Lightning And Torchlight
A little before noon we left the hut of blue mud, the mission of Atinam. We forded the shallow river, and Ferdinand cheerily led the way straight up the steep hill-side. From its summit I could overlook, for farewell, the parallel ranges, walls of my three valleys of adventure. There were no forests over those vast arid mounds to narrow the view. Hills of Weenas, hills of Nachchese, valley of Atinam, — I took my last glance over their large monotony.
I might glance over the landscape, and recall my crowded life in it, only while the horses breathed after their climb, and no longer. If not eighty, certainly sixty miles away over the mountains is the Columbia, Achilles of rivers. And, says Ferdinand, “it must be a race all day with time, all night with time, a close race with time to-morrow.” If uncertainty of success is a condition of success, we shall win the race. But no dalliance, no staying to study landscape; we must on, steadily as the Princess Parazaide, whatever sermons there be in the stones along our way.
Vast were the hilly sweeps we overcame. Nags of mine, ye had toil that penultimate day of August. But straight from far snow cliffs came electric airs, forerunners of the nightly gale. And the sun, that it might never be deemed a cruel tyrant, had provided remedies against its own involuntary despotism, in streams from the snows of Tacoma, melted not beyond the point of delicious coolness. Snow crystals married with sunbeams came gliding down the valleys on their wedding tour. Down the gorges in the basalt, and so by pool and plunge, the transfigured being, a new element, poured to the pebbly reaches below. Whenever we had climbed the long bulk of a dusty hill-side, dreary with wild sage, a stunted and abortive tree, the mean ensign of barrenness, and then descended the hot, thirsty slopes of a declivity as dreary, down in the valley always we found the antidote to dust, thirst, and sterility, the precious boon of water hidden among grass and trees, — sunshine’s gift brought from the snows to cure the pangs of sunshine. Sparkling draughts of water were ready in vale after vale. I had but to stoop from my saddle while Klale drank, and scoop the bright flow in a leather cup long dedicated to Ægle, in classic fountains of historic lands.
Ferdinand’s temptation and test of faithfulness befell him before we had gone two leagues on our way. As the fates threw Shabbiest in the path of Loolowcan, now Ferdinand’s tempter appeared. One watches his man narrowly at such a moment. Which Janus-face will he turn? the one that sees the past, or the one that looks toward the future? Will he be the bold and true radical, or the slinking conservative? The combat, with its Parthian flights and Pyrrhic victories, is generally more briefly called life, and its result character.
Thus far I had only the coarse public facts on Ferdinand as a theme for analysis. When Mystery takes care that a man shall exist, and have a few years’ career in villany or heroism, Mystery also takes care to set upon the man’s front a half-decipherable inscription. Fudnun was attractive, not repulsive, in the traits that mark character. By physiognomy, I deemed him a truish man, a goodish fellow, a wiseish nomad. But how was I to know what education had made of him? what indiscriminate vengeance be might have in his heart? what treachery in return for other blanketeers’ treachery? The same spirit of our darksome enlightenment that makes slavery possible, makes maltreatment of Indians certain. Fudnun might feel himself nominated to punish in me the wrongs of his race.
The Indian who was to be Fudnun’s Mephistophiles was riding seemingly astray and purposeless across the world, like an Indian. But when the stranger, coming full tilt through a bending defile, saw us, it was too late to skulk. He pulled up his wild black horse, noticed me with a cool Howdydo, and opened fire upon Fudnun, with gutturals not at all cheerful. Fudnun informed me that the tenor of the new-comer’s oration was like Shabbiest’s to Loolowcan, yesterday.
So, then, big Brownskin on a fiery black mustang, inferior chief with shirt and leggins of buckskin reddened with clay, sulky siwash of Skloo’s band, armed with gun and knife, — thou too art inhospitable to the parting guest, — thou too art unwilling that by the aid of Fudnun, my friend, I should speed out of the country toward the Columbia. Now, then, none of this! Avaunt! Make tracks!