Collected Works of Zane Grey

by Zane Grey

  John accepted the recommendation with a roar. “No, sir! Don’t count on me!” And thinking it best to change the scene as well as the subject of conversation, he led the way out of the post.

  Nothing Weston had said could have prepared John for the shock he received when he saw Magdaline. Attired in Navaho garb which she had vowed never to assume, her figure showed such ample development from the slim creature of a half-year ago that John at first could not believe it was she. And her face, once the register of every emotion that swayed her, now was somber, masklike. If she was surprised or pleased to see him, she concealed the fact. She offered her hand and said, “I hope you are well.”

  John replied awkwardly that he was. He was wishing as he spoke that the Magdaline of old could be restored to displace this strange aloof creature, barren of the fire of youth. Had the walls of her canyons crushed her as she feared they would? Was this the manifestation of her doom?

  “High-Lo still grows,” she said with only a nod for him.

  She did not join the boys at the table where Mrs. Weston had laid a meal of vegetable stew and coffee and a pie of generous proportions, yet John felt her eyes upon him as they passed into the dining room.

  He encountered her later on the ridge where he wandered, the victim of a strange restlessness. They met suddenly behind a hillock against which she was crouching.

  John exclaimed aloud, and she shrank from him as if his cry had been a blow.

  “You frightened me,” John said. “I thought you had gone to your room. So did Mrs. Weston.”

  “It is better here,” she said, “but even the desert stifles me now.”

  “You are not well, I hear, Magdaline. Is something troubling you? Is it because you are still so unhappy?”

  “It is nothing to you,” she retorted, turning away. “I go away tomorrow to Flaggerston.”

  “So Mrs. Weston tells me. She’s sorry. She thinks you are in no fit condition to travel.”

  She made an impatient gesture. “I understand my condition. I will be well traveling slowly. I am saying good-by to the hills as I go and mocking the prayer rocks of my people for the last time.”

  “You don’t mean — you’re so sick — that you feel you—” He spoke stammeringly and could not finish.

  “I am going away forever. You mean death? No. I think it must be good to die. Then you do not stifle like I have been for weeks. Your breath and your mind go out like fire. Then you are cool ash without flame. But I cannot die now. I am two fires ... a baby. And I am not married.”

  “My God!” muttered John.

  Magdaline raised the masklike oval of her face to him. It was very dark, very stolid there in the shadow, and her eyes were listless, much like blackened glass.

  “Yes. It is terrible. I cannot help that I have done what is done. Sand cannot help moving when a great wind blows behind it. I have been just as helpless as the sand. But I am thinking after it is done. That is what is terrible. The poor baby that does not ask to be born is going to have a spirit that will make it suffer. I have wished myself never to have been born. Sometimes I think I can save it by killing it — killing us both. That would not be like dying.”

  More alarming than her words was her lack of emotion. It was as if she had lost the power to feel, had become insensible to everything and everyone.

  “That seems the easiest way when hope is gone,” John said after a minute’s reflection. “But has hope gone entirely?” He was questioning himself as well as Magdaline. “Going through life is something like riding a deep canyon where the light seldom shines. It is a strange canyon with unexpected turns and insurmountable walls and cross-canyons, boxed completely from the light. I suppose when we hit the closing wall of one of these box canyons it looks like the end and we want to beat our life out there. Sometimes by accident, sometimes by design, we feel our way out into the place where the light comes through at times, and we go on down that way because farther on there may be a way out into that light. Don’t you want to struggle on a little longer, Magdaline? I’m boxed in at present myself, in a canyon as dark as hell, but I’m feeling around for the way out.”

  The girl stirred a little from her apathy. “You, John Curry, who are so good? I do not understand.”

  “I’m more deserving of trouble than you, Magdaline. It is only your own kindness that makes you see me so good. The worst in me is seething right now.” He paused a minute, reflecting on her case. “Why do you go to Flaggerston?” he asked after his brief silence. “Why not stay in Taho? Dr. Kellogg will take care of you.”

  “I have a little sister in Taho at school. She must not know what is to happen. No one must know here in the desert because—” A feeble note of feeling had come into her voice, and she turned away.

  “Because?” John encouraged her gently.

  She looked at him imperturbable once more. “Do not ask me.”

  Another silence fell between them, which she presently broke.

  “In Flaggerston I have a friend. She married a Mexican who works on the railroad. I can go to her and she will not tell. Then maybe the missionary will send me back to Riverside or to Los Angeles. I will be a servant for white people. Maybe another box canyon, Mr. John.”

  John was deeply disturbed. “You’ll need money. You can’t leave the desert penniless, face your trouble without funds.”

  She lifted her arms. “There are my bracelets. I will sell them when it is necessary.”

  “What they’d bring won’t last long. Let me help you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re both looking for the light, Magdaline.”

  She shrugged her shoulder slightly, giving him a faint reminder of her former self.

  “I’m leaving early tomorrow morning,” he went on. “You say you will leave tomorrow. God knows when I’ll be in Flaggerston again. If you don’t make up your mind by morning to let me help, perhaps I never can. Will you tell me by morning?”

  “I will not be able to look at you in the light of day. I do not mind the darkness. It hides us both.”

  “Then let me make up your mind for you. After you are in Flaggerston a while, call at the post office for a letter. There’ll be money in it.” John took a small purse from his pocket and counted out fifteen dollars. “Meanwhile take this.”

  Magdaline pushed it back into his hand. “I should have said before I have fifty dollars. Someone who knows gave it to me.”

  “I thought no one knew.”

  “One other must know besides me,” she said significantly. “I told him. He can’t marry me. So I got paid. Fifty dollars instead of marriage.”

  “You need better protection than that,” John said, with the fire of hate for the unnamed man leaping through his blood. “Look for the letter in Flaggerston.”

  “You, too, are in trouble. I cannot help you,” she said stubbornly.

  The subject having so firmly been closed, John suggested that Magdaline return with him to the house. “You should,” he insisted. “It will be very cold here presently.”

  “I won’t feel it,” was her response. “Go yourself. Walk as you would if you had not found me here. I will return when the house is dark.”

  Her command gave him no alternative, so he left. His desire to walk, he found, was gone. Magdaline seemed to fill the desert by her presence and crowded him out. He joined the others and spent the evening listening to Mr. Weston’s tales of the late eighties.

  That night John lay awake hours after High-Lo had, in rapturous exhaustion, flung his arms wide and found immediate repose. He could not reconcile himself to the fact that the last lap of his journey to Sage Springs would terminate within another day. Mary came to him, Newton came to him, Magdaline came to him; and when he finally did fall asleep, he dreamed of all three and of the Indian who had wronged Magdaline, and Newton appeared serving liquor to them all, and Mary drank, too, while she rocked an Indian baby on her knees. He woke in a horror of fatigue.

  While they were dressing
, John cautioned High-Lo to pack light for the trip, as they might have to pack blankets on their return to Black Mesa. They would not have to linger for information. Once the letter was delivered, he could tell Weston that Newton no longer would be a menace to his trade, for Newton soon would be gone.

  “What I’m packin’ goes on me,” replied High-Lo.

  Looking his way, John saw him buckling on his cartridge belt. “You won’t need that,” he cautioned.

  “Never take a long ride without it,” High-Lo rejoined. “Snakes in this country. Once a couple of the varmints cut my horse up some. But it’s not real rattlers I’m afraid of. I’m packin’ against the day when I meet one that don’t give me warnin’!”

  They built a fire and cooked their own breakfast. Before they had finished, Weston came in half-dressed and rubbing sleep from his eyes. He went out to the corral with them. It was not yet dawn, only cold, blue-gray light and lusterless stars.

  “You’re sure takin’ my wishes hard,” Weston protested. “Didn’t mean for you to get out this early.”

  “Want to ride in this afternoon,” said High-Lo. “Gives us time to look things over and get our invitation for the night.”

  John said, “We’ll spend about ten minutes at Sage Springs, and we’ll sleep on the desert tonight. Which side of Sage Springs will we find Magdaline’s uncle?”

  “Ten miles to the north from the post near some of them worked-out prehistoric caves. Messy-lookin’ hogan. Worst around. But his wife sure can weave blankets.”

  They rode away from the rift in the sky where day was breaking. The horses, glad to quicken their blood, broke into a steady trot. Black Mesa valley was bathed in amber light. Through it a lavender haze showed over the corrugated ramparts of the mesa, and ahead blue peaks were overlaid with a sheath of gold; and circling the horizon came a wave of pink that soon receded under the full blaze of sunlight.

  “An’ you’re thinkin’ of leavin’ it,” High-Lo ejaculated.

  “The sun rises other places,” said John. He was thinking of the legions of unexplored miles in the heart of Mexico.

  “But not like it rises on Arizona. I’d rather be buried here than livin’ most places. You sure you want to go away down there? Sure you want to give that letter to Newton today?”

  “It’s what she wants that counts with me.”

  “She don’t know what she wants. She’s afraid of what she wants, bein’ such a nice girl. ‘Cause on the outside, folks not understandin’, it don’t look so good. What’s more, there’s no girl takin’ an Indian kid to raise who ain’t tryin’ hard to do right about things.”

  John hitched to one side of his saddle. “What’s that about an Indian kid?”

  “Sure. She’s got a kid around the house. Kid calls her Ma. MacDonald was tellin’ me she saved the kid dyin’ in the hospital an’ then takes her home to cure well an’ is keepin’ her.”

  Strangely John felt himself driven to talk about Mary, even though to think kindly of her would be his downfall. “I thought I asked you not to mention Mrs. Newton again,” he said.

  “My memory never was much good,” High-Lo returned blandly. “One thing sticks. That’s what Hanley done to me an’ my horse. If I’m seein’ you through your fool business, I reckon it’s up to you to see me through mine. I want Hanley. I’m not exactly hankerin’ to kill him. Want to beat him up good an’ wrap him in his own bobwire. I don’t leave for Mexico till that’s done.”

  “That may mean waiting around a month. I’d have to go on without you.”

  “What’s a month? Want Hanley to go on breakin’ down the Navahos an’ makin’ ’em poor on liquor? If you think Mrs. Newton ain’t worth savin’ from her husband, is she worth savin’ from what he’s done? Is it worth hurtin’ the Indians who’ve been mighty damn decent to you?”

  John’s irritability increased. Truth driven home was not pleasant to him in his present mood. “Go your own way if you’re not satisfied with mine,” he muttered.

  “Not while you need lookin’ after,” High-Lo returned. “I was always dependent on you. Now things is changed.”

  Down into canyons and washes, up over rocky ridges, through cedars and junipers they rode, sometimes in single file, sometimes together, the sun mounting higher and taking away the chill of morning.

  CHAPTER XVII

  FROM FIVE DIRECTIONS trails led to Sage Springs post. Not an Indian was in sight along them, a strange coincidence, considering that it was late afternoon when trade should have reached its height.

  “Business is poor everywhere,” thought John.

  The adobe shack, once the home of a visionary oil prospector, was small for its present use. A poorly lettered sign above the door jutted on either side beyond the width of the shack like a windmill fan. The prospector, favoring alike the distance to the spring and his well, had built the shack halfway between them. So it stood barren, forlorn, against the leaning wall of a low mesa. Almost it was forbidding, as if disease lurked menacingly behind its door. From a distance the door appeared closed. Riding closer, John saw that it was. Moreover, it was barred.

  “What do you make of it?” asked High-Lo.

  “Don’t know. Indians not coming, it looks queer. Wonder if he’s away?”

  They rode up and peered in the windows. The place was deserted yet neat enough inside, with what scant provisions were visible arrayed on counter and shelves. Rugs, draped over a wire, cut off a corner of the one-room shack. Newton’s private quarters, no doubt.

  “That’s a piece of bad luck for you!” said John in disgust.

  “Maybe he’s not far off,” High-Lo suggested.

  “See what we can find out from the Indians over at the Springs. They may know something.”

  They wheeled their horses and rode a mile down the mesa and around a promontory that hid a green oasis from view. Several hogans were clustered around cornfields and in the shade of cottonwoods. A pinto pony, ears up, watched their coming. A dog barked at them from the edge of a field. That brought an Indian to the door of the nearest hogan. He was a young fellow whom John recognized as a returned schoolboy. He waited to be approached.

  John rode up to him. “Can you tell me if Newton’s likely to be back to the post today? It seems to be shut up.”

  “It is,” said the boy. “Hosteen Newton’s gone away.”

  “How long is he gone?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “Maybe so after the Indian dance.”

  “Dance?” repeated John. “We haven’t heard of any dance down at Black Mesa.”

  “Indians don’t tell. Don’t want Hosteen Weston to come. Don’t want any white people.”

  “How is it Newton’s going?” John rejoined.

  The boy grunted disdainfully.

  “They like his whisky — eh?” John went on.

  His remark drew keen attention from the boy.

  “You come for whisky?”

  John tried to avoid a direct answer. “Like some yourself?” he asked.

  High-Lo drew up alongside.

  Scornfully the Indian continued to look at both questioner and newcomer.

  “No! Pete is no fool. Pete hate the whisky because it make his father foolish. Where go the sheep, one today and one tomorrow? Pay for whisky! Hosteen Newton get rich. Pete’s father get poor. Maybe you got money for pay for whisky.”

  “We don’t want whisky,” said John. “We want to stop Newton selling it.”

  The Indian fixed a penetrating gaze upon him. “Stop Hosteen Newton? How you stop him?”

  “Make him go away.”

  “Then come other man.”

  “What other man?” asked John, reaching to uncover the intrigue suggested by the boy.

  “Pete don’t know him. Pete see him two time with Hosteen Newton.”

  “Here?”

  “No. Far away in canyon.”

  “Never see him here?”

  “No.”

  “Eve
r see him alone anywhere?”

  “Once far away in canyon.”

  “Same canyon?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Last moon. Other dance.”

  “Was this other man at the dance?”

  “No.”

  “Big man, is he? This way big?” John described girth and an expansive abdomen. “Bowlegged like some of the cowboys. Legs so?” John described circular lines with his fingers.

  “Yes.”

  “I know the man. We’ll send him away too.”

  “Most Indians want Hosteen Newton to stay. Like Hosteen Newton for sell them whisky. Damn fool Indians!”

  “You bet!” broke in High-Lo. Aside to John he said, “Plain what’s goin’ on here. They’ve been operatin’ right along. Let me nail Hanley if he’s around. Can’t you see what he’s doin’ to these poor beggars, an’ keepin’ under cover all the time? Newton’s the tool!”

  “When’s this Indian dance coming off?” resumed John.

  “Maybe four days, five days. Indians come long way.”

  “I see,” John reflected aloud. “They’ve only begun to gather.”

  “Can you take us to the canyon where you saw Newton and this man?” he asked.

  “You find him, you send him away?”

  “We’ll chase them both, Pete!”

  The boy gave a grunt of satisfaction. “Maybe take gun?”

  “No, leave your gun home.”

  The Indian disappeared into the hogan for a moment, returned with a rope, and strode off for the pony.

  “We shore walked into it!” ejaculated High-Lo. “If we can’t find ’em before the dance, we’ll find Newton, anyway, at the dance. Hanley won’t be far away. Makin’ tracks for Gallup, I reckon. Newton we can get shore and quick. Hanley we’ll follow.”

  “In either instance, no shooting!”

  “Unless someone draws. That makes it different,” High-Lo said.

  They took their horses to water in a pool below the spring where presently the Indian, Pete, joined them.

  “We go long way around mesa,” he said, a sweeping movement of his arm directing them to wheel their horses northward. Then he pointed somewhere close to the direction of the post and added, “That way Indians go to dance. I will show you how to hide from them.”