mess boy shook his head. "I don't know this coast."
The captain knew this coast very well. Standing on the wing of the hurricane deck in his oilskins—the wind and rain beating at his back—he searched for the great head which stood out as a sentinel for the Columbia's mouth. All night he had feared this coast and he had twice reset his course to pull away; now he had lost touch with it. Westward was only the gray morning gloom of rain and darkness. The ship took too much astern, she rode too heavy on a following sea. He said to the quartermaster: "Hard over starboard. South by west." Then he said to the first officer: "I don't think we've overshot Tillamook, but we'll work shoreward to have a look."
Coming around, the Jennie took the trough. She went into it heavily and lay solid there; and a great mountain ridge of water fell into her and buried her with its green avalanches. For much too long a moment the captain felt the inertness of the ship; then a second sea came aboard and the well deck filled and the port wing of the hurricane deck touched the lifting waves. The captain waited, hanging to the high side of the hurricane deck; the ship rose and slowly swung into the seas. He called to the quartermaster, "Point east," and cupped his ears to catch the possible sound of surf breaking.
He knew this coast too well. North from San Francisco as far as the Sound lay a seafaring graveyard; there was not a ten-mile stretch of it without the bones of ship and men scattered on some rocky point or sucked into some reach of sand.
At noon he saw no land, nor smelled it in the wind, nor heard surf, nor noticed anything in the sea drift. Three soundings told him nothing; the mists drove in, the rains were blending strong. He took coffee and doughnuts from the mess boy and thus entered his fifteenth straight hour on the bridge. Now and then he thought of the owners, not so much in anger as in puzzlement. Why did men blind themselves knowingly?
Sheridan made one round of the deck and gave it up; seas reached up from the south, mountain high, and the coarse spray rattled like gravel against the bulkheads. He stepped into the saloon and discovered Revelwood at a game of solitaire, and looked on a moment and went out. He tipped his body to the pitch of the Jennie North, and spread his feet to the ship's excessive rolling. The captain stood on the bridge wing, both hands anchored to the rail and his shoulders thrown forward toward a land obscured by the black-swollen clouds and the wind-ripped mist. It was middle afternoon, the day even now dying.
Sheridan reached the aft deck and started back along the port side. The Jennie's bow, slowly dropping, struck the water hard enough to throw him off balance. He seized a stanchion, and waited for the ship to come up again; unwarned, he found himself heaved forward with a violence that pulled his hand from the stanchion. He fell on his knees and, in this position, he heard the smashing, ripping sound of something solid on the Jennie's hull. A hard, long shouting fled back from the bridge; passengers rushed from the saloon, from the parlor, from staterooms. A woman screamed. A wave raced along the Jennie's side, its edges splashing aboard. He got to his feet and saw the passengers surge at him, cramped in the narrow corridor between rail and wall. They were struggling with each other for space; fear blackened their eyes and slashed strange lines into their faces. The foremost man hit him, never really seeing him, and lashed out with his fists. Sheridan struck him in the mouth and knocked him back, but the pressure of the crowd came down on him and he turned and was shoved along the narrow space. When he reached the clear area of the rear deck he stepped aside and let the tide go by. He heard the queer, grunting, whimpering sounds coming up from the crowd; he saw women borne along in the stream, knocked from man to man, and fighting back with their fingers clawed out. A man went down and disappeared beneath the merciless stampeding of feet. Watching the stream spew out of the narrow deck alley-way, Sheridan saw Clara Dale jammed into the mass of flesh around her; she seemed to have no motion of her own, nor to be taking steps of her own. Her face had the common terror on it—that sleepwalking, drawn emptiness. He pushed his way forward, bucking the onflowing people; he turned his shoulder into the pressure, took hold of her, and got her aside. The ship seemed to slant more sharply. He had to brace his feet; he put an arm around her, hanging to the rail with his other hand.
She was dead weight; she was shaking violently, and her hands squeezed his arms with all the force she had. Revelwood escaped the stampede along the deck aisle and ran forward. The terror was on him, too, but even in stress, Sheridan noticed the man's wits were quick, for Revelwood's glance searched the deck and its scene of half madness, darting from place to place, from object to object, from hope to hope. Revelwood murmured through his swift breathing, "We've got to think of something." Sheridan shook his head; there was at this moment nothing to do, no way of working against the animal craziness around him.
The ship had struck a rock lying under the water and had been impaled by it. Having lost freedom of motion, it now became a target for the seas rolling out of the rain-mists. It shook under each mountainous wallop of ocean and swayed and ground itself deeper upon the rock; the sound of that came up from the bottom as a sudden groaning and clashing of metal. The seas, rushing aft, began to board the Jennie at midships and the deck turned into green mountain streams rushing down the slope.
A ship's officer worked his way aft from the bridge and the crew members were gathering, no less witless than the passengers. The ship's officer shouted: "Boat One—stations! Boat Two come up there now." The crew members drove through the jam of passengers and began to work at the lifeboat davits. One huge black man turned to face the crowd surging at the nearest boat. He shoved men away; he shook his head, not speaking. He shoved and shook his head.
Sheridan said to Revelwood, "Life jackets in that locker over there."
Revelwood turned toward a locker built against a bulkhead. He got to it and lifted its lid and reached into it for jackets; men suddenly saw the locker and stormed at it, and Revelwood disappeared in a sudden-fighting mob. A woman came toward the railing, holding the hand of a two-year-old boy. She looked out into the rain-fog, she stared around her, and her glance came upon Sheridan and walked through him as though he were a shadow; without warning she seized the boy and flung him into the sea. She cried and screamed at him and tipped over the rail, head foremost into the ocean.
Revelwood came back with his face bleeding, but with the jackets. The two of them got a jacket around Clara Dale, prying her arms temporarily away from Sheridan. The captain came aft to watch the crew work the first lifeboat around in the davits. He shouted, "You—ladies!" He seized them and pushed them at the lifeboat; he put his hands against the chests of men crowding in. The big colored man silently pushed them away, shaking his head and baring his teeth. The first officer came along to help; there was a sudden wild rush, men and women together, toward the boat. The captain snatched a gun from his pocket and leveled it on a crew member. He said, "Stand away there." The crew member reached out to knock the gun aside. The captain flinched slightly and fired. He said to the first officer, "Take the boat away, Mr. Soames."
Revelwood said to Sheridan, "Let's get her on this boat."
Sheridan shook his head. "Not the first one. It'll swamp."
The Jennie's slant steepened and the pounding of the rock continued to open her hull. The mizzenmast, footed into the bottom of the ship, swayed and plunged straight down through the ship. The mainyard, lying crosswise on the mast, slammed upon the deck, catching a man beneath it. Sheridan flinched at the scream and looked around. He saw the man pinned and squirming beneath the spar; he saw the man's gray face wheel from side to side. He turned toward the man and turned back, shaking his head.
The first lifeboat swung out with its women; the mate crouched in the stern, shouting at the crew members at the oars, "Steady till I say." Other crew men hung to the davit lines, waiting out his call. The captain faced the first officer. "Soames," he said, "tell them if they hadn't overloaded us, this never would have happened."
"Let go!" shouted the first officer.
The davit lines were released. The lifeboat dropped into the curling seas, rode a moment on the crest of a wave and then began to work away. The oarsmen dug in, the mate shouting, "Now now—now." Suddenly the watching crowd broke through, reached the rail and began to jump into the boat, smothering the oarsmen. A wave lifted the lifeboat, flung it against the Jennie's hull and cracked its ribs. The bow flipped up, and a following wave knocked it over, men and women spilling into the water. Sheridan watched their heads bobbing; he saw the unpinned hair of women streaming on the green surface. He saw them disappear.
The captain said, "Boat Two, boys." Then he lifted his voice against the crying, against the wind, against the boom of water and the wrenching and the smashing of the Jennie North. "I'll kill the next man who rushes a lifeboat! Women, there! Travis, swing it out."
"This one," said Revelwood.
Sheridan shook his head. "No use." He had seen something else. A whole section of the aft deckhouse, torn free from its bolts, slowly shifted on the deck as the Jennie swayed; it rose stiffly when the seas came aboard. He reached down to unlock the arms of Clara Dale who hung on with her senseless grip. He shook her shoulders. "We're going to get ashore." He took her around the waist and moved along the deck toward the drifting section of the deck housing. Revelwood went with him, but presently stopped. "Do it quiet," he said, "or they'll swamp that thing too," and then he turned back toward the second boat now filling.
Sheridan half carried Clara Dale across the slanting deck; he was foot deep in water and loose objects struck him in the shins as they were carried by—preservers, chunks of timber, doors, luggage blindly brought up and blindly abandoned. The deck housing had lodged near the rounded stern rail, and moved uneasily up and down, ready to break away. He got to the yard ropes as a sea broke aboard and smothered him. Clara Dale struggled in his arms and he heard her choke as the seas dropped away; the sharp cold paralyzed his chest and the wind began to slice like a knife over his body. He crossed the yard and reached the deck section. He pulled Clara with him, and worked his way to a skylight. The glass hatch was broken; he kicked it aside and laid himself down beside the girl, and ran his arm through the iron rods of the skylight opening.
The second lifeboat disappeared over the side of the Jennie and there was again the flurry of men rushing to board it. He saw the black man, the captain and George Revelwood standing shoulder to shoulder, fighting off the attack. He had one thought then which he never changed: Revelwood was a scoundrel—but Revelwood was a brave man, and that covered everything. The deck crowd had thinned; of the three hundred souls on the Jennie, two thirds of them were now dead, and the rest soon would be. The madam stood with her girls around her, the general and the general's wife were apart from the crowd, arms around each other. Revelwood started over the deck, and then the Jennie trembled and a great explosion seemed to break her apart. She began to slide, and a wall of water tumbled over the rail, destroying the second lifeboat and scattering the crowd. Sheridan saw Revelwood bend his head and come on; the wave, reaching the broken deck housing, lifted it clear of the ship and flung it outward into the blind dark wastes. The last thing Sheridan saw on that deck was the body of a woman borne upward and outward by the wave, like a figurehead.
The deck housing was like a huge box capsized in the water; and on this Sheridan rode, one hand holding Clara, the other anchored to the skylight braces. Water rose around him, little ridges with separate saw-tooth crests etched against the leaden light. Spray cut him like knotted buckskin, and rain drove in furiously.
A wave broke over the housing, its weight grinding Sheridan's crotch into the skylight frame; it snapped his head downward and he struck his mouth and chin against the wood. There was only a moment of feeling; the coldness of this water was an anesthetic—and he began to fear that the coldness would loosen him. The roar and the pounding diminished for a short space and he lost the half senselessness which came of too much crowded too quickly upon him. He felt the deck housing rise—the sensation like that of a cable car racing up a hill—toward one of the green summits. The summit faded before it reached him and he found himself on a new crest formed beneath him, sliding downward into another valley; and at this point he first heard the sound of the surf on a beach he could not yet see through the mist and spray and twilight. It was suddenly loud and near, and fear came on him again when he remembered the violence of this surf.
He bent toward Clara Dale's head and shouted: "Don't fight against me if we capsize."
The deck housing rose up to the crest of a breaker, hovered there, and plunged. It went under. Again the pressure squeezed Sheridan and hauled at his arms and kicked him violently back and forth along the skylight frame. He lifted his head, seeking air; he took in a breath, half air and half water, and gagged it out. He lost his bearings; he felt tipped and turned and he was conscious of only two distinct things, the girl's arms gripped around him, and his own body wedged into the skylight frame. The skylight seemed to revolve like a turntable; he felt it strike bottom and lift, and the current rushed him on, and a wave picked him up, tipping the skylight. He could not be certain it would capsize but he knew that if he and the girl were caught beneath its weight they would be smashed; he released his hold on the skylight and threw himself into the water, still holding the girl. Instantly he was flung over. He touched bottom, and tried to right himself; he was knocked onward. He was crawling, his ears rang, and he felt himself lose the feeling of this earth and its life.
He touched again and lay still a moment, with the beach waters boiling around him and the roar behind him. He got on his feet while the surf came hip high around him. When it turned outward he walked on until he could walk no more, and dropped. The next time the surf came it was only a shallow eddy. The girl seemed dead.
He felt disappointed, but he didn't really care. He pulled the girl a dozen yards forward, and lay out on his side and strangled up sea water; he sucked away at the air with greed. His hurts began to come at him faintly and from different sources. Rain fell in slashing sheets and the whole beach trembled to the impact of the great rollers beating against it. The day had darkened so much that he was able to see nothing toward the sea. On the landward side a low bluff skirted the beach and solid timber seemed to run inland.
He sat up and pulled the girl across his lap and lifted her shoulders; her eyes were closed, her hair matted with sand. Her dress was torn open around her shoulders, her face was marble-colored. He said: "We're ashore. Can you stand up?"
She kept her eyes closed but she spoke to him more distinctly than he had expected. She had come back from nowhere. "Yes."
She opened her eyes. There was no motion in her face, and her lips were hard to distinguish from the rest of her skin. She was shaken by a steady trembling she could not control. "I don't know," she said, "if I can live through a night of this."
He had his own doubts. The rain could make him no wetter, but the wind destroyed the warmth in him and sucked out his vitality. Nobody could stand this sort of exposure indefinitely. He stood up and pulled her to her feet. He said, "Can you run?" and gave her a push, and trotted with her toward the bluff. She quit before they reached it.
"No," she said.
When they got to the bluff he took her by the hand and pulled her to its summit. Before them was the dark, solid face of that forest which he had viewed from the sea, now further darkened by the oncoming shadows of evening, and faintly glittering with the rains lodged within it. "This will be better," he said, and pulled her into the timber.
The trees broke the wind and the rain lessened, and this contrast was so great that for a moment he felt warmer.
Pushing on—to keep in motion more than for any other reason—he struck what appeared to be an animal trail coming down the slope, and followed it over a low summit and down into a meadow lying at the edge of a lake. Beyond the lake the forest began again and marched off toward the darkest and loneliest mountain he had ever seen. To the right the lake worked its way out of sight, around a point of land; to the left it seemed to pass into a creek and at this point he saw a broken scaffolding standing in the gloom, perhaps some open-air drying device used by Indians. Next to it stood an odd-looking but whose log walls started well below the ground level and whose roof was scarcely more than five feet high—a long and narrow structure with a bark and dirt top, more in the style of Indian living than white man's. The girl saw it as soon as he and began to run toward it.
"We don't know what's in that place," he cautioned.
"I've got to get inside," she said.
They came upon a blind side of the shack, and skirted it and found a small doorway. He pulled her back and went ahead, she crowding against him. He stepped down and forward into suddenly rank odors. He stopped, braced against surprise, and waited for his eyes to grow into this darkness diluted by muddy streaks of light coming through the door and through the cracks of the wall logs. There were a few rocks grouped in the center of the place, the mark of a fire, and in one corner was a mound of something which, when he put his hand against it, turned out to be dead grass and small branches.
He heard the girl draw a long sigh. She said, "Could we get a fire started?"
"No." Rain and wind struck the cabin and far off was the boom of the surf. In this quietness he felt temporarily warm. But that was contrast rather than real warmth; they had relief from the rain and from most of the wind, but no way of escaping the raw chill. He heard water drop down from her clothes and from his own. He went to the corner and bent down to explore the pile, which was small brush and fern and grass, crumbling dry, which somebody had used long before for bedding; there was a strip of it all along the end of the cabin. He went along the wall, drawing it together and carrying it back to a corner to make a decent pile.
He said: "Take off your shoes. That leather never will warm up. Crawl into the hay."
"Help me."
He gave her a hand, turning her. She dropped heavily under his support. She sat crouched over, still badly shaking. She wanted to take her mind from her misery and she began to work at her shoe laces and to talk at the same time. "Do you think anybody else is alive?"
"I doubt it."
He went to the far end of the shed and turned his back to her. "I'm going to wring out my clothes. You'd better do the same thing."
He peeled to the skin and twisted out the water. He dressed again, leaving off his coat. He kept his back to her; he heard her stirring in the hay, and the shaken, ragged way of her breathing. "Your friend," she said, "Revelwood—that's too bad."
"He was a scoundrel but he paid off for all his sins on the boat."
"I knew he was a scoundrel," she said. "You can come here now."
He heard the half panic in her voice, as though she were afraid she wouldn't last. He dropped and crawled against her and pulled the hay and fern and brush around them. The dust and the chaff got into his nose with its rank odors. He kept his hands to himself, but suddenly she slid her arms around him and pulled herself into him. Tremors ran steadily through her; they started at various places and worked along her body. They shook her, and ceased, and came again. She had left off her undergarments, for he felt her body beneath the single layer of her dress. A woman, he thought, was more realistic than a man. He swung his body over and put himself across her; they were two solid lumps of coldness together.
She said: "I've got to get warm, or I'll die."
"Am I too heavy?"
"No. It helps. I don't shake as much. People never know, do they? I didn't realize that nothing mattered, except to live."
The reaction was fully on her. She was filled with terror. He felt it in her, in her greediness to absorb some of his warmth. Her arms had the same tightness around him that they'd had in the ocean; she laid her face into the side of his neck. He reached back, pulling more hay around them and over them. He felt the first small warmness make its clammy sensation along his skin.
She said: "I didn't know I could stand so much. I didn't know anybody could."
"We'll get through it."
"Do you remember the nice old general and his wife? And those girls with the horrible old woman? It was the captain's fault, wasn't it?"
"I guess so."
"I'm sorry for them all, but not too sorry. That's the terrible thing. I can't feel it the way I should. I can only feel that I'm alive. I'm not as cold as I was."
She shivered less frequently; she released her grasp and pulled the hay around his back and took hold of him again. He felt softness come to her body. Her head rolled aside but he knew she wasn't sleeping; she was lying still, soaking up warmth and thinking her strange thoughts—perhaps the same thoughts that worked through his head. The scene on the deck grew sharp before him—its short, disconnected scenes flashing across his view. He admired Revelwood again. Then he thought, "What happened to the captain?" He tried to remember where he had last seen the captain, and couldn't fill in the blind spot. There were a lot of blind spots.
She said: "I've discovered a bad thing. You hung onto me, but I was thinking only of myself. I had no pity for anybody else. Most of us were like that. We would have killed in order to save ourselves." She stirred beneath him and put a little pressure in her arms. He rolled away from her. She came against him, her body over him. She pulled the hay closer around them. "I know I'm going to live. I know it, because I'm not as selfish now...I want you to live too."
"We're all like that."
"You weren't. Revelwood wasn't. It's in people, or it isn't."
Warmth began to flow between them; it came out of their bodies and clung around them. The hay held it in and threw it back at them. He felt the increasing throb of the injured places on his body. His left arm, from wrist to elbow, seemed afire. He turned her over his body and swung, facing her. She came up in to him again, readjusting herself for comfort. She was whispering, her mouth near his ear. "People believe so many foolish things. I won't believe them any more. I talked to a girl night before last in the writing room. She was going to Portland to be married. She had done without so many things, just so the marriage would be nice. What good was that to her?"
"People have got to fight for happiness."
"I don't want any more misery. Who knows when this will happen again? You can't trust anything. I'm almost comfortable now. Tomorrow I'll be miserable again, finding a way out of these woods. It's just today that means anything. When I get out of this, I'll never be cold again. I've promised myself that. This girl waited a long time for her man. She's dead. He'll grieve for a little while, then he'll marry somebody else. What good did it do her to wait and save her pennies and never look at another man? She missed everything."
A tree crashed and the girl, hearing it, tightened her arms against him. He felt heavy and exhausted and soon fell asleep.
He woke later to find the girl had crawled nearer him. Her lips were round and warm and full on his mouth. Her body was shaking so that he thought she was cold, but in a moment he heard her crying, and felt tears dropping from her and running along his face. He pulled his head aside. He said: "What's wrong?" She shook her head and her mouth brushed his face and found him again. She wanted to be nearer; he pulled her in and held her. When she had enough, her head dropped down on his arm and they both fell asleep.
Chapter 2
FROM the doorway Sheridan saw the dismal morning struggle in through the steady rain. Mist rolled along the earth before the insistent wind and above the mist lay choked dark clouds. A creek left the lake, turned a bend and ran out of sight toward the ocean beyond the hill. Clara Dale came back from the creek, both hands holding her hair. She gave him a short side glance and went on into the shack. He felt dull and exhausted and irritable, and so did she. North lay directly ahead of him, across the creek, and north appeared the only avenue of escape; both behind him and to his right—to the west—the huge black mountains blocked his way.
She came back to the door, her hair pinned down wet to her head. She said in a half-cranky voice: "I'm not attractive, am I?"
He smiled at her. "You're alive."
She shrugged her shoulders and looked down at her wrinkled, partly torn dress. She put her arms crosswise over her breasts and she stared at the day with her mouth pressed down. She hated what she saw. "How far will we have to go?"
He shook his head. She watched him a moment. "Well," she said, "I got through one day and one night. I'll get through another. I think I'll never live for more than one day at a time." She caught sight of the great raw track along his arm, and her expression tightened. "I should wrap it."'
"Let the rain wash it out." He went back into the shanty and got his coat. It was still damp but he put it over her shoulders. "That'll be good for an hour or two."
They turned back into the timber, found the trail and followed it to the bluff. Here, under the partial shelter of a tree, they looked out upon the ocean and saw no ship. "It must have gone down right after we got away." He ran his glance along the shore, to the driftwood lying well up from the tide marks. He saw the darker objects lodged in the driftwood and other dark objects half buried in the sand; he saw one bobbing in the surf. "Not as many as I thought," he said. "They'll be drifting in for a week. Some won't come in at all."
They dropped down the bluff and walked through the soft sand to the hard-packed beach, here turning north. The creek lay in front of them, meandering across the sands. He lifted the girl and waded over and put her down and went on through a steady-falling rain, the beach curving in and out of its coves before them. The wind blew behind them, the smell of the sea was exceedingly strong. He saw other black bits of wreckage scattered on the sand, and other bodies. He saw one body stripped, marble pale in the morning and he turned inshore to avoid it.
They covered one long beach, waited the falling away of the surf and ran around a rock ledge to another beach. This led them into a cove, and the cove trapped them with its low promontory, over which they had to climb. Near what must have been noon they were half the distance toward a huge head standing in the foreground, and at this point Sheridan saw something that resembled a trail opening through the timber. He turned toward it. They climbed a short sand bluff, passed a brief meadow spongy with water, and found a break in the trees; the trail went directly into the semi-darkness of the forest, and the forest rose up into bulky mountains.
"We'll cross over," said Sheridan.
She set her mouth—which normally had so little hardness into the tightest, homeliest line and nodded for him to go ahead. He stepped before her, passing into the windy, droopy shadows. The climbing ground was quite rough and quite soft; around a bend, fifty yards on, Sheridan reached a short clearing which, taking the waters of a rain-swollen creek, had become a marsh. Here, sitting on a log with the completest air of human dejection upon him, was George Revelwood.
He was ill, he was at the end of his rope; that long narrow face was pale and strained and listless. "My God," he said in a voice meant to carry feeling, "are you alive?" He spread his hands before him. "I can't find a way across this swamp." Rain dropped from his face. He wiped it with his hand and seemed to be crying.
Sheridan broke his way through the brush, traveling along the edges of the marsh. Beyond sight of Revelwood he came upon an area of old logs fallen over the creek. They made a bridge across the marsh to solid ground beyond. He called back: "Come over here."
He waited and heard nothing. He returned to find Revelwood still seated. The girl looked at Sheridan and shook her head. "He won't try."
"God damn you," said Sheridan, "get up and walk."
Revelwood stared at Sheridan with an owlish interest. "I'm tired," he said. "I was on my feet all night, trying to keep warm."
Sheridan reached over, hooked his hand under Revelwood's armpit, and lifted the man from the log. Revelwood offered him a momentary resistance, trying to find anger enough to fight. Sheridan set him in motion with a push, and followed behind. The girl brought up the rear. When they reached the logs Revelwood stopped. "I can't cross the damned things. I'd fall in."
Sheridan gave him another push, whereupon Revelwood gave out a dismal groan and painfully climbed to a log. He pulled his coat around his neck and wiped the dripping water from his nose. The log on which he stood ran out into the marsh, its lower end under water; but another log lay over it, providing further passage, and this in turn reached solid ground beyond the marsh. Too exhausted to have confidence in himself, Revelwood crept along the first log, climbed to the second with an old man's painful slowness and, suddenly aware of the marsh yawning beneath him, sat down a-straddle the log and completed the journey an inch at a time. He stepped to solid ground and put his back to a tree. Sheridan motioned the girl to go ahead; he followed, guiding her over.
Revelwood stared at the hill running upward before them. "How do we know where that goes?" The girl listened to him and turned her glance on Sheridan, waiting for his answer. He shook his head and nodded onward. She turned and started up the hill. Revelwood followed her.
Sheridan said: "How'd you get ashore, George?"
"The ship just dropped out from under me. I grabbed a plank."
The slope stiffened. The girl stopped to catch her wind and Revelwood again put himself against a tree; his nostrils flared out for wind and his pulse throbbed rapidly against the skin of his neck. The girl had assumed an almost brutal expression, her chin set, her mouth turned down at the edges. In this manner, plodding on, and halting and plodding on again, they crawled up the mountain, stumbling over fallen trees, threading the vines which slapped them and drenched them, sliding backward in the rain-softened earth.
They came, long afterward, to the summit of the ridge and were lost in its thickness; but the way was moderately level and the girl reached into some new strata of endurance; she went on without prompting, taking the trail downward. Arriving at a break in the trees she stopped and pointed into a small, stumpy clearing. Coming forward, Sheridan saw a house and a lean-to barn. A spiral of smoke came from the house and a cow grazed on a miniature side-hill meadow. None of them said anything; they moved slowly down the trail. A dog barked through the rain, a bell tinkled, and when they came to the edge of the clearing they found a woman in the yard watching them.
Clara Dale was first to reach the woman. She began to say something but the woman stopped her. "You're from the wreck. There's a man here already from it." She was a dark, grave girl and pity softened her eyes. She put an arm out to Clara. "You come in," she said. "All of you come in."
Revelwood said, "I don't believe—" and fell on his knees and tried to support himself, and collapsed on his side. An older man ran from the dilapidated barn with a boy and a girl at his heels. Sheridan stared down at Revelwood, knowing he ought to lift him from that wet earth, yet having nothing much left in the way of strength. Clara Dale stared at Revelwood woodenly. Then she lifted her eyes to Sheridan. "I'm stronger than he is," she said.
She turned into the house. The man and his two youngsters came up and the older man said, "I'll take care of this fellow. Anybody else coming?"
"No," said Sheridan. "That's all," and went into the house.
They had eaten and they had slept; now it was another gray morning, the wind at half strength and the rain falling in lazy gusts. The survivors sat at breakfast—these three and a rough, short Irishman who had preceded them down the trail.
The story came out with no prompting from the man who sat by the stove with his pipe and interfered with his eldest daughter Katherine's cooking. She was the mother of the Morvain family in place of the real mother who was dead. She was the eldest daughter, as silent as her father was talkative. The two boys, sixteen and twins, were Bob and Harry—the best hunters in the county. "Venison," said Morvain, "is a poor man's way of stayin' alive. Bear's not bad, but my family don't like it." The eleven-year old girl was Suzie. There was a boy a year younger; he was Elgin, and looked nothing like the others.
The small kitchen was warm and filled with the close, keen odors of coffee, bacon and hotcakes. Comfort soaked into Sheridan and his vitality came back; and Clara felt well enough to smile. It was Revelwood who sat jaded and drawn. Katherine Morvain worked steadily from stove to table, possessing practical gifts which her father obviously did not have. Her hair, remarkably black, lay neatly over her head, her dress was smooth around a strong body, and a summer darkness lay on her skin. She observed Revelwood's lethargy particularly and filled his coffee cup again and paused over him. "You'd better eat. It's cold outside and you'll be driving ten miles through the rain."
Revelwood shook his head.
"I'll ride you into Seaside," said Morvain. "You can catch a wagon of some sorts on to Astoria. There's daily boats from there to Portland. But if you're tired, stay here longer. My house is open. What we've got is yours."
Katherine Morvain's glance touched her father with a small warning which he didn't see. "This coast is rough country," he said. "I've had three ranches along it in five years. I'd like to go on over to the valley and would of done it earlier if I wasn't deputy sheriff."
He was mild and vain and blind to himself; he believed himself a bigger man than he was. That, Sheridan suddenly decided, was what Katherine Morvain knew about her father. This family was dirt poor. The rough room showed it; the misfit barn, the sidehill clearing, the clothing of the children, the slackness of Morvain himself—these things showed it. Out in the rain stood one thin cow and out in the rain too stood a plow gathering rust.
"We'll move on," said Sheridan. "We're under great obligation to you."
Revelwood spoke one of his rare sentences. "This was as far as I could come last night. If the house hadn't been here I'd have died in that timber."
"I ought to know the names of the drowned," said Morvain. "I guess that's part of a deputy's job. Maybe I ought to go over to the beach and see what I can identify."
Revelwood said rather quickly, "Let the coroner do that. It's not what anybody would want to see who doesn't have to see it."
"Oh," said Morvain indulgently, "I've seen a lot of death." His face was smooth and entirely free of care. He had no knowledge of care, Sheridan thought; it would be his daughter who took the care.
Rising, Sheridan reached into his pocket for the wallet which once, during the shipwreck he had thought of throwing away because of its weight. He took out two double eagles and extended them toward Morvain. "Will you be good enough to take this? And if at any time I meet you again and you are in need of help of any kind, I'll consider it an obligation."
Morvain had enjoyed himself in the role of an open-handed host, and this offer offended him. "By God, no. What do you consider me? If you knew me better—as people around here know me—you wouldn't offer it."
"Well," said Sheridan, "any time you feel like hitching up, we're ready," and went to the yard. With a full belly and a night's rest he couldn't bring back the sharp edge of yesterday's misery, but some of it came back when he saw the dripping timber. Morvain walked to the barn. Clara Dale rose from the table and came into the yard. She said, under her voice, "Give me that money."
He dropped the two eagles into her hand. She stared at them a moment with a scheming warmth in her. "Could you afford more?"
He brought out his wallet and opened it to her.
She said, "Is that what you start with in this country, Mark?"
"That's all of it."
She bent her head, thinking. Then she said, "They need it so much worse," and took two more double eagles and turned back into the room. She said something and put the gold pieces into Katherine Morvain's hands. Sheridan noticed the tightening expression come to her—something like the cut pride her father had shown. Clara put her hand on Katherine Morvain's arm and said some other thing. Katherine Morvain shook her head; she held one gold piece in her hand and passed the other three back to Clara.
The Irishman came out and stood near Sheridan without speaking. He put his hands into his pocket and looked blankly at the timber. Sheridan said: "How'd you get ashore?"
"I don't know," said the Irishman. "Never will know, I guess."
"Bound for Portland?"
"We were," said the Irishman. "My wife and three kids went down with that ship."
