Joseph turned around. “Be careful you don’t slip,” he called.
Her heel dug for a third step. And then the moss stripped off a little. Her hands gripped the moss and tore it out. Joseph saw her head describe a little arc and strike the ground. As he ran toward her, she turned slowly on her side. Her whole body shuddered violently for a second, and then relaxed. He stood over her for an instant before he ran to the spring and filled his hands with water. But when be came back to her, he let the water fall to the ground, for he saw the position of her neck, and the grey that was stealing into her cheeks. He sat stolidly on the ground beside her, and mechanically picked up her hand and opened the fingers clenched full of pine needles. He felt for her pulse and found none there. Joseph put her hand gently down as though he feared to awaken her. He said aloud, “I don’t know what it is.” The icy chill was creeping inward upon him. “I should turn her over,” he thought. “I should take her home.” He looked at the black scars on the rock where her heels had dug a moment before. “It was too simple, too easy, too quick,” he said aloud. “It was too quick.” He knew that his mind could not grasp what had happened. He tried to make himself realize it. “All the stories, all the incidents that made the life were stopped in a second—opinions stopped, and the ability to feel, all stopped without any meaning.” He wanted to make himself know what happened, for he could feel the beginning of the calm settling upon him. He wanted to cry out once in personal pain before he was cut off and unable to feel sorrow or resentment. There were little stinging drops of cold on his head. He looked up and saw that it was raining gently. The drops fell on Elizabeth’s cheeks and flashed in her hair. The calm was settling on Joseph. He said, “Goodbye, Elizabeth,” and before the words were completely out he was cut off and aloof. He removed his coat and laid it over her head. “It was the one chance to communicate,” he said. “Now it is gone.”
The pattering rain was kicking up little explosions of dust in the glade. He heard the faint whisper of the stream as it stole across the flat and disappeared into the brush. And still he sat by the body of Elizabeth, loathe to move, muffled in the calm. Once he stood up and touched the rock timidly, and looked up at its flat top. In the rain a vibration of life came into the place. Joseph lifted his head as though he were listening, and then he stroked the rock tenderly. “Now you are two, and you are here. Now I will know where I must come.”
His face and beard were wet. The rain dripped into his open shirt. He stooped and picked up the body in his arms and supported the sagging head against his shoulder. He marched down the trail and into the open.
There was a dull rainbow in the east, fastened by its ends to the hills. Joseph turned the extra horse loose to follow. He slung his burden to one shoulder while he mounted his horse, and then settled the loose bundle on the saddle in front of him. The sun broke through and flashed on the windows of the farm buildings below him. The rain had stopped now; the clouds withdrew toward the ocean again. Joseph thought of the Italians on the rocks, cracking sea urchins to eat on their bread. And then his mind went back to a thing Elizabeth had said ages before. “Homer is thought to have lived nine hundred years before Christ.” He said it over and over, “before Christ, before Christ. Dear earth, dear land! Rama will be sorry. She can’t know. The forces gather and center and become one and strong. Even I will join the center.” He shifted the bundle to rest his arm. And he knew how he loved the rock, and hated it. The lids drew halfway down over his eyes with fatigue. “Yes, Rama will be sorry. She will have to help me with the baby.”
Thomas came into the yard to meet Joseph. He started to ask a question, and then, seeing how tight and grey Joseph’s face was, he advanced quietly and held up his arms to take the body. Joseph dismounted wearily, caught the free horse and tied it to the corral fence. Thomas still stood mutely, holding the body in his arms.
“She slipped and fell,” Joseph explained woodenly. “It was only a little fall. I guess her neck is broken.” He reached out to take the burden again. “She tried to climb the rock in the pines,” he went on. “The moss skinned off. Just a little fall. You wouldn’t believe it. I thought at first she had only fainted. I brought water before I saw.”
“Be still!” Thomas said sharply. “Don’t talk about it now.” And Thomas withheld the body from him. “Go away, Joseph, I’ll take care of this. Take your horse and ride. Go into Nuestra Señora and get drunk.”
Joseph received the orders and accepted them. “I’ll go to walk along the river,” he said. “Did you find any water today?”
“No.”
Thomas turned away and walked toward his own house, carrying the body of Elizabeth. For the first time that he could remember, Thomas was crying. Joseph watched him until he climbed the steps, and then he walked away at a quick pace, nearly a run. He came to the dry river and hurried up it, over the round smooth stones. The sun was going down in the mouth of the Pureto Suelo, and the clouds that had rained a little towered in the east like red walls and threw back a red light on the land and made the leafless trees purple. Joseph hurried on up the river. “There was a deep pool,” he thought. “It couldn’t be all dry, it was too deep. For at least a mile he went up the stream bed, and at last he found the pool, deep and drown and ill-smelling. In the dusk-light he could see the big black eels moving about in slow convolutions. The pool was surrounded on two sides by round, smooth boulders. In better times a little waterfall plunged into it. The third side gave on a sandy beach, cut and trampled with the tracks of animals; the dainty spear-heads of deer and the pads of lions and the little hands of raccoons, and over everything the miring spread of wild pigs’ hoofs. Joseph climbed to the top of one of the water-worn boulders and sat down, clasping one knee in his arms. He shivered a little with the cold, although he did not feel it. As he stared down into the pool, the whole day passed before him, not as a day, but as an epoch. He remembered little gestures he had not known he saw. Elizabeth’s words came back to him, so true in intonation, so complete in emphasis that he thought he really heard them again. The words sounded in his ears.
“This is the storm,” he thought. “This is the beginning of the thing I knew. There is some cycle here, steady and quick and unchangeable as a fly-wheel.” And the tired thought came to him that if he gazed into the pool and cleaned his mind of every cluttering picture he might come to know the cycle.
There came a sharp grunting from the brush. Joseph lost his thought and looked toward the beach. Five lean wild pigs and one great curved-tusked boar came into the open and approached the water. They drank cautiously, and then wading noisily into the water they began to catch the eels and to eat them while the slimy fish slapped and struggled in their mouths. Two pigs caught one eel and squalling angrily tore it in two, and each chewed up its portion. The night was almost down before they waded back to the beach and drank once more. Suddenly there came a flash of yellow light. One of the pigs fell under the furious ray. There was a crunch of bone and a shrill screaming, and then the ray arched its back as the lean and sleek lion looked around and leaped back from the charging boar. The boar snorted at its dead and then whirled and led the four others into the brush. Joseph stood up and the lion watched him, lashing its tail. “If I could only shoot you,” Joseph said aloud, “there would be an end and a new beginning. But I have no gun. Go on with your dinner.” He climbed down from the rock and walked away, through the trees. “When that pool is gone the beasts will die,” he thought, “or maybe they’ll move over the ridge.” He walked slowly back to the ranch, reluctant to go, and yet fearing a little to be out in the night. He thought how a new bond tied him to the earth, and how this land of his was closer now.