by Zane Grey
“I suppose so. But I didn’t after Chane made him tell. And certainly not after my father beat me.”
“Oh, did your father do that?” cried Sue, aghast.
“He did. And he said he’d kill me if I ever ran off with another white man. My tribe once upon a time tore a girl limb from limb for infidelity.”
“How terrible!” exclaimed Sue.
“My education says that was wrong, but my Indian conscience says it was right.”
“Did you know that Manerube came over here and told us he had beaten Chane Weymer for — for mistreating you?” demanded Sue, at last coming to the climax of her importunity.
“Yes. My father took me to your father,” replied Sosie. “And I told just what a dirty lie that was. Manerube is bad. Chane Weymer is good. My father will tell you. Few white men who come among Indians are as good as Chane. I never met one. What’s more, while I was at school I never met a white man like Chane. If I had listened to him I’d never have fallen in love with Manerube. But Chane scolded, advised, talked, almost preached to me when what I wanted was to be made love to. Chane wouldn’t do it. He said he couldn’t love me because he couldn’t marry me.”
“Oh, it’s all wrong — this that the white people have made you suffer,” cried Sue, in distress.
EVENTUALLY Sue ended her long talk with Sosie, and, stirred to her depths by the revelations of this day, she made her way toward the tent of the Weymers. Her full heart cried out to make amends. That was all she could do. She would hurry to abase herself now while she had this tremendous false courage, this accusing conscience, this scornful pity for herself and mounting joy for Chane and Chess. How truly Chess had known his beloved brother!
Sue found them together, Chess at work on a quirt he was braiding for Ora, Chane watching her approach with sad dark eyes. She vowed she would meet their gaze even if they penetrated to her shameful secret love. She vowed she would be her true self if it were the last time in all her life. She walked straight up to him.
“Chane, I have wronged you.”
His bronzed face lost something of its still calm, and it paled.
“You have? How so?” he returned.
“I believed what Manerube said about you.”
“Well. That was unfortunate for me, wasn’t it?” he rejoined.
“I was stupid and shallow,” added Sue, in ringing bitter voice. “Then — afterward — I was too slight and miserable to listen to my weak little conscience.”
“Sue Melberne, this is what you say to me?” he demanded, incredulously.
“Nothing I can say matters to you now. But I wanted you to know what I think of myself.”
“No, it doesn’t matter now what I think of you — or you think of — yourself,” he said.
“But you must hear what I think of myself,” cried Sue, beginning to break under the strain. “You must hear that I’m a silly, mindless, soulless girl.... Why, even when Chess denounced Manerube as a liar I couldn’t see through it! Worse, when Chess spoke so nobly of you I didn’t believe. Most shameful of all, after they fought, when I saw Manerube’s horrid face after he’d beat Chess down — —”
“What!” cried Chane, in piercing interruption. He sprang erect, and the look of him made Sue quake. “Beat Chess down!” he repeated, menacingly. “Say, boy, come here.”
“Sue, you darned little fool! Now you’ve played hell!” wailed Chess.
Chane fastened a powerful hand in the boy’s blouse and with one pull drew him close.
“Boy, you’ve kept it from me,” he said, deliberately. “You’ve double-crossed me. Because I asked you.”
“Yes, Chane — I lied,” choked Chess.
“What for?”
“I was afraid of what you’d do to Manerube.”
“Then he beat you? For defending me? Out with it!”
“Sue’s told you, Chane. But, honest, she’s made it worse than it was.... What’s a few punches to me? It was only a fight and he didn’t get so awful much the best of it.”
Chane let go of the boy’s blouse and shoved him back.
“I knew there was something,” he muttered, darkly, to himself; and then abruptly he dove into the tent.
“Sue, you’ve played hell, I tell you,” said Chess.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to tell. It slipped out. What can I do?”
“You can’t stop Chane now.”
“Yes I can,” cried Sue. She recognized she must do something desperate, but she had no idea what it should be. Her mind seemed clogged. Then, when Chane emerged from the tent, she quailed before the lightning of his eyes. He held a rawhide whip in his left hand. And on his right side a heavy gun swung from his belt.
“Sue Melberne, I’ll use either gun or whip on your lover. But I suspect it must be the whip.”
“Lover! Bent Manerube? How dare you?” burst out Sue, suddenly infuriated beyond endurance. She gave him a swift hard slap in the face.
A bright red spot stained his pale cheek. He lifted a hand to feel the place, while his gaze blazed down on her.
“Thanks. I like that. It was human and womanly, something you’ve never been to me. Did I wrong you with my insinuation?”
“You insulted me. I despised Manerube. I never liked him. I — I flirted with him — to my shame — because — well, I don’t choose to tell.”
“So. You are indeed clearing up much this day,” returned Chane. “I apologize. I reckon that was temper. I didn’t really mean it.... All the same, I’ll use my gun or whip on Manerube.”
Chess did not even attempt to stop Chane, but Sue cried out some incoherent entreaty and tried to hold him back. Not gently did he thrust her aside, and without another word strode toward the group of men plainly discernible round the camp fire.
“Come to your tent, Sue,” begged Chess.
“I guess not. I’ll not quit — like that,” panted Sue. “I’ll tell dad. He’ll stop them.”
“Sue, it’s too late. Anybody getting in front of Chane now will be hurt.”
“But, Chess — he — he might be killed!” whispered Sue.
“Who? Manerube, you mean? Well, it’ll be darn good riddance,” rejoined Chess, hotly.
“Oh, I mean Chane — Chane.... Listen, if you tell I’ll hate you forever. Forever! I — I love Chane. It’s killing me. Now do you understand?”
“You poor girl!” replied Chess, in wonder and pity, and he put his arm round her. “Sue, don’t be scared. Manerube is a coward. He’ll never face Chane with a gun. All he’ll get will be a horsewhipping. Come on — let’s see him get it.”
Sue was unsteady and weak on her feet and needed Chess’s support, yet slow as they were they got out to the edge of the grove in time to see Chane confront the staring half-circle of men, among whom Manerube stood out prominently.
“What’s up?” demanded Melberne, loudly.
“Manerube’s game,” retorted Chane, curtly.
Certain and significant it was that Melberne hurriedly moved out of line, and every man on either side of Manerube backed away, leaving him standing alone.
“Manerube, the jig’s up,” said Chane. “I don’t care a damn about the lies you told. But you laid your dirty hands on my brother for defending me.... You beat him! Are you packing a gun?”
“I reckon,” replied Manerube, white to the lips.
Sue swayed to a resistless up-surging spirit. Tearing herself free of Chess, she ran swiftly to confront Chane, to grasp him with hands strong as steel. But her voice failed her.
“Sue, you’re mad,” he protested, with the first show of softening. “We’ve got to fight. Why not now?”
Melberne stepped swiftly up to Chane, calling to his men. Utah and Miller ran in. Jake followed.
“Grab him, boys,” ordered Melberne. “Chess, get Sue out of this.” Then he strode toward the men opposite. “I won’t have my womenfolk runnin’ risks round heah. Manerube, you’re shore gettin’ away lucky. Take your two rider pards from Wund an’ get out of my camp. A
n’ Jim Loughbridge, you can go along with him. I’ll make you a present of wagon, team, grub.”
“All right, Melberne,” returned Loughbridge, harshly. “I’ll take you up. But you haven’t see the last of this deal.”
CHAPTER XIII
FAR WEST OF Stark Valley the reconstructed Melberne outfit had halted on a lofty rim to gaze down into a gray-carpeted, green-dotted, golden-walled canyon, wide and long, running close under the grand bulk of Wild Horse Mesa.
“Nightwatch Spring is there, up in the rocky notch where you see the bright green,” Chane Weymer had said, directing Melberne’s gaze. “It’s so big it makes a brook right where it comes out from under the cliff.”
Melberne had never been a man to rave. Here he gazed as if spellbound, at last to burst out, “Beats any place in Texas!” From him that was not unlikely the most extravagant praise possible. Then he continued, with a singular richness and depth in his voice: “Wife, daughter, heah we shall make our home. A rancher down there will shore be rich in all that makes life worth livin’. I’ll send for my brothers, who are waitin’ for word of good country to settle in. We’ve relatives an’ friends, too, who’ll take my word. We’ll homestead this place, an’ right heah I pick the haid of this canyon, takin’ in the spring. One hundred sixty acres for mine, with all them miles of range land to control.... Weymer, I reckon my debt to you grows. I wonder now — won’t you an’ Chess throw in with us heah?”
“Quien sabe?” replied the rider, musingly. “Chess surely will. It’s good for him. But I — well, I’m a wandering wild-horse hunter.”
One dim rough trail led down into this golden-rimmed abyss. Neither Chane nor Toddy Nokin knew where the bands of wild horses dotting the gray had descended from the uplands above, if indeed they had gone that way. This league-wide rent in the rocky earth zigzagged away westward, under the tremendous benched wall of Wild Horse Mesa, and the western end could not be seen. Toddy Nokin said it ended in a split in the stone that no Indian had explored.
Sue was entranced. She had been prepared for something rugged, beautiful, in accordance with Chane’s simple statement, but no words could have done adequate justice to this marvelous place. Not paradise or fairyland was it to her, but sublime in its vastness, unreal in its isolation, gorgeous in color, wild as the sky-towering mesa that bulged stupendously above.
The notch toward which Chane had pointed proved to be a labyrinth of indentations in the wall, all narrow, lined by green borders of spruce and cedar, floored by rich thick bleached grass, turning and twisting, full of golden shadows reflected from the looming walls, lonely, silent, sweetly fragrant with the dry canyon tang, and purple with sage.
Melberne pitched camp on the site he chose for the ranch house he would erect eventually. It was a low bench, sloping with sage toward the open, backed by a belt of timber, and canopied by a leaning golden wall. Nightwatch Spring burst from under this cliff, a thick rushing volume of pure water, and made music down the slope, to meander between willow-bordered banks far as eye could see. Wild horses, deer, rabbits, and many birds proved the fertility and lonesomeness of this spot.
Through the thin belt of spruce trees, higher up on the last swell of sage slope under the wall, Sue espied a place that she determined must be her camp. It looked down upon the bench; it was sheltered by the curve of the wall; it seemed dreamily and drowsily permeated by the song of the stream. It was indeed a throne from which perhaps some barbarian queen of ages past had ruled her subjects. Purple sage bloomed there, and the scarlet of Indian paint-brush, the vermilion of cactus, lavender daisies, and an exquisite flower unknown to Sue, a delicate nodding three- petaled blossom of white with violet heart.
She enlisted Chess and Jake in her service, with the result that sunset and supper time found her task completed — a camp which must surely become a home, comfortable, safe, secluded, and open to a view beautiful close at hand, and in the distance one of exceeding grandeur.
Camp that night had for Melberne’s outfit the best of all virtues for the tired travelers — permanence. It did not disturb Melberne or any of his party that Loughbridge and Manerube had followed on their trail.
“Reckon we’ll have six more weeks of this heah fine weather,” remarked Melberne, as he stood with his back to the fire.
“Hope so. But winter is mild down in these protected canyons,” said Chane. “The snow seldom lays long.”
“Good. Wal, that’ll give me time to throw up a log house heah. Will my wagons be safe where we left them?”
“They’re well hidden. Only an Indian would run across them, and he wouldn’t steal.”
“We cain’t ever drive a wagon down in heah,” observed Melberne.
“That’s the beauty of it. Build a corral and barn up on the rim, and down here also.”
“Chane, you shore have idees. Wal, in a day or two I’ll send Utah an’ Miller back to Wund to mail letters an’ fetch back a wagon-load of supplies. Mebbe my brothers will be so keen aboot this place they’ll come before the snow flies. If not, then by spring, shore.... Wal, wal, I reckon I’m happier than I’ve been for long.”
Sue wondered what her father meant by that. It brought back to her the subtle intimation of an enemy he had always been expecting to meet. Here in this out-of-the-way corner of the world perhaps he felt secure at last from the fear he must kill a man. So Sue interpreted that strange observance of her father’s.
Without the disturbing element of Manerube and the Loughbridges, camp life had indeed taken on a happier order. Chess confessed that he missed Ora, and hinted he might go after her some day. Sue also missed a girl companion, but the rest of that disorganizing contingent did not occasion regret.
“Say, Chane, I reckon I can make a big pond heah, judgin’ by the lay of the land an’ the rocky ground,” observed Melberne, whose mind obviously was active on possibilities.
“Sure you can,” replied the ever-optimistic and enthusiastic Chane.
Captain Bunk removed his pipe, manifestly to deliver a remark of importance.
“Shiver my timbers if I wouldn’t dam up the other end of this hole in the rocks and fill her up with water to the gunwale.”
“W-w-w-wh-wh-what’n hell for would you do t-t-t-t- th — that?” stuttered Miller.
“Why, mate, I’d have a bit of a lake, and run boats on it, and start a fish ranch,” replied Bunk, impressively.
“Haw! Haw!” roared Melberne. “Shore that’s a new one on me. Fish ranch! — Wal, a fish pond ain’t a bad idee. Cap, you’re shore helpin’ me to establish a home.... Sue, we haven’t heard from you aboot this heah homestead of mine. Reckon I’d like somethin’ good from my girl.”
“Dad, it’s wonderful!” replied Sue. “But I can’t think of anything to tell you — except I’ll stay. It’ll be my home, too.”
“Wal, listen to that, wife,” ejaculated Melberne, his broad face beaming in the firelight. “Sue will not go back to the cities to teach. She’ll stay with us — to teach kiddies when they come heah, as shore they will. Mebbe some of her own! These boys will be gettin’ themselves wives before long. An’ that’ll be good.”
Night down in this deep-bottomed, high-walled solitude kept Sue awake for hours. It was so strange, so different from any other night she could recall. It had a haunting melancholy, a perfect peace, a glory of starlit loneliness. The insects might not have belonged to species she knew, so clear-toned and high- pitched were they. A lonesome owl far back in the notched fastnesses bemoaned his watch. The murmuring stream made music like all fast-flowing streams, yet somehow more mellow, the same because it was swift water tumbling over rocks down the mound to a level, yet differing because of innumerable imagined melodies.
Dawn came gray, cool, rich in its dark clearness, taking long to grow lighter. Sue wondered what was the cause. She had never before awakened to a dawn like this. Daylight came, yet all seemed shadowed.
Where was the sun? Where was the east? At last she realized she was down in the very bowels of
the earth. The mighty wall of Wild Horse Mesa loomed above her, shutting out the sunrise.
At last a clear wonderful deep-blue light shone over the eastern rim. Low clouds, faintly rose, floated above a strange live effulgence that centered the horizon line. Here was the effect of the sun. Beneath Sue the wide canyon slept, still dark, except over the gray levels, and they were vague. Far to the west the faces of the great escarpments that lifted high above the rim began to brighten, to turn purple. Sue watched the changes, sure of them, though they seemed imperceptible. Under the wandering wall of Wild Horse Mesa showed only a soft dark freshness of dawn.
Sue rose to begin the day, aware of the whistle of the riders below, of the ring of an ax, the smell and blue of a column of smoke, the hearty voice of her father. She felt light, quick, buoyant. She wanted to run, to sing, to ride, to go wild with it all. She was happy, yet there was that break, that wound in her heart. But her sorrow and her shame were not as they had been. Some incalculable difference had followed her avowel of injustice to Chane Weymer, her abasement of self. She had told him. That had not mitigated her blunder, but it had eliminated her vanity. The absence of Manerube had much to do with her mounting pleasure in the present. He was not there with his swaggering figure, his hateful handsome face, to mar every scene for her. How wrong she had been to encourage his attention just to sting the man she loved! She had never forgiven herself for that blindness; she was always uneasily conscious that the end of her blunder was not yet come. Nevertheless, happiness encroached more and more on her trouble. She stifled the whispering voices of dreams; she would not listen to the woman temptress strong in her depths, the feminine that would bid her use charm, coquetry, sex, love to win Chane Weymer. In his heart he must despise her, and though at times this conviction roused a flashing fiery rage in her, she always reverted to the justice of it and accepted it as her punishment for unworthiness. Even sight of Chane had grown bearable, and then a joy, provided he was not close enough to see her watching him. Seldom he spoke to her or noticed her; never unless politeness or the kindness of service made that imperative to a man of his character. Sue had welcomed this aloofness, but as the days passed it had begun to gall her — a fact about which she did not like to conjecture.