by Zane Grey
The thundering herd swept on out of sight. And the thunder became a roar, the roar a rumble, and the rumble died away.
Pilchuck rose to his lofty height and peered across the river, into the gray haze and purple distance that had swallowed up the buffalo. He seemed to be a man who had lived through something terrible.
“The last herd!” he said, with pathos. “They’ve crossed the Brazos an’ they’ll never come back. . . . The storm of rain was like the storm of lead that’ll follow them.”
Tom also got dizzily to his feet and faced the south. What he felt about the last herd could not be spoken. He had been spared a death he felt he deserved; and he had seen a mighty spectacle, incalculable in its spiritual effect. All in vain was the grand stampede of that thundering herd. It must drink, it must graze — and behind would troop the ruthless hunters of hides. But Tom had seen and felt its overpowering vitality, its tremendous life, its spirit. Never would he kill another buffalo! And a great sadness pervaded his mind. As he stood there, trying to form in words something to say to Pilchuck, a huge old buffalo bull, one of the many that had been mired in the sand, floundered and wallowed free, and waddled to the opposite shore. Stupidly he gazed about him, forlorn, alone, lost, a symbol of the herd that had gone on without him. Then he headed south out into the melancholy gray of the prairie.
“Jude, I’m — going — north!” exclaimed Tom, haltingly, full of words that would not come.
“Shake!” replied the old scout, quick as a flash, as he extended his brawny hand.
CHAPTER XIX
FROM THE CREST of the long prairie slope, beginning to color brown and gold in the September sun, Tom Doan gazed down at the place that had been Sprague’s Post. It had grown so as to be almost unrecognizable. Ranches dotted the beautiful sweep of fertile land. Near at hand, the river wound away, hidden in green foliage, and far out on the plain it glistened in the sunlight.
Despite the keen pang in Tom’s heart, and the morbid reluctance to return that had abided with him, strangely he found he was glad. The wildness of the buffalo range, loneliness and silence and solitude, and the loss that he felt was irreparable — these had dwarfed his former kindliness and hopefulness, and his old ambition to know the joy of his own home and ranch. But might there not be some compensation?
The long wagon train of hides and camp outfits lumbered across the prairie to enter the outskirts of the Post and haul up on the green square between the town and the river. Huts and cabins had taken the place of tents. Still there were new wagons and outfits belonging to hunters bound for the buffalo range. Tom wanted to cry out about the pains and blunders they were so cheerfully and ignorantly traveling to meet.
Big wagon trains such as this one were always encountered at the Post. News traveled ahead of such large caravans; and there was a crowd on the green. There were half a dozen wagons ahead of the one Tom drove, and the last of these was Pilchuck’s. The lean old scout was at once surrounded by hunters eager to learn news of the buffalo range.
Tom saw Burn Hudnall and Dave Stronghurl before they saw him. How well they looked — fuller of face and not so bronzed as when they had ridden the open range! Eager and excited also they appeared to Tom. They would be glad to see him. If only he could avoid meeting their women folk! Then Burn espied him and made at him. Tom dropped the knotted reins over the brake with a movement of finality, and stepped down out of the wagon.
“Howdy, boys! It’s sure good to see you,” he said, heartily.
They grasped him with hands almost rough, so forceful were they; and both greeted him at once in a kind of suppressed joy, incoherent and noisy, all the more welcoming for that. Then they hung on to him, one at each side.
“Say, have you boys taken to drink?” retorted Tom, to conceal how their warmth affected him. “I haven’t just come back to life.”
“Tom, I — we — all of us was afraid you’d never come,” burst out Burn. “You look fine. Thin, mebbe, an’ hard. . . . My Gawd! I’m glad!”
“Tom — I’ve got a baby — a boy!” beamed Dave, his strong smug face alight.
“You don’t say! Dave, shake on that. . . . I’m sure glad. How time flies! It doesn’t seem so long—”
“We’ve got other news, but the best of it’ll keep till we get to the ranch,” interrupted Burn. “Tom, I’ve got that five hundred acres father liked so well. Remember? You can buy next to me, along the river. Dave has thrown in with Sprague. The town’s boomin’! We’ve a bank, a church, and a school. An’ wait till you see the teacher! She’s—”
He rambled on, like a boy, to be silenced by Dave’s look. Then Dave began, and being more practical he soon got out Tom’s bag and gun and roll of blankets.
“You’re comin’ with us this hyar very minnit,” he concluded, as Tom tried to make excuses. “Burn, grab some of his outfit. Reckon this team an’ wagon belongs to Pilchuck?”
“Yes, it does,” replied Tom.
“Come along then, you buffalo-chasin’, Comanche-ridin’ Llaner Estacador,” went on Dave. “We’ve orders to fetch you home before these hyar town girls set eyes on you.”
They dragged Tom and his belongings out of the crowd, pushed him up into a spring-wagon, and while Burn piled his baggage in the back, Dave climbed up beside him and started a team of spirited horses out along the river road.
If the welcome accorded Tom by Burn and Dave had touched him, that given by their women folk reached deeply to his heart. They were all at the front of Burn’s fine ranch house. Burn’s wife was weeping, it seemed for joy; and Sally Hudnall gave Tom a resounding kiss, to his consternation. Mrs. Hudnall, whose motherly face showed the ravages of grief, greeted him in a way that made Tom ashamed of how he had forgotten these good people. She took possession of him and led him indoors, ahead of the others. They had all seemed strange, hurried, suppressing something. They were not as Tom remembered. Alas! had he grown away from wholesome simplicity? They wanted to welcome him to their home.
Mrs. Hudnall shut the door. Tom had a sense that the room was large, lighted by windows at each end. Clearing his throat, he turned to speak. But Mrs. Hudnall’s working face, her tear-wet eyes, made him dumb. There was something wrong here.
“Tom, you’re changed,” she began, hurriedly. “No boy any more! I can see how it hurts you to come back to us.”
“Yes, because of — of Milly,” he replied, simply. “But you mustn’t think I’m not glad to see you all. I am. You’re my good friends. I’m ashamed I never appreciated you as I should have. But that hard life out there—”
“Don’t,” she interrupted, huskily. “You know how it hurt me. . . . But, Tom, never mind the past. Think of the present.”
“My heart’s buried in that past. It seems so long ago. So short a time to remember! I—”
“Didn’t you ever think Milly might not have been lost?” she asked.
“Yes, I thought that — till hope died,” replied Tom, slowly.
“My boy — we heard she wasn’t killed — or captured — or anything,” said Mrs. Hudnall, softly.
“Heard she wasn’t? My God! That would only torture me,” replied Tom, poignantly. He felt himself shaking. What did these people mean? His mind seemed to encounter that query as a wall.
“Tom, we know she wasn’t,” flashed the woman, with all the ecstasy in face and voice.
He staggered back suddenly, released from bewilderment. He realized now. That had been the secret of their excitement, their strangeness. His consciousness grasped the truth. Milly Fayre was not dead. For an instant his eyes closed and his physical and spiritual being seemed to unite in a tremendous resistance against the shock of rapture. He must not lose his senses. He must not miss one word or look of this good woman who had given him back love and life. But he was mute. A strong quiver ran over him from head to foot. Then heart and pulse leaped in exquisite pain and maddening thrill.
“Milly is here,” said Mrs. Hudnall. “We tried again and again to send you word, but always miss
ed you. Milly has lived here — ever since she escaped from Jett — and the Indians. She has grown. She’s taught the school. She is well — happy. She has waited for you — she loves you dearly.”
Voice was wrenched from Tom. “I see truth in your face,” he whispered, huskily. “But I can’t believe. . . . Let me see her!”
Mrs. Hudnall pushed back the door and went out. Some one slipped in. A girl — a woman, white of face, with parted lips and great, radiant black eyes! Could this be Milly Fayre?
“Oh — Tom!” she burst out, in broken voice, deep and low. She took a forward step, with hands extended, then swayed back against the door. “Don’t you — know me?”
“I’d lost all hope,” whispered Tom, as if to himself. “It’s too sudden. I can’t believe . . . You ghost! You white thing with eyes I loved!”
“It’s your Milly, alive — alive!” she cried, and ran to envelop him.
Later they stood by the open window watching the sun set gold over the dim dark line of the Llana Estacado. She had told her story. Tom could only marvel at it, as at her, so changed, so wonderful, yet sweet and simple as of old.
“You shall never go back to the buffalo range,” she said, in what seemed both command and appeal.
“No, Milly,” he replied, and told her the story of the stampede of the thundering herd.
“Oh, how wonderful and terrible!” she replied, “I loved the buffalo.”
Mrs. Hudnall called gayly to them from the door. “Tom — Milly, you can’t live on love. Supper is ready.”
“We’re not hungry,” replied Milly, dreamily.
“Yes, we are,” added Tom, forcefully. “We’ll come. . . . Milly, I’m starved. You know what camp grub is. A year and a half on hump steak!”
“Wait. I was only teasing,” she whispered, as with downcast eyes, like midnight under their lashes, she leaned a little closer to him. “Do you remember my — my birthday?”
“I never knew it,” he replied, smiling.
“It’s to-morrow.”
“You don’t say. Well, I did get back at the right time. Let’s see, you’re eighteen years old.”
“Ah, you forget! I am nineteen. You lost me for over a year.”
“But, Milly, I never forgot what was to have been on your eighteenth birthday, though I never knew the date.”
“What was to have been?” she asked, shyly, with a slow blush mantling her cheek.
“You were to marry me.”
“Oh, did I promise that?” she questioned, in pretended wonder.
“Yes.”
“Well, that was for my eighteenth birthday. You never hunted me — you hunted only buffalo. You might have had me. . . . But now you shall wait till — till I’m twenty.”
“Milly, I hunted for you all through summer, fall, winter. And my heart broke.”
“But — but I can only marry you on a birthday,” she replied, shaken by his words, and looked up at him with dusky, eloquent eyes.
“Dear, I’m so happy to find you alive — to see you grown into a beautiful woman — to know you love me — that I could wait for ten birthdays,” he said, earnestly. “But why make me wait? I’ve had a lonely hard life out there in the buffalo fields. It has taken something from me that only you can make up for. I must go back to my dream of a ranch — a home, cattle, horses, tilling the soil. Have you forgotten how we planned when we met in secret under the cottonwoods? Those moonlight nights!”
“No, I never forgot anything,” she whispered, her head going down on his shoulder.
“Well — since to-morrow is your nineteenth birthday, and I’ve lost you for an endless hateful year — marry me to-morrow. Will you?”
“Yes!”
THE END
Under the Tonto Rim
CONTENTS
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter I
LUCY WATSON DID not leave home without regrets. For a long time she gazed at the desert scenery through tear-blurred eyes. But this sadness seemed rather for the past — the home that had been, before the death of her mother and the elopement of her younger sister with a cowboy. This escapade of Clara’s had been the last straw. Lucy had clung to the home in the hope she might save her sister from following in the footsteps of others of the family. Always she had felt keenly the stigma of being the daughter of a saloon-keeper. In her school days she had suffered, under this opprobrium, and had conceived an ideal to help her rise above the circumstances of her position. Clara’s deflection had left her free. And now she was speeding away from the town where she had been born, with an ache in her heart, and yet a slowly dawning consciousness of relief, of hope, of thrill. By the time she reached Oglethorpe, where she was to take a branch-line train, she was able to address all her faculties to a realisation of her adventures.
Lucy had graduated from high school and normal school with honours. Of the several opportunities open to her she had chosen one of welfare work among backwoods people. It was not exactly missionary work, as her employers belonged to a department of the state government. Her duty was to go among the poor families of the wilderness and help them to make better homes. The significance of these words had prompted Lucy to make her choice. Better homes! It had been her ideal to help make her own home better, and so long as her mother lived she had succeeded. The salary offered was small, but that did not cause her concern. The fact that she had the welfare department of the state behind her, and could use to reasonable extent funds for the betterment of these primitive people, was something of far greater importance. When she had accepted this position two remarks had been made to her, both of which had been thought-provoking. Mr. Sands, the head of the department, had said: “We would not trust every young woman with this work. It is a sort of state experiment. But we believe in the right hands it will be a great benefit to these uncultivated people of the backwoods. Tact, cleverness, and kindliness of heart will be factors in your success.”
Lucy had derived gratification from this indirect compliment. The other remark had aroused only Amusement. Mrs. Larabee, also connected with the welfare work, had remarked: “You are a good-looking woman, Miss Watson. You will cause something of a stir among the young men at Cedar Ridge. I was there last summer. Such strapping young giants I never saw! I liked them, wild and uncouth as they were. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them married you.”
Oglethorpe was a little way station in the desert. The branch-line train, consisting of two cars and the engine, stood waiting on a side track. Mexicans in huge sombreros and Indians with coloured blankets stolidly watched Lucy carry her heavy bags from one train to the other, A young brakeman espied her and helped her aboard, not forgetting some bold and admiring glances. The coach was only partly filled with passengers, and those whom Lucy noticed bore the stamp of the range.
Soon the train started over an uneven and uphill roadbed. Lucy began to find pleasure in gazing out of the window. The flat bare desert had given place to hills, fresh with spring greens. The air had lost the tang of the cattle range. Occasionally Lucy espied a black tableland rising in the distance, and this she guessed was timbered mountain country, whither she was bound.
At noon the train arrived at its terminal stop, San Dimas, a hamlet of flat-roofed houses. Lucy was interested only in the stage-coach that left here for her destination, Cedar Ridge. The young brakeman again came to her assistance and carried her baggage. “Goin’ up in the woods, hey?” he queried curiously.
“Yes, I think they did say woods, backwoods,” laughed Lucy. “I go to Cedar Ridge, and farther still.”
“All alone — a pretty girl!” he exclaimed galla
ntly. “For two cents I’d throw up my job an’ go with you.”
“Thank you. Do you think I need a — a protector?” replied Lucy.
“Among those bee hunters an’ white-mule drinker I reckon you do, miss.”
“I imagine they will not be any more dangerous than cowboys on the range — or brakemen on trains,” replied Lucy, with a smile. “Anyway, I can take care of myself.”
“I’ll bet you can,” he said admiringly. “Good luck.”
Lucy found herself the sole passenger in the stage-coach and soon bowling along a good road. The driver, a weather-beaten old man, appeared to have a grudge against his horses. Lucy wanted to climb out in front and sit beside him, so that she could see better and have opportunity to ask questions about the country and the people. The driver’s language, however, was hardly conducive to nearer acquaintance; therefore Lucy restrained her inquisitive desires and interested herself in the changing nature of the foliage and the occasional vista that opened up between the hills.
It seemed impossible not to wonder about what was going to happen to her; and the clinking of the harness on the horses, the rhythmic beat of their hoofs, and the roll of wheels all augmented her sense of the departure from an old and unsatisfying life toward a new one fraught with endless hopes, dreams, possibilities. Whatever was in store for her, the worthy motive of this work she had accepted would uphold her and keep her true to the ideal she had set for herself.
The only instructions given Lucy were that she was to go among the families living in the backwoods between Cedar Ridge and what was called the Rim Rock and to use her abilities to the best advantage in teaching them to have better homes. She had not been limited to any method or restricted in any sense or hampered by any church or society. She was to use her own judgment and report her progress. Something about this work appealed tremendously to Lucy. The responsibility weighed upon her, yet stimulated her instinct for conflict. She had been given a hint of what might be expected in the way of difficulties. Her success or failure would have much to do with future development of this state welfare work. Lucy appreciated just how much these isolated and poor families might gain or lose through her. Indeed, though beset by humility and doubt, she felt that a glorious opportunity had been presented to her, and she called upon all the courage and intelligence she could summon. There was little or nothing she could plan until she got among these people. But during that long ride through the lonely hills, up and ever upward into higher country, she laboured at what she conceived to be the initial step toward success — to put into this work all her sympathy and heart.