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Robinson Jeffers - Give Your Heart To The Hawks
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After the first good rain I`ll go."
The reasons she made only angered him.
                                                                  Late in January
Fell rain mingled with hail, and snow in the nights. Three or four
calves died in a night, then Lance
Had occupation with what survived; and the north slopes of
hills were sleeted with magic splendor
That did not melt.
                                Fayne was drying dishes while Mrs. Gomez
washed them; she dropped a cup
With the dazzle of the white hill in her eyes when the sun came
out;
Then Lance`s mother filled up the door and said,
"That Mary Abbey is here." Fayne answered clearly,
"I broke a cup. She is in Idaho I think.`*
The old woman: "She`s thinner. Oh Fayne, there were only seven
Left of the dozen"; she gasped, remembering Michael: six were enough.
"She`s got something to tell you." Fayne said, "Being out of our net
Has she flown back? Where`s Lance?" and passed the old woman
As one moves a door to pass through a doorway,
But found no one; neither in the front rooms
Nor on the garden path when she opened the house-door.
Then she returned to Lance`s mother and asked,
"Where has she gone? Where was she?" but found no light in
the answers,
Only that Mary looked waxy as a little candle,
Her heart must be terribly weak, she looked all blue by the mouth,
And must have come a wet way.
Fayne felt the jealous
Devil fingering her throat again, tightening her breath,
And hasted and found Lance; but he was alone;
In the lower creek-bed, lopping all the twigs from the willows,
making a load, to be chopped fine
And mixed with little portions of hay. She saw him reaching up
the dwarf stems, as tall as the trees,
The sky-cold knife, the purple twigs at his feet, and said, "Have
you seen Mary Abbey?" "What?" "Mary Abbey."
"You said she`d gone." "Well, she did go: she was up at the house
just now"; and knowing her own bitter absurdity
Fayne trembled, saying, "Was she here?" He looked into the
hollow creek-bed behind him; what was Fayne seeing
To make her tremble? "No," he said. Fayne, trembling with
anger: "I`ll tell you what she went east for: she was pregnant.
She stopped in San Francisco to be fixed up." "That`s bad," he
said; "poor child";
He slashed the twigs. Fayne tortured her hands together until
the pain in the knuckles made her able
To smell the wounds of the willows and say steadily, "What
will you do,
Now she`s come back?" "Oh," he answered. She stood waiting;
he slashed the twigs and dropped them, saying, "Let her
stay there.
I`ve been thinking, Fayne. I`ve been able to think, now the heat`s
broken. We have no outlet for our bad feelings.
There was a war but I was too young: they used to have little
wars all the time and that saved them,
In our time we have to keep it locked up inside and are full of
spite: and misery: or blindly in a flash:
Oh," he said stilly; "rage
Like a beast and kill the one you love best. Because our blood
grows fierce in the dark and there`s no course for it.
I dream of killing all the mouths on the coast, I dream and dream."
She said, "Will you go to-morrow?"
"No. When the grass grows up. I`m bound to save what I can for
the old people, but knives and axes
Are a temptation. Two inches of grass." She stood gazing; he
saw the blue of her defenseless eyes
Glance at his knife-hand. "Don`t be a fool," he said, "I can be
quiet forever. Have you seen the old man
When he looks at me? I think he knows." "That is impossible,"
Fayne answered. "Why?" "For his mind is like
A hanging rock; he`d go mad when you crossed his eyes. But if
he learned it after you`d gone away
He could absorb it, like the other dreadful dreams that he eats."
He answered, "Davis has known for weeks.
I can tell that." "We have friends," she said; "faithful ones."
"Did you say that poor child
Was . . . what did you say?" Fayne hardened and answered,
"Your mother saw her."
"I mean ... no matter," he said.
                                                  In the night she lay
Unable to sleep; she heard the coyotes howl
And shriek on the white hill, and the dogs reply.
Omens and wraiths waked in her night-weakened nerves,
Reminders of the vague time when wolves were terrible
To one`s ancestors; and through all the staring-gaps of the night
She kept thinking or dreaming of Mary Abbey,
Who had come to the house and then lacked courage to stay,
and must no doubt
Be suffering something.
But Lance to-night slept quietly; he`d enjoyed the good fortune
Of useful and active labor outdoors, in the cold
Beautiful weather. He was so concentrated
On the one spot of anguish
That nothing else in the world was real to him. The Abbey girl
Was never real to him; not even while . . . Fayne heard her own teeth
Chipping each other in the angry darkness . . .
Nor whether she`d been in trouble.
                                                        The little wolves on the hill
Lifted their tumult into a tower of wailing; Fayne saw clearly
in her mind the little muzzles
Lifted straight up, against the starlit gray shoal of snow, and the
yellow-gray clamor shot up the night
Like a church-spire; it faded and floated away, the crackling
stars remained. "They smell," Fayne thought,
"The dead calves, and no doubt have found them. They`ve feasted,
And now they sing. . . . Nothing is real to Lance but his wound;
But when we get away from this luckless place,
Which yet I love,
Then gradually the glory of the outer world
Will become real; when he begins to perceive the rushing and
shining storm and fragrance of things,
Then he`ll be well."
A drift of thin rain fell in the morning;
The white vanished from the hill. The third day,
Fayne, going to spy for fear Mary might come
Where Lance was working, found old Davis in the driveway
Talking to a tall thin man on a red horse;
A Spanish man whom Fayne had not seen before,
But felt that she`d seen the horse. She eyed them and said,
"What does he want?" Davis, turning his back on the stranger,
Covertly touched his forehead and drooped an eyelid.
"He works at Abbey`s. This is the famous Onorio Vasquez,
The cowboy that sees the visions. He wants to tell you: you can
send him off if you want to. Have you heard
About Abbey`s girl?" "What?" Fayne asked, her eyes narrowed,
lips thinned. "He says she put herself out.
The young they ain`t got consideration for nobody." "What do
you mean?" "Jumped off a pier I believe.
A telegram came in their mail yesterday. Her dad`s gone up to
San Francisco to view the body.
So his hired man can roam." Payne`s mouth jerked, her eyes
widened. "I cannot understand what you mean,
Davie," she said; but gazed at the Spanish-Indian, the hollow
brown eyes
With a bluish glaze across them, in the shadow of his hat, in his
bony face. "Jumped off a pier,"
Davis answered with patient enjoyment; "it seems she kept her
address in her hand-bag on account of traveling,
So they telegraphed." "Did you say that she died?" He nodded,
"Mmhm: wa`n`t made for a fish, didn`t have gills.
The young ain`t got consideration for things like that." "Mary!"
Fayne said, her hand at her throat.
She drew deep breath, and sharply lifting her face toward the
silent horseman: "What are you waiting for,
Your news is told?"
He, in better English than one expected,
In the soft voice of his race: "You are very sorry:
Excuse me, please. I only saw her a little and she went away
After I came to work; she was beautiful with patient eyes but
I think it is often good to die young.
I often wish." "She came to this house," Fayne said, "two days
ago: how could she ... in the city? She was here
The day before yesterday." "No, that was the day," he answered,
"she died." Fayne stared at him
Without speaking; he was half dazzled by the wide blue of her
eyes below the fire-cloud of hair,
He looked at the brown earth. "What time did she ...
What time?" Fayne asked. "Don`t know." She said slowly,
"I think it is ... strange." She hardened. "Nothing. Have you come
To tell us any other thing?" "Yes," he said proudly,
"I ride on the hill and see a vision over this house. You have
heard of Onorio
Vasquez? That is my name." Old Davis made a derisive noise
in his throat; Fayne, thinking "Visions?
Apparently we too . . ." said quietly, "I never heard of you."
He, saddened: "It does not matter." But Davis, the grizzled
Thatch of his lip moving to make a smile:
"Now that`s too bad: for the man`s famous. He`s got six brothers
And every one of them knows him, every Vasquez on the coast.
If they can`t steal meat nor borrow a string of peppers they listen
to brother Onorio
Telling his dreams all through a winter night;
They don`t need nothing." She answered, "If you have nothing
to do here,
Go and help Lance." And to Vasquez: "Tell me what it is
You have to say." "You know a place in the south call` Laurel
Spring? No?" he said. "Near Point Vicente.
I never been: my brother Vidal has been. He told me a rock and
an old laurel tree
Is cut by the wind into the shape of the rock, and the spring runs
down. He made a beautiful place
The way he told; we are much Indian, we love such places."
Fayne answered, "I am busy just now." He: "Excuse me, please.
I ride on the hill and every day
Watch the old war in the sky over this house;
I hurt my heart with my eyes. Sometimes a naked man
Fighting an eagle, but a rattlesnake bitten him;
Sometimes a lion fighting a tide of dogs;
But sometimes terrible armies out of the east and west, and the
hacking swords." Fayne gazed at him
And said, "Is that all?
I have just heard that my best friend has died:
I cannot think of these things." He said "The two armies
Destroyed each other, except one man alone
Walking among the bodies of horses and men
That blocked the sky; then I heard someone say,
`Let him lie down with the others.` Someone say, `No.
At Laurel Spring he will wash off the blood,
And be cured of his wound.` I cannot live
Until I tell you." "Is it on the way
Into the south?" Fayne said. "Yes: on the trail.
My brother Vidal . . ." "I believe many lies
Are told about us," she said. "Have you heard talk
About this house?" He picked at the hair rope of the halter
On the horn of the saddle. She said, "I can guess
What you have heard. . . . May I call you Onorio?
Because it was kind of you to come down; and thank you
For telling me about your vision." She went nearer to him,
To reach his eyes under the eaves of his hat.
"Do you know Leo Ramirez?" "Him? Yes." "Have you talked to him?
He could tell you about it. He and I alone
Saw my husband`s brother climb on the cliff and fall.
Ask him and he will tell you the truth. The others lie:
To amuse idleness, I guess. If they had your great power
And saw the spirits of the air, they`d never do so.
But would you think the spirits of the dead?" Her face
Flashed at him, soft and hard at once, like a wet stone.
"Nothing," she said. "This present world is enough
For all our little strength. Good-bye, Onorio. If you hear anything
Come down and tell me ... at Abbeys` or anywhere . . .
For nobody comes down to see us any more,
On account of those wicked . . . lies . . ." While she spoke
A sob broke through and she hid her face. He from above
Looked down at her bent head and the wild color
And foam of her hair; he reached and touched her hair
As if it were a holy thing. Fayne, in a moment
Quelling her tears: "I`ll remember
About the way south, that fountain. I am very unhappy
For my lost friend." She turned hastily away
And left him, and found Lance.
                                                    She sobbed, "Mary Abbey
Will never come back. I .... I liked her well enough
If she had not . . . Oh Lance." He was flaying the leather from
a white and red calf, kneeling to work.
He rested his red-stained hands on the carcass and looked up with
vague eyes. Fayne remembered, "At Laurel Spring
He`ll wash the blood . . ." "Hm?" he said, "what?" "Mary . . .
What am I doing," Fayne thought, "I oughtn`t to tell him
While his mind is like this"; and clearing her face if she could,
making a smile, said carefully, "What
Do you want the skin for?" "I`ve nothing to do," he said, "for
the time. Rawhide has uses. I ground my knife
After all the willows were cut. Occupation." "A sort of bloody
one," Fayne said carefully. "Well," he said,
And tugged at the skin with his left hand, making small cuts with
the knife against the cling of the flesh.
She stood and watched, and furtively wiped her eyes. He looked
up again: "No fat to scrape off." He dipped
The knife in the shrunken flesh between ribs. "Amazing," he
said, "how the beasts resemble us, bone for bone,
And guts and heart. What did you say about Mary Abbey?"
"No," she answered, "nothing. I was too unkind.
I think how lonely she was." "Oh. You mean Mary Abbey. I
wish to God . . ."
He stopped speaking and tugged the skin, making small cuts
At the tearing-place. Fayne said, "Did you ever hear
Of Laurel Spring, down the coast?" She saw his wide shoulders
Suddenly stiffen, a shadow shot over in the air
And Lance`s white-blue eyes rolled after the bird,
A big black one, with bent-up wing-tips, a flesh-color head
That hung and peered. He sighed and pulled at the skin, slicing
the fiber.
Fayne said, "A vulture. They`re living high now." "Mm," he
said, "they know: they`re always stooping over my head.
I thought it was something else." "You`ve shot them out of the
sky," she answered, "there are no hawks." "Aren`t there!"
He said, and hushed.
                                After a time Fayne left him, and looked back
When she came to the ridge of the hill. She saw the brown breast
of earth without any grass, and the lean brown buckeye
Thicket that had no leaves but an agony of stems, and Lance
Furiously stabbing the flayed death with his knife, again and
again, and heard his fist hammer
On the basket-work of the ribs in the plunges of the hiltless
blade. She returned; when he saw her he was suddenly still.
She said, "Whom were you thinking of?" He gazed in silence
as if he thought that he ought to remember her
But could not. "Who was being stabbed ... in your mind,
Lance?" "Nobody. We are all dogs. Let me amuse myself."
"Me?" she said steadily. "No." She sighed and said, "I was going
to tell you ... I will. Mary Abbey`s dead."
She watched his blood-flecked face and his eyes, but they stood
still. "Oh," he said coldly. "What did she die of?"
"Unhappiness. She drowned herself." "Too bad." He said no
more, and Fayne stared and said: "When your mother saw her
That day, she was not real but a pleading spirit; she was dying
in the north. We never pitied her."
"Is she frightened?" he said. "Who? Your mother? I have not
told her." "Don`t then."

XIII
                                                                   He stood up slowly,
And wiped the knife on the hair side of the skin;
He looked up the darkening wind and said, "It is going to rain."
Fayne said, "Then will you go?" seeing his fixed face
Against the lit cloud, so that the sanguine flecks
And smear under the cheek-bone were not apparent,
Only the ridge of the face, the unrounded chin
Higher than her eyes. He turned in silence and passed
Heavily over the grassless earth, but soon
Fayne had to run to keep up. Near the house
They came to Davis pouring water into the hand-pump
Of the old well to prime it; who said, "The water`s
Quit in the pipes; the crick`s not dry up yonder,
I guess a rat in the intake . . ." Lance answered hoarsely,
"Fish it out then. Where`s the old man?" Fayne said,
"What do you want, Lance?" "The old man." Old Davis gaped
At his changed face; Fayne saw the water clamber
Up the sides of the can in the shaking hand
In little tongues that broke and ran over, "Hey, hey,"
Davie stammered, "y` got to consider," but Lance touched him
With only the finger-tips, then the man raised
One arm and pointed northwestward, slant up the hill.
Lance turned and ran; Fayne followed him, but could not now
Keep up, old Davis hobbled panting behind them;
At lengthening intervals the little ridiculous chase
Crossed over the creek-bed under sycamore trees,
Past buckeye clumps, and slant up the bare hill
Below the broad moving sky.
                                               Tall spikes of a tough weed
With leather leaves grew at a place on the hill;
A few staring-flanked cows tongued the gray leaves
But would not crop them, and broke the stalks. Old Fraser stood
Against a fence-post and watched; he saw the herd
A red and white stippling far down the slope, and the serpent-winding
creek-bed, the salt pool of its end
Behind the sand-bar, and the sandstone fang in the mouth of the
valley, from which the shore hills over sky and water
Went up each way like the wings of a sombre archangel. Lance
came from behind
And said, "I have run my course. I cannot go on forever." The
old man, broken out of his revery,
Looked blindly at the wide chest, red hands and stained face, as
if a pillar of mist had come up and stood
Threatening above him. "You," he said harshly, "what do you
want?" "Judgment. I cannot go on alone,"
And in a boy`s voice, "Oh, judgment. I have done . . .
I need, I need." The old man`s brown apelike eyes got him clear
at length, and became after their manner
A force of thrusting, like a scorched bar of fire-hardened wood.
"Go home," he said, "drunkard.
If there is no work in the field for your . . . hands . . what
blood is that?" "My brother`s," Lance said. Fayne came too late,
And sobbed for breath, in her throat a whining, and said, "He
was skinning a calf down there, he was . . ." Lance passed
Between them and leaned on the fence-wire with his hands together
and dragged the palms of his hands to the right and left
So that the barbs of the wire clicked on the bones of his hands
through the torn flesh. "And mine," he said.
Fayne heard the tough noise of tearing, and felt in her own
entrails through the groin upward an answering anguish.
Lance turned, hissing with pain, and babbled: "For no reason on
earth.
I was angry without a cause and struck him with iron and killed
him. The beast in me
That wants destruction. I mean Michael you know, Michael I
mean." Old Fraser staggered, saying quietly,
"Has he had drink?" Fayne said, "He . . ." she looked up at
Lance`s beautiful head and stained gray face,
But the lower zone of her vision could not avoid his hands, and
thick blood falling from the shut knuckles:
Where was that readiness of mind, her thoughts were wailing
away on the wind like kildeer, which flitter singly,
Crying all through the white lofts of the moonlight sky, and
you never see them. "Am I going to tip over
For blood, like Mary?" She stammered: "He . . .
Ah God. I`ll tell you . . ." Lance said, "This is mine. I have
come. Keep that woman away from me until I speak.
She fooled me into concealment, time and again, Oh cunningly.
I have fallen through flight after flight of evil
And harmed many." Fayne gathered her mind and said,
"This is it. This is the thing. He made love
With a girl and she has just died: now he hates me and he hopes
To take all the sins of the world onto his shoulders, to punish
himself. It is all like a mad saint.
You trained him to it. But I saw Michael . . ," Lance said, "I
remember an iron bolt for my shipwreck
Stood in my hand": he opened the ripped palm and the red
streamed: "I struck." "Climb," Fayne said,
"Up the awful white moon on the cliff and fall, I saw him. It is
Mary Abbey
Has killed herself." Lance said, "How your power`s faded. You`ll
never
Fool me or the world again. I would not die
Until I had told."
                               Davis came up, and saw
Lance head and shoulders against the sky like a dead tree
On which no bird will nest; the others at his base
On the brown hill, Fayne saying "Oh weak as water,
How will this help you bear it?" Davis, choked
With haste on the hill: "Ah. Ah. What`s he been doing?" Lance held
His two hands toward his father, suppliant, but clenched
To save the blood. "What shall I do?" The old man
Stepped backward without an answer. Fayne said, "Because
The Abbey girl drowned herself, Lance thinks his finger
Helped push her down; but she was sick in her dreams
And might `a` done it for anyone: the rest`s invention
To punish himself. I am the one to hate him
Meddling with that sick child, but I love him
And will not lose." Davis, eyeing certain flakes
And scraps on the red thorns of the wire, sighed "Ah
That was a ghastly thing," and stood swaying,
Yellow and withered. Old Fraser`s burnt wandering eyes
Fixed on him, the old man said: "Which is the liar?
Did Lance do it?" Lance opened his palms toward him
As if they would take and hold, saying "Tell the truth,
I will not bear to live in the dark any more."
Davis groaned, "Ay. It`s true I guess." Fayne: "Ah, Ah, coward.
Because he held his hands at you." She said to old Fraser:
"People hate you and your enemies made this story
Because you still had a son after Michael died.
This is what they have whispered so long, and Lance has heard it
And uses it to stab himself." Lance said, "It is horrible
To hear the lies from her mouth like bees from a hive
Hot in the sun. I was Michael`s death;
And I cannot bear it in silence. Only I pray you all to keep it
Hidden from my mother; you can do that
With a little care, with a little care, she cannot live long.
Make a story to save her." Old Fraser, suddenly
Covering his face: "Me . . . has anyone cared a little to save
Lest I live to the bitterness?" He passed among them
With tottering steps, tasting the way with his hands,
And down the hill toward home. Lance stood and muttered,
"What did he say, did he answer me?
He`s honest, I bank on that."
                                               A short way down
The old man stumbled and nearly falling stood still a moment;
Then turned his course up the hill and seemed to make haste
With short weak steps. Lance watched him and followed soon,
But turned fiercely on old Davie: "Back to work. Off.
That rat in the intake." And to Fayne: "How death
Makes even a rat powerful, they swell like clouds.
Leave me, will you." She answered, "I will never leave you.
But you, Davie, go home." "Hm?`` Lance said, "never? You take
your time.
Tie up my hands then; I think the seepage dulls me
More than the hurt helps. Here`s a handkerchief:
Your dress is old." She tore it, and while she bandaged him
They stood, the old man trotted on. Lance dully wondered:
"Why did I come to him; because he believes in God?
What the hell good is that? Hm? Oh, to put it
Out of its misery." "I know you have been in torture," Fayne said.
"And now you have done unwisely but yet we`ll live: not here,
but certainly, fully
And freely again. You might have spared that old man.
Our joined lives are not weak enough to have gone down
In one bad night. . . . Oh Lance," she prayed suddenly, "have
mercy on me. While you tear and destroy yourself
It is me that you tear."
                         He went on, she followed. On the high knoll ahead
Stood the bleak name-posts of those three burials, one new and
two old, erect against the sinking gray sky,
And seemed to rise higher as the clouds behind went down. The
old man was struggling across a gully this side.
Fayne breathlessly said, "Lance, Lance, can you hear me? He is
going up to Michael`s grave, where his wild mind, that you`ve
Not spared, is to find some kind of fall, some kind of decision.
Do you remember, dear, that you took me
To Michael`s grave a while back? You were so angry.
But that was the break of our bitter frost.
And maybe there, or maybe afterwards at home in bed: sometime
you put new life in my body.
Do you remember that I begged you for it? I could not bear
That that sick child and not I ...
Through me you go on, the other threw you away. Remember,
whatever destroying answer
Is to gore us now,
A spark of your life is safe and warm in my body and will find
the future. There is some duty in the parcel
With being a father; I think some joys too. But not to destroy yourself,
Not now I think." "Sing to yourself," Lance answered.
"I am sorry if she died sadly, I`ve worse to think of."

Fayne saw old Fraser, crooked and black against the light cloud,
Totter up the hilltop and drop himself down
By the new name-post, but he stood up again
Before Lance and Fayne came. He screamed, "Keep off,"
And picked up clods of the herbless earth and threw them,
But Lance went up without noticing. "What must I do?"
He prayed, "I cannot live as I am." Old Fraser
Suddenly kneeling covered his face and wept,
And said, "What has God done? I had two sons and loved them
too much,
And he is jealous. Oh Lance, was there no silence in the streaming
world
To cover your mouth with, forever against me?
I am not. Not hangman. Tell your story
Where it belongs. Give yourself up.
Must I take you?" "That`s what I thought of at the very first,
But have been deluded awhile," Lance answered quietly,
And turned to go down. Fayne cried, "What good is this? Oh,
but how often,
Father, you have spoken of the godless world: is that what Lance
is to go to for help and punishment?
When they came to put a serum into your cows, what did you
say? You would not trust an old cow to them,
Will you trust Lance? If he were as red as Cain . . . when
hunters come and break down your fences here
Do we run to the law? Must we run to it
For a dearer cause? What justice or what help or what understanding?
I told him to give his heart
To the wild hawks to eat rather than to men." Lance gripped her
elbow with the tips of his fingers,
And pointing at the empty air past the old man: "See, he looks
pleased wi` me,
And happy again." She looked first at Lance, then at the vacant
air. "How could he help but forgive you,"
She answered, "he knows it was not hatred but madness.
Why must you punish yourself, you loved each other"; and to
the old man: "Is God`s hand lamed? Tell Lance
To lean on your God; what can man do for him? I cannot remember,"
she said trembling, "how Cain ended.
There were no prisons I am sure?" Lance said, "He looks well.
No scar at all and his eyes laughing. Ah, Ah, look:
He waved his hand at his grave and laughed. I`ll tell you, though,
He`s not real. Don`t mistake him. It makes me glad,
But it`s bright nothing. Now it`s gone: see?" The old man, suddenly
Erect and shaking against the gray cloud: "I will have no part in
this matter.
It is written that sevenfold vengeance on the slayer of Cain. Go.
Go. To be a fugitive and be a vagabond,
And tramp the earth hard that has opened her mouth for thy
brother`s blood. No wonder the sweet rain could not fall.
I say flee quickly, before the dogs . . . should I give
My son to be judged by dogs?" Fayne said, "Do you hear him,
Lance, he has answered you. We must go away south,
As I`ve been praying." Lance said, "It has all been useless and
blind. I am back in hell." He sighed and went down
The way Fayne led, old Fraser behind them crying:
"If you had listened in the days before: now it is night,
And who shall hear? but the sharp feet of pursuers: yet look
how Christ`s blood
Flows like a fiery comet through heaven and would rain sweetness
The fields refuse."
                              Fayne said, "I am going to tell your mother
That you`ve got work as foreman on a farm in the south,
A dairy I`ll say, near Paso Robles. You`ve got to go and earn wages
Because we`re to have a baby. But next summer
She`ll see us again: we`ll come visiting: do you understand?
You must not let her think that you`re going for good;
She couldn`t bear that perhaps; but cheerfully say good-bye,
You`ll save the sorrow, that`s your wish, perhaps even
The ticking of her tired heart. Can you do it, Lance?
No," she said sadly when she looked at his face.
"I`ll say that you`ve gone ahead. You had to go suddenly
To get the job." "By God," he said, "I can do my own lying,
And smooth a face of my own, come on and watch me.
It is my mother." "Your hands, Lance." He moaned impatiently
"How will you say they were hurt?" He moaned, "Hobbled, hobbled.
Never an inch. That`s the first rule in hell,
Never to step one inch until it is planned.
... In the feed-cutter." Fayne said "I daren`t. Yes, at the end.
I`ll find clean cloth to bandage them. You must wash.
Get Davie to help you ready the horses.
The pack is ready, only we must put food in it."
He answered, "I am sick of life. I have beaten at the last door
And found a fool."
 
XIV
                                        Beyond Abbey`s place
The trail began to wind up to the streaming cloud.
Fayne looked back: Abbey`s was hidden, the awful memoried cliff
Crouched indistinguishable. Lance said fiercely,
44What do you see?" "Nothing." Fayne led the packhorse
To save torture of his hands; Lance rode behind.
He stopped on the rounding of a high fold of the hillside
And turned himself in the saddle, with his finger-tips
On the withers and on the croup. Fayne stopped. "Did you see,"
Lance said,
The look of the man that watched us by Abbey`s fence?"
"What, Lance? I am quite sure you are wrong: there has been
no one
Since we left home." "Then I was mistaken.
... I see nobody following. If they come after me
I`ll kill them; I am not going to be interfered with now.
My trouble`s my own affair. I`d cut my heart out
To make him live: that`s out of the question. I have beaten like
a blind bird at every window of the world.
No rational exit. No cure. Nothing. Go on. No," he said, "wait.
You know it`s our last chance to see home. There are our hills
but the valley`s hidden. There`s Fraser`s Point,
Do you see? The small jag: like a beak, ah? And," he said slowly,
"the curve
On this side, glimmering along . . . that cliff you know.
Looks like flat shore." "Dear," she said faintly, "it would be better
not to look back. We`re going far. Come."
"Worn flat I suppose by my thoughts, walking around, up and
down, walking around. Don`t talk about it.
I can even pick out the hill where we stood this morning, that
posted hill. I`m a little run down in health,
Perhaps these haggles in my hands will poison. Go on: I`ve seen
enough."
Around the corner of the hill, where wet earth hushed
The stony hooves, "Did you tell me," Lance said,
"That my mother saw Mary . . . what did you tell me
When she died?" Fayne felt a tired hope of joy:
He was thinking of someone else than Michael at least.
"Your mother saw her the day she died; probably the hour
And very moment. She thought that she asked for me,
But when I came, the presence had disappeared."
"What about it?" he said, "there`s no sense in it." "No.
That`s the manner of ... spirits. She had a clear sweet nature,
Candid and loving." Lance answered, "I am much troubled
About leaving my mother. The skin looked bluish again
Around her nostrils; we ought not to have left her." Fayne heard
An angry repeated crying high up in the air;
She was careful not to look up, but stealthily
Looked back at Lance; and said, "She was happy, dear,
When I told her about the baby; she was full of plans.
And we`ll write often." He was glaring up at the sky,
His face menacing and pale. Fayne said, "Lance?"
And when he did not answer, herself looked up and watched a
great soaring bird,
White-tailed, white-headed, a bald eagle, wide over the mountain
and shore scribing his arc of flight,
Tormented by a red-tail hawk that sailed above. The hawk dived,
screaming, and seemed to strike,
The eagle dipped a wing with reluctant dignity
And sailed his course. "Oh, you can`t kill them all,"
Fayne said, "from here to Mexico." "I don`t want to.
They win, damn them."
They climbed at length to the cloudy ridges
Where the high trail went south; they rode through the clouds
and in windy clearings
Would see enormous declivities tilting from the hooves of the
horses down wells of vapor to the sudden shore`s
Thin white surf on a rock like a grain of sand. Two or three times
Fayne heard Lance stop; she sat in the cloud and waited until he
came. When the ridge and the trail widened
They rode abreast; then she saw that he`d stripped
The bandage from his right hand, but one thin layer
The wound gaped through. "Oh Lance, it is all exposed: was it
too tight?" "Too stiff." "I must fix it.
Have you thrown the linen away?" He said with a shamed face,
"Let`s be friends, Fayne. I feel somebody
Behind us; and I can tell you I won`t be caught. I have my gun:
I can`t manage the trigger
Wi` that muff on my hand." "You are right," she answered with
a flash of joyful fear; "but it is certain
That no one`s following. Your wrist looks swollen." "No," he
said; "but it is strange and pleasant to have left the place
Along with you. Your hair is like a fire in the cloud." She answered,
"We have changed worlds." "Wait for me,"
He said, and turned and went back. Hearing him speak, but not
able to see him through the blind vapor,
She struggled in a kind of nightmare to turn the packhorse
To go back to him; she dropped the hair rope and struck
Her mount with fists and heels. As it leaped, Lance
Grew out of the fog, towering on his little horse.
"What was it? What did you see?" "Ah, nobody.
I could ‘a’ sworn."
                                 He was always listening as they went on,
And looking back, if the steam of the world cleared
Over the draft from a gorge. Fayne suddenly stopped
In the blind coil and drizzle of the cloud. "Are you there, Lance?
Are you all right?" "Hm? Yes," he answered, "I know it.
But I never can see him." Fayne said quietly, "Perhaps he is.
As when your mother saw Mary Abbey. But they`re not real,
As you and I are, and the hard mountains and the horses and the
wet cloud. He is not an enemy; we never
A moment hated him, but always loved and were sorry. But he
is only an echo of our own troubled
And loving thoughts." Lance laughed like the sudden bark of a
dog: "Eavesdroppers
Have got to take what they get. But what`s real, ah? How do you
know?" "I never thought of it," she answered,
"But I can tell you. What eyes, ears, fingers, can feel; and come
again the next day
And feel again: that`s real. You may see visions but you cannot
touch them; but if you could touch them too,
Yet they don`t last. . . . Did you ever hear of a place called
Laurel Spring?" "No. Any water would do.
It`s growing toward night." "I was thinking about a man named
Vasquez," she answered,
"That sees visions."
                                     The trail had come lower,
They rode in dropping skeins of the cloud, a slight cattle-track
On a steeple-roof slope so sheer and high
That every stone the hooves kicked out rolled down
Into deep water; but had dwindled from sight down the pitch of
distance
The first quarter of its fall. The sea-west heaven
Opened an eye, whence the last of the sun
Flamed, like a fire fallen into a well
Flashing before it is drowned, that makes the black disk of water
As bright as blood; and the wild angry light streams from the
bottom up the stained wall
And washes with color every cold stone: so from the floor of the
world a fountain and flood of roses
Flew up to the height, those two riders might have seen
Their own blue shadows on the red cloud above them;
Then the eye of the west closed. Color was there
But no radiance, here the gray evening gathered.
Lance`s mount suddenly stumbled; Fayne cried out;
And they rode on. Lance said, "Now he`s ahead of us;
The horse shied when he passed; I couldn`t see him.
It`s trembling still." Fayne said, "No wonder. If it had fallen
It would roll from here to the sea; oh, keep your feet
Light in the stirrups. Your bay`s getting too old, Lance.
To-morrow it must take the pack; you`ll ride the pinto."
"To-morrow!" he said. Fayne turned and looked and said nothing,
feeling intolerable sadness
Grow over her mind like the gray darkness covering the world;
for a moment it seemed they were not escaping
But only dragging the trap; and the twilight darkened. There
was no stopping here;
They rode like flies upon the face of a wall;
The tired horses must stick if they could, and go in darkness
Until some flat place found. Fayne was tired too,
And shook in the cold. "Lance, Lance, ride carefully.
If you should fall I`ll follow. I will not live
Without you." He laughed, "Ha!" like the bark of a dog.
"No danger here, we are going in the perfect owl`s eye.
Michael has gone ahead to make ready for us.
You know: a camp." "What?" she said. "You know: a camp.
We`ll come to it." "Oh Lance, ride carefully." A kind of shoulder
on the wall
Showed in the dark, and a little noise
That Fayne thought was the sea. Lance called behind her,
"Hello. Are you there?" She said, "Here, Lance." "Uhk-hm.
The other fellow; not you." She thought "I can`t bear it,"
And said quietly, "It`s water my horse has found.
It must be a little creek; I can hear it falling."
They stopped and drank under the whispering bushes,
And found no place to lie down. There were no stars,
But three ships` lights crept on the cavernous depth
And made a constellation in the under-world;
Lance said, "Damn you, go on." Fayne understood
By the useless curse how his mind stared. The horses
Paced on with heads down, and around the fold of the hill
Stopped of themselves. Here in a shallow gully
There seemed to be room to camp, between the sharp slope
And a comb of bushes.
                                     Fayne saw a glimmer move in the dark
And sobbed to restrain a cry; it was Lance`s hand
From which he had slipped the bandage; the wound and its wet
exudate
Shone phosphorescent: the right hand: the hand that had done it.
Or can pain shine? In a moment Fayne thought more quietly:
"Is it infected, could infection shine in the dark like decaying
wood?" He was feeling the earth for sticks
To start a fire: she dipped in the pannier and found the matches.
In the red firelight she examined his hand:
Feverish, a little; but less than his lips and eyes: Oh, when would
the strain end? "Let`s make a big fire,
This our first night of freedom, and keep ghosts away." She took
the short-handled axe from the pannier side
And broke dead wood with it. "We`ll make a bright eye up here
for the night, in the high blackness, for the hollow night,
For the ships to wonder what star . . . I`ll tell you what star,
You streaming ships: the camp-fire of Lance and Fayne is the
star; we are not beaten, we are going to live.
We have come out of the world and are free, more hawk than
human, we`ve given our hearts to the hawks to keep
In the high air." Lance laughed, "Ha! Owls you mean. Welcome."
He kept his hands
From the fire-heat, and would take no food.

XV
                                                                        The famished horses
Moved in the dark; Lance ground his teeth in sick sleep;
Wind whispered; the ocean moaned; that tinkling water
Fell down the rock. Fayne lay and was cold; she wondered
Whether it was Laurel Spring perhaps; then perfectly knowing
That all the leaves were oak, she was compelled
To creep away in the darkness and crush leaves
To smell their nature. "I was not like this
A year ago," she thought wistfully, "to lie wakeful
And stare at the words of a fool; in the high sweetness
Of mountain night." Her solitary mind
Made itself a strange thought: that Lance would be saved and well,
But she herself would die at the baby`s birth,
After some happy months: it seemed to lead hope
Into the line of nature again; for nobody ever
Comes off scot-free.
                                      She slept a little; Lance woke
And felt his hands aching, and thought, "It cannot be true
That I killed. Oh yes, it is. At every waking.
And there is no way to change it." Night was grown pale
In the way to dawn, and many dark cold forms
Of bush and rock stood quietly. But moving creatures
Troubled the stillness, Lance heard the steps of pursuit
Along the trail from the north, more than one rider;
Then his long-frustrate and troublesome life
Flaming like joy for the meeting, shook its bewildered elements
To one sharp edge. He was up, and moved quietly,
Willing to let Fayne sleep, in the sunset cloud
And pillow of her hair. His puffed hot fingers buckled
In a moment without fumbling the bolstered belt
That had the gun; he caught the short-handled axe
That magnetlike drew his hand; and the world was suddenly
Most cool and spacious.
                                       Four lean steers
Led by a barren cow were along the path.
They had come to drink in the dawn twilight, and now
Remembered a grass-plot southward. Where Lance met them
The trail was but a hair of passage stepped in the face
Of a leaning clay cliff; the leader stopped,
Was pushed from behind, and trying in her fear to turn,
Splayed with both forefeet over the slippery edge,
Felt the axe bite her neck; so leaping out blindly
Slid down the pit. They were horsemen to Lance, his enemies,
Albeit a part of his mind was awake and faintly
Knew what they were; the master part willed them to be
Men pursuing a murderer; they were both cattle and men
At the one moment. For being men, hated; for being cattle,
The hand was more free to strike, the fiery delight
More pure of guilt. The steer came on, not angrily,
Dull and unable to turn, dipping his new-moon horns,
Lance whining with joy and reckless of his own body
With both hands on the axe-helve drove the sharp steel
Into the shoulder; it broke right through the shoulder-blade
And nicked the broad ribs below. At the same moment
The curve and base of a horn found Lance`s thigh
And pushed; but he with his weight flung forward
In the fury of the axe-blow went over the head
Onto the shoulder, and a moment clung there, as when an old
mountain-lion
Has hunted under the spite of fortune for many days, until his
bright hide is ruffled, and the ribs
Lift up the hair; he comes by a secret way and crouches in the
alder leaves an hour before dawn
Over a pool where the deer drink; but not a deer but a cow-elk
comes to the pool,
And stands in the glimmer and the trembling twilight, and stoops
her head: the puma watches, his lustful mind
Can even taste the hot flesh through the rough hide, and smell the
soft heavy fountain of blood: he springs,
And sticks on the shoulder, blunting his teeth against the great
bones of the neck; but the elk does not fall,
But runs, and beats her death against the low branches, and scrapes
him off:
So Lance fell off from the steer`s shoulder, and was ground
Between the flank and the cliff, as the numbed foreleg
Failed and recovered. The weight lifting, he stood
With his back to the steep wall and violently
Pushed the great hairy quarters with all his power
Of both his arms; the hind hooves fell over the edge,
And the forelegs, one crippled, scraped the stiff clay
In vain for foothold, the great hurt bulk went down
Standing, but fell in a moment and slid in the chasm.
The others had turned and fled.
                                                    Fayne saw her lover
Come swaying and shining against the gray sky
Over the abyss of darkness, and she had seen the steer fall.
Lance held the axe. "Ah, Ah," Fayne cried, "strike then. Strike.
Finish it. We have not lived pleasantly,
And I have failed." He threatened her, laughing with pleasure.
"I have not had such pleasure in the days of my life.
Did the dogs think they were hunting rabbit? Surprised them, ahf
ah?" She said, "Your hands have opened again
And dripping fast." "More?" he said, hearing the horses that
stamped and snorted beyond. "Oh, good. If they get me,
Remember it`s a grand end." He ran and struck
The nearest; it was holding its head ready for the axe, backing and
straining
On the taut halter, and went down on its knees; the second stroke
Chopped horribly along the neck, the third ended the pain. Lance
crouched and looked at the head, and wearily
Rose, and said slackly, "There was no way out, here, either. My
own horse you see.
I must `a` been ... I have been troubled.
Bearing my face on every glass gap and porthole . . .
And get a beaten face.
Were those more horses?" Fayne had stood rigid; she said,
"Steers." "Why didn`t they shoot? ... Oh ... Steers. Tbafs it.
Yet I hate blood.
See how it springs from the ground: struck oil at last, ah?
I felt like this, that time. So we`ve tried a long time
And never found
My exit: I think there`s none: the world`s closed.
A brave fellow, a tethered horse.
A natural butcher."
                                    One of the fallen forelegs
Paddled its hoof on the earth and Lance said faintly, "I`ve come to
the point
I cannot even put him out of his pain."
He dropped the red axe; Fayne saw his own blood spring from his palm
When he let go. "I think," he said, "have I got the gun on me?
Will you finish him off?" "He is dead," she answered.
"Listen, Lance." Her throat was twisting and beating upward
with hot nausea; she swallowed and said,
"Dearest. This is only a stumble on the way. We are going on.
You will be well after this.
You are dreadful with blood but you are too beautiful
And strong to fail. Look, dear,
How the clear quivering waters and white of dawn fill the whole
world; they seem to wash the whole mountain
All gently and white, and over the sea, purifying everything. If
I were less tired
I could be full of joy." She pressed her hands to her throat and
swallowed and said, "Where you and I
Have come to, is a dizzy and lonely place on a height; we have to
peel off
Some humanness here or it will be hard to live. If you could think
that all human feelings, repentance
And blood-thirst too, are not very important in so vast a world;
nor anyone`s life;
Nor love either, the unlucky angel
That has led me so far: we`ll go on, we`ll not fail. All over the
mountain
The eagles and little falcons and all the bright cold hawks
you`ve made friends with them now are widening
Their wings to wash them in the cool clearness, and over the
precipices launching their bodies like ships
On the high waves of dawn. For us too
Dawn brings us wandering; and any ghost or memory that wants
to follow us will be sore in the feet
Before the day`s end. We`re going until the world changes, you
and I like the young hawks
Going hunting; we`ll take the world by the throat and make him
give us
What we desire."
                                He stood bent over, smiling sidewise, watching
the drip from his hands, and said,
"You do it quite bravely. No doubt you are right, and I must
take your guidance without a word
From this time on. What next? I`ll go wash. Faugh.
What a hell of red to be stuck in; you`re out o` luck,
Loving a butcher." She answered with her hands at her mouth,
struggling against her sickness, "I`ll come in a moment
And help you to clean your hands and bandage them again." He
went back by the trail, but she
Vomited with grievous labor a little water and followed him.
Now all the world was quite clear
And full of dawn, so that Fayne saw from the trail
The jutting shoulder of the hill, guessed at in darkness,
Was a great rock, lengthened by thick hard foliage
Of mountain laurel, which grew above it, and the wind had carved
Into the very nature and form of the rock
That gave it shelter, but green for gray. She remembered
With a wild lift of the heart, "He`d wash the blood
In Laurel Spring, and be healed of his wounds,"
But Lance had not gone to the stony basin, but stood
Out on the ledge of the rock, and was looking down
The straight vast depth, toward the beauty of the ocean
Like a gray dove`s breast under the dawn-light. She could not
call to him
Before he leaped and went down. He was falling erect
With his feet under him for a long time,
But toward the bottom he began turning in the air.
One of the roots of the mountain concealed his end
On the shore rocks. Fayne lay down in the trail
And thought that when she was able she would go down to him,
One way or another. ". . . That would be happiest.
But then he`d be extinguished forever, his last young spark
That lies warm in my body, bought too dear
For gulls to eat . . . and I never could help you at all,
And now has come the wild end.
I could not keep you, but your child in my body
Will change the world."
She climbed slowly down,
Rock to rock, bush to bush. At length she could see him
Lying softly, and there was somebody bending above hinif
Who was gone in a moment. It was not so dreadful
As she had feared; she kissed the stained mouth,
And brought smooth stones from the shore until she had covered
Her love against the vultures and salty gulls;
Then climbed up, rock to rock, bush to bush.
Source
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