by Zane Grey
“But can’t he get another? They’re usually short of men at Taho. That is, men who have any idea of permanent residence.”
“I guess you don’t know Mr. Newton very well. Permanent residence or otherwise, no one seems to be anxious to hire him.”
“It’s rumored he’s a lazy cuss. But I didn’t think he was so lazy that he’d let his own wife go to work!” exclaimed John.
“Don’t misunderstand,” Katharine protested. “He doesn’t want her to work. She couldn’t be around at his beck and call all the time if she did. This is her own idea and she intends to carry it through. He wants a month’s vacation, it seems. What kind of heavenly manna he’s depending upon for daily bread meanwhile I don’t know! They are really very poor, Mr. Curry. Mrs. Newton keeps and sells poultry and eggs, but you know how little profit there is in that in a place like Taho where there is such a plentiful supply.”
Katharine looked away to the color-flung west. John sat very still, he too given at the moment to staring at the intensifying hues in the sky.
“He wants a month’s vacation, does he?” John said eventually. “I expect that’s most convenient to his latest shines.”
“What do you mean?” asked Katharine.
He turned about so suddenly that she had no time to withdraw her searching gaze. Curry, she slowly gathered, knew more about Newton than she could have had any reason to believe.
“Miss Winfield, I like you. You’re a person to be trusted,” John said slowly. “I’m going to tell you something about this man Newton that only High-Lo knows. He’s in on a liquor-running deal with Hanley and a couple of women to sell liquor to the Indians on the Navaho Reservation. It’s a good money-making racket because most Indians will sell their souls for liquor. That’s what the white men have done to them. It used to be pretty bad when just an occasional scrupulous man was the only force operating against it. Then, a number of years back, we passed a state law against selling liquor on Indian reservations. That was before the national prohibition law went through during the war. That state law saved many an Indian from poverty and misery. It’s now doubly lawless to sell liquor to Indians. And what’s more, it’s the cruelest, thievingest thing I know of that a man could do. I’ve been aching to shadow Hanley and Newton and catch them red-handed. But there’s Mrs. Newton. She stands between me and that. To convict Newton would be to expose Ma —— , his wife to disgrace.”
A chill crept over Katharine as she listened, partly as a result of the gradual withdrawal of warmth from the desert, partly from the incredible information Curry had disclosed.
“Oh, poor Mary! If she ever learned that about Wilbur!” Katharine faltered.
“Do you see what a position I am in?” Curry asked. “I owe it to the Indians to spill that fine gentleman into the penitentiary. I could, easily, if it wasn’t for that sad-eyed little girl who’d go down under it. I’ve thought of things I might do. Go to Taho and pick a fight with Newton, beat him up and when I got him helpless tell him what I know and scare him into giving it up. But he’s the kind of hombre who would only make her suffer for that. Why, I could shoot him like I’d shoot a pig with an incurable disease. He isn’t any good to himself, let alone to anybody else. He bears watching, I’m telling you. Maybe I better move along to Flaggerston as soon as the season’s over here.”
Unconsciously he gave to Katharine the moment she was waiting for. “You must not do that,” she said. “It won’t do any good.”
“But it couldn’t do any harm just to look the ground over. Suppose someone else got him on this bootleg business? He might involve her. Blast the whole cussed situation, it’s just too devilish hard to handle!”
“Mrs. Newton asked me to warn you that should you and she ever meet by chance in Flaggerston to pass her with a greeting and avoid her thereafter. She wanted me to tell you that probably she would be leaving Taho, but she’d keep close to the desert, that she’s not forgotten what you said to her at Oraibi.”
“That only makes me more anxious to go. It tells me to stay away because she’s afraid of Newton. He’s giving her plenty of trouble. I can see that.”
“But you can’t be like a knight of old, go riding by and snatch the princess from the ogre as you snatched her from the mesa rim at Oraibi. You’re living in the twentieth century, and the lady in question happens to be the wife of the ogre.”
“You mean I’d be taken for a meddler?” muttered John.
“You’d be taken as a man with a too great interest in another man’s wife. Can’t you see that that would hurt her?”
John flung down his sombrero with an impatient gesture and ran his hand through his hair. “Hurt her! That’s the last thing in the world I want to do!” he cried.
“And that’s because the interest is there, John Curry. A deeper interest than you have even confessed to yourself!”
Katharine sat breathless, afraid of her daring. The man beside her seemed to stiffen and become silent. Whereupon an uncomfortable fear possessed her that after all she might have been wrong. If he would only speak! Her gaze was fixed on him, but he, unconscious of it, was looking away into the gathering twilight.
“You’re very keen, Miss Winfield,” he said after a long silence, speaking downward as if she were somewhere on the desert below him instead of by his side. “There is no use pretending to you. I love Mary Newton. It’s the kind of a love that makes a man finer for having it. Please believe me. I wouldn’t do anything to cheapen it for her or for me. Before this I would no more have thought I would ever fall in love with a married woman than I would of being shot by High-Lo or you. I had no use for a man that I’d suspect of such a thing. Circumstance plays with us strangely sometimes and changes things for us. I never forced myself in Mary Newton’s way. The desert threw us together — made us of use to each other. I think I’m stronger for it even if it seems such a hopeless thing to be in love with her. If someone awakens love in you, trying to deny that it’s happened doesn’t give you back your old freedom of heart. I try to be honest about it and not dislike Newton because he happens to be her husband, but he doesn’t try to be worthy of her, and I don’t savvy a man like that. She loved him, I’m sure, when she married him. Maybe she loves him now — women are like that. But she doesn’t love him for what he is, it’s for what she thought he once was. Young marriages are awful mistakes sometimes. I’ll never be so lucky as to have a woman like Mary Newton love me, but if I did I’d sure do my best all my life to make her see I appreciated the honor that she was conferring on me. I’d want to keep clean and fine for her. I couldn’t do anything dishonorable then — ever!”
At the close of the longest speech he had ever made he turned to Katharine again. The struggle within him was manifest in his face. All the maternal spirit in Katharine yearned to console him.
“I don’t condemn you. I feel that if I were a man I’d love Mary, too, regardless,” she said. “It’s serious for you. But you must remember, it might be dangerous for her. When the man a woman loves fails her as completely as Mary may live to learn Newton has failed her, she’s human enough to want to turn to a strong man for protection. It would be a spiritual thing to her — goodness overcoming deceit. And she couldn’t help herself. But the world would condemn her. ... As if human hearts and needs were not holy things!”
“You mean she might come to care for me?” Curry asked, ostensibly disposed to doubt her.
“Why, yes. It’s more than possible,” returned the Eastern girl, inwardly amazed at the naïve modesty of this man whom even shy Alice proclaimed as so lovable.
“I guess I never thought of that. I just accepted unconsciously that to a woman like Mary Newton marriage closed the way for any other man.”
“And so it would, forever, if she had found love and fidelity where she so bountifully had given them. Mary hasn’t.”
“Yes, I see,” John said. “But I think you’re wrong about her ever learning to care for me. I can’t help feeling that it’s only a very smal
l possibility that I may hurt her if I don’t stay away. The only reason why I’m going to think you must know best, Miss Winfield, is because you’re such a good friend to her.”
He looked squarely at Katharine during this declaration. She saw that his face was pale in the dim light of the evening.
“You’ll be a good friend to me too, I hope,” he continued. “I’ve had very few girl friends and I’ve never had a sister. My mother was sort of a sister. She was always very young in looks and spirit, as much of a pal to me as she was a mother. I remember the only binding affection I had ever had for a girl wasn’t in the least bit reciprocated, and Mother helped me over that bad time. She died while I was away in the service. It was her going that brought me here from Colorado. On the way over I tied up with High-Lo.”
“You’ll never leave the desert?” Katharine asked.
“Never for any length of time. I come from a beautiful pastoral country in Colorado and I’ve been in the Colorado desert time and again, but I love Arizona best, her farm country, her woods, and especially her desert. It’s a merciless spell the old desert has. Once it enters your insides you’re a goner. I’ve a lot of cattle in Colorado that run on the same range as my brother’s. He looks after mine for part profit. I’ve often dreamed of getting a big ranch somewhere near Flaggerston, keeping lots of cattle and horses and running a tourist trade, too — taking people out by pack trains from Flaggerston. Mr. Weston’s getting on. He says he’ll have to give up the post in about four years, and if all went well I’d take that over, too.”
“There ought to be good money in it,” said Katharine.
“A gold mine if it’s done right.”
“Perhaps you’d need someone to share in the investment with you,” Katharine suggested. “I would, in a minute, and think myself lucky to have the chance. My grandmother left me some money on her death two years ago. It’s banked and drawing only low interest. So much sickness dogged our family during those two years that I hadn’t the thought or the will to invest it to better advantage.”
“This layout would make a good investment, Miss Winfield,” John returned promptly. “But it will be a year or more before I can think of the ranch and tourist proposition. I don’t want to invest anyone else’s money unless I can meet my share of the investment with the same amount.”
“Would you give me first consideration when the time does come?”
John agreed, with the first smile he had shown since the serious turn in their conversation.
“Splendid!” exclaimed Katharine. “For then I’d always have an excuse for visiting Arizona. Otherwise my people would never understand it. As soon as Alice gets well, spending her summers here in the North and her winters in the South — I guess near Phoenix or Tucson — I’ll have to go back East. Then I’ll have a terrible time convincing my Europe-commuting family and friends that the West is a place for anyone other than invalids or hobos. I think I’ll have to start a reform, a sort of See-America-First campaign.”
A silence fell between them. The wind, fresh and cool, grew stronger as night descended over the valley. It moaned through a sea of boughs like the ocean spending itself upon a lonely shore. Over all was a cloud-ridden sky. Here and there in a patch of purple-blue lone stars shone down upon the gray monuments and mesas. These cathedrals of God’s silent hand, these wonderful rocky slopes, these ledges and benches where the wind spent its force, these caves and crags that echoed with the solemn hymns of desolation, these sage-choked plains, grim, gray, engulfed in the shadows of night, were endeared to Katharine forever. For bound by them she had been permitted to share the burdens of two friends.
“We had better go,” Katharine reluctantly suggested. “The descent will be difficult in the dark.”
John rose to accompany her. He led the way, care for her welfare in every movement. As they reached the gentler grade that led around the knoll to camp, the boughs of the cedars seemed edged with red reflected from the roaring campfire. Then from the shadows beyond the firelight they saw Stub and caught his voice recounting one of High-Lo’s escapades. They could see High-Lo’s face showing part irritation, part good humor, and Alice’s, as she gravely chided Stub for telling tales.
Katharine felt unduly self-conscious as she stepped into the firelight.
The party had ridden almost thirty miles that day, something of a strain for Alice who began to droop soon in heavy-eyed weariness. Bed had a sweet comforting call for all of them. When the girls were snug under their blankets, Alice reached for Katharine’s hand, and from the silence that followed Katharine knew that she was formulating some thought difficult to express.
“Could you really live here forever?” Alice asked after a while. “At Black Mesa or Taho?”
“I would gladly, if I were surrounded by people I love.”
“That’s necessary, of course,” agreed Alice. Another silence hung between them, then she added very solemnly, “You know, Katharine, I think you like John Curry awfully well, yourself.”
“Of course I do, silly. Everybody does,” Katharine replied, keenly aware of the drift of Alice’s questioning. “And I’m sure he must have a sweetheart tucked away somewhere in Arizona.”
Alice said no more. Her hand relaxed from its hold on Katharine. In a short time the girl was sleeping.
But Katharine stared for a long time into the blue sky above her, where the sight of countless other spheres made so trifling the destinies of individuals on the small earth she knew.
“Yet we do matter,” she told herself, resolutely dismissing the dangerous thought Alice had stimulated. “People’s struggles and heartbreaks must be for some good end.”
The wind moaned fitfully. She found herself slipping gently into unconsciousness, and soon she was dreaming of a ranch near Flaggerston where Mary presided with the contentment of a saint come into her own, and John Curry, a confused combination of himself and High-Lo, seemed rightful lord of the establishment.
CHAPTER X
BY LATE AFTERNOON of the next day John was leading his pack train back to the post. The girls, riding fast, had preceded him, and came out with Mrs. Weston on his return, bright and smiling, in the dainty costumes they wore so well, looking more like persons who had stayed at home than like worn travelers.
“We trust you had a fine trip, Mr. Curry. We’re glad to see you home again,” Katharine called gaily to him.
John turned sidewise in his saddle and met Katharine’s laughter. “You’ve sure shaken the dust. No one would believe you had ever belonged to this outfit. I call you thoroughbreds — that’s what!”
It was satisfying to John to be home again, to see Mrs. Weston, mother to the last man of them, bustling around with an inquiring word for each boy’s welfare. Manifestly she missed the boys and anticipated their return as if indeed they were her own sons.
“High-Lo behaved himself?” she asked John. To conceal her conversation she pretended to be engrossed with Nugget whose nose she was patting.
“You bet! He’ll be expecting me to write him a pass to heaven soon.”
“Bless the boy! He’s a caution! Keeps everyone in hot water when he’s around. But when he’s gone I miss him. Between him and Magdaline I’ve felt as if I had an orphan asylum on my hands.”
Magdaline! John had not given her a thought for days. Memory of his recent talk with her stirred a feeling of apprehension within him.
“She’s come back?” he asked.
“No. Not yet. And she’s not at Sage Springs. Her father came into the store yesterday. He knows nothing about her and doesn’t seem to care much. ‘Maybe with white friends,’ he said. We’re none of us responsible for her, of course, but she is such a pretty little thing and so obviously unhappy that I’m afraid.”
Though Mrs. Weston did not particularize, John grasped the significance of her words. Almost immediately he said, “There are times when I’m afraid Magdaline may run wild. Still, she had a bigger field here. And some of the boys wouldn’t have needed much
encouragement to help her cut loose. She’s attractive, and some of the boys are pretty raw material. Maybe she’s gone off somewhere just as High-Lo does to nurse a grievance. Anyway, that’s what I’m trying to think.”
High-Lo, coming upon them, broke in with a sly, “What’s that about me?”
John gave him a lusty poke in the ribs. “I was telling Mrs. Weston that if you weren’t such a lazy cuss we’d have these animals watered and in the corral long before dark.”
“Huh! And who’s boss of this outfit?” High-Lo retorted in fine scorn.
“That shuts me up,” said John. “Guess you’ll have to excuse me for the present, Mrs. Weston.”
While the boys were in the midst of their work, the mail stage arrived, which occasion almost precipitated a strike among them, for it was a matter of great moment to hail newcomers and to stand around while the mail was being sorted, speculating on the chance of a word from home. High-Lo, who had never once received a letter during his employment at Black Mesa, was usually the most expectant of all. Yet despite all the protests and High-Lo’s vociferous appeal, John remained obdurate. Horses and mules came first. The boys had to put in a hard half-hour’s work before they were free.
The mail, it developed, was light, and there were no newcomers. Mr. Weston remarked to John over the counter in the post that the season for tourist trade was about over. As usual High-Lo’s ever-anticipated letter failed to materialize, and John, coming from the store with him, smiled at the familiar words, “Strange that I don’t hear from nobody!”
“Miss Winfield got a letter,” added High-Lo. “Golly! Must of been a love letter.” With a swing of his sombrero he indicated Katharine, who in marked preoccupation was walking slowly down the path from the house, tapping a letter thoughtfully against her lips.
John stepped forward to open the gate for her. “Coming out, Miss Winfield?”
She started ever so slightly and then said, “Oh, yes, thank you. I was coming out. In fact I was about to look you up. Can you give me a minute?”