by Zane Grey
“Cal, see heah,” he said, turning; “you’d better let the little lady go home with me.”
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Thurman; you’re very kind indeed,” interposed Georgiana, demurely, “but I’m going with Mr. Cal.”
“Wal, you might have to walk,” rejoined Wess, rather gruffly.
“That would be lovely. I adore walking.”
Wess vouchsafed no reply to this, manifestly giving in with poor grace, and with a meaning glance at the rattling Ford he strode back to the touring-car. Arizona, however, had still a thunderbolt to loosen. He bent over the door close to Georgiana, and with great seriousness he said:
“Lady, shore this’s the wust season for walkin’.”
“Indeed! Why, how strange! The weather seems delightful to me,” she replied, smiling at him. Cal gathered the impression that she could not help being prodigal with her smiles, and he was not sure she gave them with perfect sincerity.
“Wal, miss, the weather hasn’t nuthin’ to do with walkin’ in the Tonto,” went on Arizona. “Now, my hunch is jest this heah. Shore Cal’s old Ford is palpitatin’ yet. But it’s dyin’ an’ it’ll croak pronto. Thet’ll be aboot dark, I reckon, mebbe before. You’ll hev to hoof it. An’ see heah, lady, do you know aboot hydrophobia skunks?”
“No, indeed, I don’t. What’re they?” queried Georgiana.
“Polecats what hev rabies,” replied Arizona. “They’re loco-crazy. They ain’t afeerd of nothin’. They run right at you, an’ if you move or yell they’ll bite you an’ give you hydrophobia. Then you go crazy an’ run around tryin’ to bite people yoreself. I knowed two fellars what got bit on the nose while they was sleepin’ with me. I hed to choke the dinged skunks to make ’em let go. An’ both them fellars died horrible!”
“Mr. Cal, is he kidding me?” she asked, turning to Cal, somewhat concerned by Arizona’s dreadful recital.
“I reckon he is, but all the same there are lots of hydrophobia skunks, an’ we sure keep clear of them,” replied Cal, with a laugh.
“See thet, miss,” responded Arizona, triumphantly. “Onct in a while Cal shows he’s human. So you’d better hedge on thet walk for hours an’ hours along the lonely road — in the dark woods — an’ come with us. I’ll see you safe in Green Valley.”
“I’ll take a chance on Mr. Cal,” returned Georgiana, archly.
“Aw!” breathed Arizona, in disappointment. “Cal, you ought to be ashamed — draggin’ this nice little gurl, with all her pretty clothes, to go trampin’ through the dust an’ woods.”
“Arizona, it takes a long time for anythin’ new to penetrate your skull,” replied Cal. “Miss Georgiana Stockwell wants to go home with me.”
“Ahuh! Wal, all right. I was only tellin’ her what she’s up against.”
“Trust me to tell her myself, Arizona,” returned Cal, heartily. “Jump in, Tuck. I reckon there’s no occasion to throw any monkey-wrenches just now. Ha! Ha!”
Merry climbed into the back seat and slammed the door. Cal, with deep and secret misgivings, put on the power, half expecting that the car would refuse to move. But to his delight it started off as if running smoothly was its especial forte.
“Say, Cal,” yelled Arizona, “we’ll hang along behind an’ pick up the pieces.”
Cal drove by Wess and Pan Handle and Tim, on past the garage, where the mechanics peeped out in sure betrayal of their part in the plot, and down the dusty road out of the village into the country. The driving, and getting away from Ryson, relieved Cal of the necessity of strain and left him to the mercy of new and strange sensations. Much that he had feared had come to pass, but differently, and it had lost its hatefulness. All the rest seemed mysterious and exalting. Something had happened. He felt keen, light, buoyant, and yet shy. He wanted to look at the girl, but could not yet compel himself to do so. The well-known winding, dusty road, with its borders of brush, had utterly lost its sameness, its long monotony and gray and green dullness. It led now to adventure and romance. It called to youth. It was immeasurably too short. Only eighteen miles to Green Valley! How he wished it were ten times that distance. A glamour floated over the valley, not all the rosy veils and golden glints of the westering sun. The drowsy air, beginning to cool, smelled and tasted sweet to Cal. But despite all this, despite the new senses of beauty and wonder in his world, despite the gratifying end of the day, after its miserable beginning, despite the undeniable joy of the moment, there was a vague strange dread deep in his soul. Like a shadow behind the radiance of mind! He felt it along with all the rest.
The girl sat quietly for the first mile or so of that journey. Cal saw out of the corner of his eye how still and thoughtful she appeared. He noticed when she began to take interest in the ride and in him. Several times she peeped up at him, and each time that sign thrilled him.
Presently she turned to address Merry, whom she evidently had forgotten up to that time.
“Mr. Merry, thanks for — for defending Eastern girls,” she said, hesitatingly. “That boob was horrid and just what you called him. I never saw any one hit as you hit him. I’ll say you handed him one.”
“Don’t mention it,” replied Tuck, gallantly. “I’m a ladies’ man. And I’ve a little sister just like you, only not so pretty.”
“Thank you. So you’re a flatterer as well as a slugger,” she said, merrily. “Mr. Cal, what do you think about it?”
“Please don’t call me Mister,” replied Cal. “What do I think about Tuck? Wonderful fellow! Oh, it was grand when he walked up on Bloom and called him all that — and punched his nose — thumped his big paunch — then slammed him hard. Aw, great! If only Enoch could have seen that!”
“Who’s Enoch?” asked the girl.
“My older brother. He’s the finest fellow. He an’ Bloom are set against each other something bad. An’ we all side with Enoch. A Thurman sticks to a Thurman, right or wrong. But in this case we’re right. Bloom is no good, an’ that showy rider of his, Bid Hatfield — —”
Cal checked his impulsive speech. Recall of Hatfield was singularly bitter at this incomprehensibly sweet moment. And likewise, Miss Georgiana seemed to feel the silencing effect of the thought of Hatfield. Her pensiveness stormed Cal’s heart with an utterly new sensation — the fire of jealousy.
“Did you like Hatfield’s looks?”
“Oh, indeed I did! Looked like a swell movie actor to me,” she replied, naïvely. “I fell for him, I’ll tell the world.”
Cal’s beautiful trance suffered a darkening blight. If he had never before had reason to hate Hatfield he had it now. Moreover, the way Miss Stockwell talked at times began to disturb Cal and trouble him. He had been most concerned with the vague sweetness of her presence, the tones of her voice. She was wonderful. But the actuality of her began to impress him.
“Well, Eastern girls are no different from Western girls, so far as Bid Hatfield is concerned,” said Cal compelled to a caustic sincerity. “Sure the Tonto girls fall for him, as you called it.”
“Sort of a man vamp,” giggled Georgiana.
Cal had no reply for this. His stirred antagonism shaded into disappointment in her, in himself, and the hour that a moment ago seemed so alluring. By way of forcing himself aloof he began to drive faster, with the result that the Ford performed in a miraculous manner.
“Step on it, Bo!” cried the girl, gaily. “You can’t scare me. I eat speed.”
Cal answered to that with reckless abandon until Merry reached forward and, tapping him on the shoulder, said, rather forcefully: “Buddy, cut the speed or you’ll spill us. And that big car with your cousin and his pards is right behind us.”
Thus brought to his senses, Cal slowed down to careful driving. He tried not to be aware of Miss Georgiana’s distracting nearness, but the fact that a lurch of the car had thrown her against him, and she had not shown any special desire to move away, utterly defeated his efforts. He vowed, however, that she should not see how bewildering she was to him. Once he looked back down a
long straight stretch of road. The big Thurman car with Wess and the boys was hanging back there. Cal was grimly reminded of the fact that they were driving slowly, waiting behind him for the inevitable disaster, whatever it was to be. He did not welcome it now as he had welcomed it a few miles back. Something had hurt him, and he began to think that it would never do for him really to care for a girl like this one beside him. She was Eastern. He was Western. She would never look at him, even if she could be serious, which he doubted. He did not understand her.
“Cal, this limousine seems to be holding together,” she said, presently. Evidently she could not keep quiet or sit still for long. Cal sensed something restless, intense, vibrating in her.
“Yes. Did you expect it’d fall apart?”
“It’ll spread pretty soon and we’ll go one way while Mr. Merry goes the other.”
“Aren’t you afraid of autos?” he queried, curiously.
“Afraid! I should say not! What for?”
“Why, accidents, of course! I sure am afraid of them. But I love a wild horse.”
“What’s the use to be afraid? If you’re going to get it in the neck you’ll get it, that’s that. Oh, I should worry.”
She was a wholly new species of girl to Cal, and the more he talked to her the greater grew his confusion. But one thing he gathered — along with his confusion grew her charm.
“Oh, what beautiful country!” she exclaimed, when Cal turned the last curve of the valley road and headed into the foothills.
“Beautiful isn’t strong enough, Miss Georgiana. It’s glorious. You just wait.”
“Cut out the formal stuff, for tripe’s sake,” she said, impatiently.
“What?” asked Cal, blankly.
“Can the Miss, will you? I’m not an old lady. I’m only seventeen. Call me Georgiana.”
“Oh — I — I see. All right,” rejoined Cal, confusedly. But the shock he had sustained was not pleasurable. Still, her praise of his beloved Tonto warmed him toward her. There could be no more lovely country in all the world. And with that thought flashed another, disturbing, thought-provoking. Would this girl come to love the Tonto Basin, and find a home there? Cal experienced a queer fluttering of his heart, quite inexplicable.
The sun was about to go down behind the ragged golden-hazed range of mountains in the west, and the most lovely moment of the day was at hand. Cal was driving slowly up a long winding road round a foothill and he had opportunity to snatch a glimpse now and then of the country. The pageant in the sky and the panorama rolling away on all sides were unusually beautiful. It seemed to him that valleys and foothills and mountains, the azure sky, the pink canopy of cloud, the golden flare, all had united to impress this girl with the wonder and glory of the Tonto.
Cal yielded to an uncontrollable impulse. On the summit of the foothills he stopped the car and bade Georgiana look around. She uttered a little cry, not of delight or wonder, but of some new emotion, born of that wild mountain prospect. The green rolling valley waved away to the Mazatzals, blue-massed, gold-tipped, marvelously canopied in a purple haze. Long dark green slopes lifted for leagues and leagues, to the noble brow of the Mogollon Rim, where blazed the last fire of the sun on the zigzag stone front of this mesa mountain, endlessly reaching westward, lost in dim distance.
Close at hand the foothills presented soft rounded contours of green brush and yellow earth alternating in patches. Cal pointed out to the girl the manzanita, with its smooth red-barked branches, its glistening green leaves, like wax, its gold-hued berries. He showed her the mescal cactus plants, gray-green, with spiked leaves, and long dead flower-stems, standing aloft. To the eastward rose the foothills, higher and higher, growing green and dark with cedar, juniper, and at last the pines, all mounting in sloping billows to a great dominating landmark, a flat-topped, black-fringed mountain called Promontory Point, standing out from the Rim to catch the last glittering rose and gold of the sunset. To the southward the country fell away into the numberless dark shadowy lines of ridges and canyons that constituted the Tonto Basin, and at this bewitching moment all was bathed in a strangely beautiful and unreal light, purple and lilac, exquisite and intangible as the shadow cast by a rose.
“You love it all — don’t you?” she said, as Cal ended his enthusiastic designation of the country visible to them.
“Yes,” he replied, drawing a deep breath of the cool air, now bearing fragrance of pine and cedar.
“Oh, it’s nifty, all right,” she replied, settling back in her seat, “but too wild and woolly for me. I went to New York City once, and, say, take it from Georgie, there’s the place for me.”
“Ahuh! I don’t doubt it,” replied Cal, rather bluntly, in his disappointment. Then, as if to find solace for his hurt he turned to Merry, who had evinced a keen interest in all Cal had pointed out. “Tuck, do you like it?”
“Buddy, here’s where I homestead,” was the hearty reply. “I’ve been all over the world. But this Tonto has got ’em all skinned to death. I want to live here a hundred years and bury four wives.”
Cal joined with Georgiana in mirth at Merry’s facetiousness. Then the hoarse honk of an automobile horn hastened Cal to start on again. Wess was creeping up on him. Cal drove on, down the winding slope of that foothill and up another, toward the dense green wooded country rolling eastward.
“I’m nearly — frozen,” said the girl, presently.
“That’s too bad. I forgot to fetch a robe. Haven’t you a coat?”
“Yes, I’ve a heavy coat, and sweater, too, but I can’t unpack them now,” she replied. She was indeed shivering. With the setting of the sun and growing altitude the air had become cold, marked by a penetrating quality of the desert land.
For the first time Cal deliberately ran his glance over her from head to foot. Indeed, the light, flimsy dress she wore, low at the neck and startlingly short, was no garment for the Tonto at night. A girl needed to wear wool. Cal’s quick glance caught a glimpse of her bare knees, shapely, slim, and pink, and her black stockings rolled low. If he had experienced any shocks heretofore, what was this now? Quickly he averted his glance, back to the road ahead, and he tingled under a sensation of amaze, disgust, and something else he could not define.
“If you — you suffer from cold — why don’t you dress differently?” he queried, in a tone he meant to be casual. But it was not.
“Don’t you like this dress?” she asked, quickly.
“I should smile I don’t,” he replied.
“What’s wrong with it?” she added, with an irresistible concern. “It’s new — stylish. All the boys said it was some swell rag.”
“Boys!” retorted Cal. “What kind of boys?”
“Why, all my friends!” she replied, in a dangerous tone that warned him. Then as he did not answer she asked again: “What’s wrong with it? I suppose you’re the arbiter of style in your wonderful Tonto.”
“I don’t know anything about style — or swell rags”, said Cal, stung by her sarcasm. “But I’ve got some sense. This is a mountain country. You’re six thousand feet above sea-level right here, and going higher. You’ll freeze to death in that — that thing. It’s too thin and too low — and a mile too short.”
“But that’s all the rage,” she protested. “Every girl wears them this way. You’re buried alive out here. What do you know of styles for women?”
“Nothing, Miss Stockwell,” he said, stiffly. “I acknowledge that. But I can’t see the sense of being uncomfortable for the sake of what you call style.”
“How’d I know I was going up into the mountains where it’s winter in summer? But if I had known I’d have worn the same, only I’d had my coat out.... Mister Thurman, it may interest you to learn that last winter all the fashionable women wore skirts almost to their knees and open-work lace or silk stockings and slippers. There! Do you get that, Mister Backwoodsman?”
“Ahuh! I reckon that is interestin’,” replied Cal, just as tartly. “Women back East dress that way? .
. . In winter-time?”
“Yes, I’ll say so.”
“When it was cold?” he went on, incredulously.
“Yes — cold — slushy — icy — sleety zero weather,” she averred, in triumph.
“Well, they’re loco,” declared Cal, shortly. “Plumb loco — an’ that means crazy, Miss New York.”
“I think you’re horrid,” she retorted, hotly. “It’s strange my sister is so fond of you.... I wish I had come with Mr. Bid Hatfield.”
Cal felt the blood flame and sting his face. What a little cat she was! He thought he hated her then.
“Ahuh! Thank you. That’s two speeches of yours I’m not likely to forget,” he flashed back at her. “You’ve got some Western ways to learn, Miss Stockwell, an’ I’m sorry I was fool enough to open my mouth. We don’t savvy each other.... An’ as for what you said about Bid Hatfield — let me tell you out straight — you’re bein’ driven home now by a gentleman, even if he does live in the backwoods — an’ if you had come with Hatfield you’d have learned what he thought of your rolled-down stockings.”
She turned quite pale and sat perfectly motionless, looking ahead of her. Presently she spoke in a different tone.
“Is that straight talk or just temper?” she asked, quietly. “Is it square to Mr. Hatfield?”
“Yes, it’s straight an’ it’s square. I could tell you a lot, but all I’ll say is, Hatfield once insulted my sister.... Reckon I’ll kill him some day.”
That gave her a slight start and she turned sharply, with lips parted. Nevertheless, she did not reply. Presently she relapsed into pondering thought. At that moment Cal experienced a singular conception of what was going through her mind, and it seemed to him that she was struggling against something he had stirred, either anger or contrition — that she had suddenly been confronted with a naked truth never seen before and was fighting it with all her strange, practical force. The feeling left him as quickly, but he sensed it and could not get away from its influence. Maybe this girl was not all she pretended to be. “I ought to apologize for — for talkin’ familiarly about a lady’s way of dressin’,” added Cal, with finality. “But I’d never have done so if you hadn’t said you were freezin’.”