《山涧IN A HOLLOW OF THE HILLS》
作者:[美]Bret Harte布雷特·哈特【完结】
故事简介（英文书籍）
"Well," said the leader, leaning back in his chair aftercarefully unloosing the buckle of his belt, his eyes on the fire."We've prospected every yard of outcrop along the Divide, and thereain't the ghost of a silver indication anywhere." The men had seentheir share ups and downs -- having been starved, snowed upon, halfdrowned, and shot at by road-agents and horse-thieves. Now themoney had run out, and in the morning they would shake hands allround and call everything square, and go on their separate ways.But some of them had seen a strange light down in the hollow, thatnight -- and it turned out to be not heat lightning, nor swamp fire. . . but real fire: a forest fire -- And there was a house downthere, in the hollow, where they had seen a woman peering out alittle window . . .
CHAPTER I.
It was very dark, and the wind was increasing. The last gust had been
preceded by an ominous roaring down the whole mountain-side, which
continued for some time after the trees in the little valley had lapsed
into silence. The air was filled with a faint, cool, sodden odor, as
of stirred forest depths. In those intervals of silence the darkness
seemed to increase in proportion and grow almost palpable. Yet out of
this sightless and soundless void now came the tinkle of a spur's
rowels, the dry crackling of saddle leathers, and the muffled plunge of
a hoof in the thick carpet of dust and desiccated leaves. Then a
voice, which in spite of its matter-of-fact reality the obscurity lent
a certain mystery to, said:--
"I can't make out anything! Where the devil have we got to, anyway?
It's as black as Tophet, here ahead!"
"Strike a light and make a flare with something," returned a second
voice. "Look where you're shoving to--now--keep your horse off, will
ye."
There was more muffled plunging, a silence, the rustle of paper, the
quick spurt of a match, and then the uplifting of a flickering flame.
But it revealed only the heads and shoulders of three horsemen, framed
within a nebulous ring of light, that still left their horses and even
their lower figures in impenetrable shadow. Then the flame leaped up
and died out with a few zigzagging sparks that were falling to the
ground, when a third voice, that was low but somewhat pleasant in its
cadence, said:--
"Be careful where you throw that. You were careless last time. With
this wind and the leaves like tinder, you might send a furnace blast
through the woods."
"Then at least we'd see where we were."
Nevertheless, he moved his horse, whose trampling hoofs beat out the
last fallen spark. Complete darkness and silence again followed.
Presently the first speaker continued:--
"I reckon we'll have to wait here till the next squall clears away the
scud from the sky? Hello! What's that?"
Out of the obscurity before them appeared a faint light,--a dim but
perfectly defined square of radiance,--which, however, did not appear
to illuminate anything around it. Suddenly it disappeared.
"That's a house--it's a light in a window," said the second voice.
"House be d--d!" retorted the first speaker. "A house with a window on
Galloper's Ridge, fifteen miles from anywhere? You're crazy!"
Nevertheless, from the muffled plunging and tinkling that followed,
they seemed to be moving in the direction where the light had appeared.
Then there was a pause.
"There's nothing but a rocky outcrop here, where a house couldn't
stand, and we're off the trail again," said the first speaker
impatiently.
"Stop!--there it is again!"
The same square of light appeared once more, but the horsemen had
evidently diverged in the darkness, for it seemed to be in a different
direction. But it was more distinct, and as they gazed a shadow
appeared upon its radiant surface--the profile of a human face. Then
the light suddenly went out, and the face vanished with it.
"It IS a window, and there was some one behind it," said the second
speaker emphatically.
"It was a woman's face," said the pleasant voice.
"Whoever it is, just hail them, so that we can get our bearings. Sing
out! All together!"
The three voices rose in a prolonged shout, in which, however, the
distinguishing quality of the pleasant voice was sustained. But there
was no response from the darkness beyond. The shouting was repeated
after an interval with the same result: the silence and obscurity
remained unchanged.
"Let's get out of this," said the first speaker angrily; "house or no
house, man or woman, we're not wanted, and we'll make nothing waltzing
round here!"
"Hush!" said the second voice. "Sh-h! Listen."
The leaves of the nearest trees were trilling audibly. Then came a
sudden gust that swept the fronds of the taller ferns into their faces,
and laid the thin, lithe whips of alder over their horses' flanks
sharply. It was followed by the distant sea-like roaring of the
mountain-side.
"That's a little more like it!" said the first speaker joyfully.
"Another blow like that and we're all right. And look! there's a
lightenin' up over the trail we came by."
There was indeed a faint glow in that direction, like the first
suffusion of dawn, permitting the huge shoulder of the mountain along
whose flanks they had been journeying to be distinctly seen. The sodden
breath of the stirred forest depths was slightly tainted with an acrid
fume.
"That's the match you threw away two hours ago," said the pleasant
voice deliberately. "It's caught the dry brush in the trail round the
bend."
"Anyhow, it's given us our bearings, boys," said the first speaker,
with satisfied accents. "We're all right now; and the wind's lifting
the sky ahead there. Forward now, all together, and let's get out of
this hell-hole while we can!"
It was so much lighter that the bulk of each horseman could be seen as
they moved forward together. But there was no thinning of the
obscurity on either side of them. Nevertheless the profile of the
horseman with the pleasant voice seemed to be occasionally turned
backward, and he suddenly checked his horse.
"There's the window again!" he said. "Look! There--it's gone again."
"Let it go and be d--d!" returned the leader. "Come on."
They spurred forward in silence. It was not long before the wayside
trees began to dimly show spaces between them, and the ferns to give
way to lower, thick-set shrubs, which in turn yielded to a velvety
moss, with long quiet intervals of netted and tangled grasses. The
regular fall of the horses' feet became a mere rhythmic throbbing.
Then suddenly a single hoof rang out sharply on stone, and the first
speaker reined in slightly.
"Thank the Lord we're on the ridge now! and the rest is easy. Tell you
what, though, boys, now we're all right, I don't mind saying that I
didn't take no stock in that blamed corpse light down there. If there
ever was a will-o'-the-wisp on a square up mountain, that was one. It
wasn't no window! Some of ye thought ye saw a face too--eh?"
"Yes, and a rather pretty one," said the pleasant voice meditatively.
"That's the way they'd build that sort of thing, of course. It's lucky
ye had to satisfy yourself with looking. Gosh! I feel creepy yet,
thinking of it! What are ye looking back for now like Lot's wife?
Blamed if I don't think that face bewitched ye."
"I was only thinking about that fire you started," returned the other
quietly. "I don't see it now."
"Well--if you did?"
"I was wondering whether it could reach that hollow."
"I reckon that hollow could take care of any casual nat'rel fire that
came boomin' along, and go two better every time! Why, I don't believe
there was any fire; it was all a piece of that infernal ignis fatuus
phantasmagoriana that was played upon us down there!"
With the laugh that followed they started forward again, relapsing into
the silence of tired men at the end of a long journey. Even their few
remarks were interjectional, or reminiscent of topics whose freshness
had been exhausted with the day. The gaining light which seemed to
come from the ground about them rather than from the still, overcast
sky above, defined their individuality more distinctly. The man who
had first spoken, and who seemed to be their leader, wore the virgin
unshaven beard, mustache, and flowing hair of the Californian pioneer,
and might have been the eldest; the second speaker was close shaven,
thin, and energetic; the third, with the pleasant voice, in height,
litheness, and suppleness of figure appeared to be the youngest of the
party. The trail had now become a grayish streak along the level
table-land they were following, which also had the singular effect of
appearing lighter than the surrounding landscape, yet of plunging into
utter darkness on either side of its precipitous walls. Nevertheless,
at the end of an hour the leader rose in his stirrups with a sigh of
satisfaction.
"There's the light in Collinson's Mill! There's nothing gaudy and
spectacular about that, boys, eh? No, sir! it's a square, honest
beacon that a man can steer by. We'll be there in twenty minutes." He
was pointing into the darkness below the already descending trail.
Only a pioneer's eye could have detected the few pin-pricks of light in
the impenetrable distance, and it was a signal proof of his leadership
that the others accepted it without seeing it. "It's just ten o'clock,"
he continued, holding a huge silver watch to his eye; "we've wasted an
hour on those blamed spooks yonder!"
"We weren't off the trail more than ten minutes, Uncle Dick," protested
the pleasant voice.
"All right, my son; go down there if you like and fetch out your Witch
of Endor, but as for me, I'm going to throw myself the other side of
Collinson's lights. They're good enough for me, and a blamed sight
more stationary!"
The grade was very steep, but they took it, California fashion, at a
gallop, being genuinely good riders, and using their brains as well as
their spurs in the understanding of their horses, and of certain
natural laws, which the more artificial riders of civilization are apt
to overlook. Hence there was no hesitation or indecision communicated
to the nervous creatures they bestrode, who swept over crumbling stones
and slippery ledges with a momentum that took away half their weight,
and made a stumble or false step, or indeed anything but an actual
collision, almost impossible. Closing together they avoided the latter,
and holding each other well up, became one irresistible wedge-shaped
mass. At times they yelled, not from consciousness nor bravado, but
from the purely animal instinct of warning and to combat the
breathlessness of their descent, until, reaching the level, they
charged across the gravelly bed of a vanished river, and pulled up at
Collinson's Mill. The mill itself had long since vanished with the
river, but the building that had once stood for it was used as a rude
hostelry for travelers, which, however, bore no legend or invitatory
sign. Those who wanted it, knew it; those who passed it by, gave it no
offense.
Collinson himself stood by the door, smoking a contemplative pipe. As
they rode up, he disengaged himself from the doorpost listlessly,
walked slowly towards them, said reflectively to the leader, "I've been
thinking with you that a vote for Thompson is a vote thrown away," and
prepared to lead the horses towards the water tank. He had parted with
them over twelve hours before, but his air of simply renewing a
recently interrupted conversation was too common a circumstance to
attract their notice. They knew, and he knew, that no one else had
passed that way since he had last spoken; that the same sun had swung
silently above him and the unchanged landscape, and there had been no
interruption nor diversion to his monotonous thought. The wilderness
annihilates time and space with the grim pathos of patience.
Nevertheless he smiled. "Ye don't seem to have got through coming down
yet," he continued, as a few small boulders, loosened in their rapid
descent, came more deliberately rolling and plunging after the
travelers along the gravelly bottom. Then he turned away with the
horses, and, after they were watered, he reentered the house. His
guests had evidently not waited for his ministration. They had already
taken one or two bottles from the shelves behind a wide bar and helped
themselves, and, glasses in hand, were now satisfying the more imminent
cravings of hunger with biscuits from a barrel and slices of smoked
herring from a box. Their equally singular host, accepting their
conduct as not unusual, joined the circle they had comfortably drawn
round the fireplace, and meditatively kicking a brand back at the fire,
said, without looking at them:--
"Well?"
"Well!" returned the leader, leaning back in his chair after carefully
unloosing the buckle of his belt, but with his eyes also on the
fire,--"well! we've prospected every yard of outcrop along the Divide,
and there ain't the ghost of a silver indication anywhere."
"Not a smell," added the close-shaven guest, without raising his eyes.
They all remained silent, looking at the fire, as if it were the one
thing they had taken into their confidence. Collinson also addressed
himself to the blaze as he said presently: "It allus seemed to me that
thar was something shiny about that ledge just round the shoulder of
