by Zane Grey
JOHN STEPPED OUT of the Flaggerston post office a disappointed man. No one knew of an Indian girl calling recently for mail; no one had seen or heard of a person of her description. He was sick and dizzy. Two days’ ride at a killing pace for both horse and rider left him the worse for wear. He needed food, a doctor, sleep. But no sleep would he take till he had found Magdaline. He calculated that Flaggerston was such a small place one on the alert was bound to see every able-bodied inhabitant and identify any strangers before a day’s end. There was no reason to despair.
Food was his first consideration now he was through at the post office, so he went to a restaurant on Main Street, and choosing a seat by the window sat down to enjoy a substantial meal. Opposite him was a man with a newspaper, in which, as a page was being turned, John’s eye caught a headline: COWBOY MARRIES INDIAN GIRL. “Everybody’s doing it,” thought John grimly.
Ravenously he ate. Meanwhile his gaze swept the street for a glimpse of a Navaho girl. He saw only white people: cowboys, young girls, women with market bags. His meal over, John left the restaurant for the Main Street Hotel where from a comfortable chair he could continue his surveillance through the plate-glass front of the lobby. It would be a while before a doctor had the pleasure of ordering him to bed. He was less dizzy now that he had eaten, but desire to sleep was more urgent. He wanted Magdaline. He kept telling himself that he wanted her, in order to counteract the lethargy that was stealing over him, and the heaviness of his eyelids. He registered in his mind everyone who passed. Pretty girl. Skinny woman. Sleepy-looking Mexican. Boys scheming mischief.... The train. Always someone going away. Magdaline going away. Not on the train, however. To Mexico.... More boys — almost ran that woman down.... A cowboy.... Damned familiar cowboy!
“Damned familiar cowboy,” John repeated aloud. He leaped to his feet and strode into the street, conscious of following eyes. “High-Lo, the beggar!” he muttered.
High-Lo it was! Some girls turned to look slyly after him. No wonder they turned! Handsome beggar!
“Followed me!” said John emphatically to himself.
He caught up with him quickly and hailed him with a whack on his shoulder. High-Lo swung around abruptly. His surprise vanished in a smile.
“What are you doing here?” John asked angrily.
“Lookin’ for you. An’ darn well you know it.”
“Had to follow me!”
“Had to stop you from marryin’ Magdaline.”
“You can’t.”
“Yes I can. Fact is, I have.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Evidently you haven’t seen the morning papers,” returned High-Lo complacently.
“What are you driving at?” demanded John.
“I married Magdaline myself, yesterday.”
John stared at High-Lo, confounded.
“Congratulate me, you duffer.”
“You married Magdaline yesterday?” said John when at last he spoke. “How could you — yesterday?”
“With the help of a parson.... You see, you didn’t leave me at Black Mesa. I left you there. Pulled out at two in the morning. Framed it with Weston who loaned me his car. I talked straight from the shoulder to Weston. He knows everything now. But I didn’t tell Weston I’d marry Magdaline. Said I’d send her away. I meant it then. Then I knew you’d follow quick an’ maybe find her. You’d be all the more determined. Nothin’ to do but for me to marry her. It was a pretty good idee at that! It come to me on the desert.”
“But, you locoed fool, you don’t—” John stopped.
“Love her, I suppose you were goin’ to say. No more did you. At that I guess I did care more. Didn’t she help save my life? Even if she was follerin’ you when she did it, that don’t change things none. An’ didn’t I go make her a quirt that you never gave her? Never made nothin’ for a girl before that. Now I’m goin’ to make her a bum husband. She’s got the worst of the bargain.”
Something like a sob rose in John’s throat. “Laying down your life for me, eh, High-Lo? My madness drove you to this extremity? Man! Why did you do it?”
“Could I let you do it? Could I take the least bit of a chance?” There was a beautiful light in High-Lo’s eyes. His nostrils quivered as he spoke. “Couldn’t you see folks would say the kid was yours? What if we went to Mexico? It would leak out someway, an’ your goin’ would look the worse. With me, they’d laugh, sort of pokin’ fun. They’d expect it of me. They’d put it down to just plain deviltry. But you? You’re different. An’ you were forgettin’ the other girl. I’d die ‘fore I’d have her makin’ you out a skunk. She never would smile again then.”
“It’s for life,” John said dully. “You’re not the kind to quit her because she’s Indian and it’d be easy.”
“No more’n you would. You weren’t thinkin’ these things for yourself. Why are you thinkin’ them for me? Look here! I’m a pretty lucky fellow far as the wife goes. Get on to me with an educated wife! No educated white woman with brains like Magdaline would look at me twice. Think of the good to my kids with an educated mother. What if she gives them a dark complexion? I can stand that. What I come from for stock don’t offer ’em much in other ways. The best’ll come from her. ‘Course, there’s Newton’s kid.... I don’t like that much. Hope it’s a boy who can some day knock his father’s block off!”
John comprehended slowly. “Newton’s kid!” he gasped.
“That’s right. You didn’t know?” said High-Lo. “Yes. Magdaline gave me the straight of it. An’ say — she run across Mrs. Newton in Taho an’ spilled it to her. She didn’t know there was a Mrs. Newton, pore kid! Like to drove her crazy. John, there’s justice operatin’ somewheres, but everythin’ is pilin’ up on that pore little woman you jilted.”
High-Lo’s words splintered John’s thoughts like glass. “My God!” he cried. “Where’s Newton now? Where’s she?”
“We’re goin’ to find out, buddy,” said High-Lo. “We’ll ride back hotfoot, after you get some rest.”
John, trying to laugh, made a strange choking sound. “Rest?” he struggled to say. “How can I rest now? For God’s sake take me to her!”
He felt suddenly deathly sick. The street whirled around beneath him. He reeled against High-Lo. Then everything went black. He was plunging downward into this darkness, and High-Lo, far away, was saying, “Get me a car. This man’s sick. Yes. To the hospital.”
* * * * *
Opening his eyes upon the white walls of an all-white room and upon High-Lo talking to a woman in white, John remembered the boy’s last words. He was in bed. His clothes were off and replaced by a nightshirt. On his shoulder which still throbbed was a neat new bandage. He strained to hear the lowered conversation in which he caught his own name.
“I’ll ask the doctor.” That was the nurse.
“I’m sure you can’t keep him more than a couple of days.” That was High-Lo. He continued. “Be worse for him to stay. He’s got to settle up some affairs that are worryin’ him, an’ he’d go loco waitin’. He’s strong! Long as there’s no poison in the shoulder, a little rest’ll fix him. He’s been killin’ himself with a long ride and short food an’ lots of worry.”
Just then High-Lo saw that John had come to. He saluted him with a comic gesture.
“Now we’ve got you put,” he said. “Taken your clothes away. Don’t worry, cowboy. I’ll get you out soon. Got to have some sense about yourself. Golly, I feel like a wife-deserter! S’pose I bring Magdaline around for a minute.”
“It might be awkward,” said John weakly. “She’s told me things. Guess you told her why you were marrying her, too. She knows you stopped me, doesn’t she?”
“She knows more’n that. She knows about you and Mrs. Newton. Say! She worships Mrs. Newton more than ever since I told her. An’ she wants everything to come right for you, John. Let me bring her.”
John capitulated. Tumbling gray patterns in the kaleidoscope of events were shifting about to give place to a brighter
design.
An hour later Magdaline came. There was a look of peace about her, in her quiet smile, in the softening lines of her face.
“High-Lo says soon we go to Taho with you,” she said in a calm, quiet voice. John remembered her then as he had seen her when she was administering to High-Lo that memorable day at the pass. She would mother High-Lo. She would live for him from now on.
Magdaline seemed to divine his thoughts. She nodded her head as she observed his ruminating, as if to say, “Yes, it is so.”
Presently she spoke. “By accident I have found my way out into the place where light comes through the canyon, and I see that maybe not so far down there is a way into that light. I believed in your wisdom, John Curry. Now I will do my best to make High-Lo happy, seldom sorry. He has been good and brave like you.”
CHAPTER XX
HIGH-LO WON THE doctor’s confidence, and John was dismissed from the hospital in two days.
Accompanied by Magdaline, they journeyed to Taho, where they found Mary had fled. MacDonald informed them that Billy Horton had borrowed his car to take Mrs. Newton and her friend to Black Mesa. So far as he knew, Newton had not been seen in Taho. John was satisfied that they must go to Black Mesa at once. Late evening of that same day they reached Castle Mesa, where they spent the night, and next morning they arrived at the post.
Weston rushed out to meet them. On High-Lo’s presentation of his wife, he was aghast, but soon collecting himself muttered, “Thank God!” and pumped John’s hand vigorously.
“Mrs. Newton here?” asked John.
“Yes, and Miss Winfield,” said Weston. “That Horton fellow brought them. He’s gone back.”
Mr. and Mrs. Weston were troubled. Beany, who had returned, seemed unhappily out of place. An Indian girl slipped through the living room with a tray in her hands, and a minute later John recognized Katharine’s voice down the hall, “Yes, thank you, Mrs. Newton is feeling better.”
John looked around helplessly, praying for someone to speak.
Weston relieved the strain. “She collapsed after I told her you’d seen Newton and chances were he had her message. And when she found that you had gone — you understand I couldn’t tell her why — she just went to pieces. Miss Katharine’s been nursin’ her. She’ll have to break it kind of slow that you’ve come back. Things are pretty near bein’ consid’able mussed up.”
“No one’s seen Newton?” asked John.
“Ain’t showed up here. Beany rode over to Sage Springs. No sign of him there neither. Believe me, we didn’t want him. Just wanted to get a line on him. Let him show up! He’ll get a closed door here.”
Katharine joined them at lunch. She took John’s presence for granted. Magdaline and High-Lo she received happily. The gloom broke a little with Katharine there driving them to talk and think of commonplace things.
After lunch High-Lo and Magdaline went to the hogan on the hill which the boys had shared last year as a dressing room, and which Mrs. Weston turned over to them, for Magdaline needed rest, and High-Lo wanted to make sure she would be comfortable. Mrs. Weston took up some sewing, Mr. Weston and Beany went over some accounts, and John had an opportunity to talk to Katharine. It was not long before High-Lo joined them. They agreed then that Katharine should tell Mary that John had come. Meanwhile Katharine entertained them with stories about Joy and about Mary’s strenuous winter experience.
Suddenly the sound of a shot split the air. Then followed an ear-piercing shriek.
John and High-Lo stared at each other.
“What was that?” they all asked simultaneously.
Instantly Weston, his wife, and Beany were on their feet. Then John tore out of the room with High-Lo close behind.
At the kitchen door stood the Indian maid waving arms frantically toward the hogan. “Up there!” she cried.
“Magdaline!” groaned High-Lo.
A riderless horse wheeled away as they approached. John remembered in a flash that very horse wheeling from him once before. Wilbur Newton had ridden him then. He heard the thud of other hoofs bearing down his way, but his eyes were on the hogan door. As he made it, he felt High-Lo at his heels.
John stared in horror. High-Lo’s cry shook him as deeply as the thing he saw. On the floor, arms spread wide, face ghastly and drawn, lay Wilbur Newton dead. And near by on the bed, her feet still close to the dead man’s, her hand still grasping the revolver, was Magdaline, swaying in dry-eyed agony. She seemed slow to comprehend that they had come. When they entered, she sprang to her defense with the fierceness of an animal at bay.
“I killed him!” she screamed. “He would not let me go! I killed him.”
Voices sounded outside. A figure glided into the room and knelt swiftly at Newton’s side, only to back away dismayed. It was Pete, the Navaho guide, come strangely from a tragic past into a tragic present.
Magdaline shrank from High-Lo, who leaped over the body to reach her.
“He would not let me go!” she reiterated wildly. “He held me tight!”
Then High-Lo was beside her drawing her head down to his shoulder. “High-Lo, I did not mean to kill him,” she sobbed.
“Sure, you didn’t,” said High-Lo. “Everybody knows you didn’t. Nobody’s goin’ to hurt you. Just tell us what happened.”
Now the others had come. They stood stricken to silence. Magdaline’s sobs seemed terrible in that stillness.
“Tell me what happened,” High-Lo repeated gently.
The girl looked up, at the same time pushing her disheveled hair from her eyes, and with her hand clutching High-Lo’s arm, her eyes intent on his, she spoke dully with fearful haste.
“I was on the bed. I heard somebody. Then Wilbur came crouching into the room. He was looking back, always back. I sat up. Your belt and gun you left there on the floor. I picked it up quick to put beside me so he could not see it. He heard me. He turned frightened. Then he cried my name, glad-like. He came very close. Talked very fast. Said an Indian had been following him everywhere for days. He said he was starving — said he was afraid — said I must hide him from the Indian. I did not know what to think. He has lied to me before. I hate him. I looked in his eyes. Somehow he made me look in his eyes. I saw there something terrible — as though he wanted to take possession of me again. I wanted you then, High-Lo. I was so afraid. I got up to go. He came so close. He took my hands. He said he loved me — he had come to marry me. I was so frightened. I tried to scream and I could not scream. I tried to pull away. His arms came around me tight and his face so close, and he pushed me back on the bed. Your gun was there. It came into my hand, High-Lo. I did not know it. It was there so quick without thinking. When I felt it, I knew I was safe. ‘I can get to High-Lo,’ I said to myself. I kept saying, ‘I can get to High-Lo,’ and it made me strong so I could push him up. But he stood in front of me again, when I got up, with his eyes making me look at him and his arms clutching. And I kept saying, ‘I can get to High-Lo,’ and I cried it out to him, and the gun was there between us, tight against me, tight against him, and my finger pressed when I said, ‘I can get to High-Lo,’ There was the sound then, and he fell and I saw the smoke and the blood and smelled cloth burning. That’s what happened, High-Lo.”
Her hands went fluttering to her neck as if something were choking her.
Pete spoke up. “I follow Hosteen Newton. One day go Sage Springs. Hosteen Newton in post. Door locked. Hosteen Newton go when Pete sleep. Pete follow Hosteen Newton to Black Mesa. Hosteen Newton dead.”
He brought a stained crumpled letter from his blouse and handed it to John. John shuddered. He was receiving a bloody weapon; for verily, the letter had been both Hanley’s and Newton’s undoing.
Magdaline was wearing out her terror in sobs which she smothered on High-Lo’s shoulder. Mr. Weston and Beany covered Newton’s body with Indian rugs. Then John caught a suggestion from Weston to send out Magdaline and High-Lo. He heard Katharine and Mrs. Weston leave. He was so stunned by the recent shocking event
and the extenuating circumstances that there seemed no time beyond the stupefying present. Silently he communicated Weston’s hint to High-Lo. High-Lo swept Magdaline into his arms and strode from the hogan. Then Weston advised John to go.
“Leave this to us,” he said. “We’ll box him. Coroner will have to have a look in, an’ the law go its course. But don’t be worryin’ none.”
John wanted to go. There was terrible revulsion in the thought of laying even a finger on the carcass of the coward whose fear had driven him to his doom.
Mary’s voice, plying frantic questions, came to him as he approached the house. Slim in a flowing dark wrap, her black hair enveloping her face like a cloud, she was begging that someone tell her why everyone was running around like mad. When she saw John, she stood like one transfixed. He looked at her helplessly and murmured, “Mary!”
That seemed to release her. She was a breathing demanding creature again. She rushed toward him authoritatively. “You tell me, John. They won’t.”
Conscious that she intuitively knew, and that uncertainty and evasions would be worse than the truth, he said, “Your husband is dead, Mary. Don’t ask for particulars now. There’s time enough to know them.”
“Someone shot him. I know. But you didn’t do it,” she said with a strange calm.
“No. Not I,” John returned firmly.
She smiled the most tragic smile he had ever seen.
“I want to cry,” she said, “and I can’t.”
Then she turned from him still smiling, and walked past the others, ostensibly serene, as quietly and calmly as a nun.
Not a word passed between the group in the room until a door closed down the hall. Then Katharine said, “I had better go to her.”
“It’s Magdaline who needs attention,” said Mrs. Weston, nodding toward the couch where she lay clinging to High-Lo’s hand. “Take her to my room and stay with her. I’ll be in soon.”
High-Lo obeyed. John dropped heavily into the nearest chair.
“The end is not yet in sight.” Mrs. Weston nodded her head in the direction High-Lo had taken with his burden.