by Zane Grey
“Why, Hettie!” he whispered, deeply touched.
“Oh, Ben — I’m just — glad to see you,” she replied, moving back from him yet clinging to his arm. “How big you are! It was good of you to come — at once. I owe that Nevada cowboy something. He’s nice. Ben, I want you to slip in with me and see mother. She’s alone. But somebody might come any minute. You and I can talk afterward. I hope the surprise will not hurt mother. But I just believe it’s what she needs. Come. You’re clumsy, Ben, and your spurs jingle.”
“Hettie, I can’t get over how tall you are,” whispered Ben, permitting himself to be led under the dark trees toward the lighted window of the kitchen. They reached the porch. She cautioned him not to make a noise. How tightly she gripped his hand! Ben’s heart throbbed high. The past flashed back stingingly — the many times he had come home in the dark, after a day of running wild against his father’s command, to be protected by his mother. His feet seemed leaden and his spurs clanged. Hettie opened the door. The kitchen was empty. Ben slipped in behind her. Nothing had changed. His father’s new riches were not proclaimed in this homely kitchen. The ticking of the old clock suddenly seemed to smother him. It had ticked like that when his little brother Jude lay dying. So many years ago!
—
Then Hettie turned toward him in the bright light, her face pale, her eyes bright, a prayer on her lips.
“Mother,” called Hettie, in a voice low and broken, “here’s somebody to see you “Well, child, fetch somebody in,” replied her mother, complacently, from the sitting-room.
“No, you’re requested to come out here,” returned Hettie.
There was a moment’s silence. Ben’s heart kept time with the clock. Hettie moved toward the door of the sitting-room. Ben heard the sound of a chair pushed back, then slow footsteps, almost feeble, he thought: a shadow crossed the light that shone in this room. Then Ben saw his mother’s face and it seemed all the riot of his heart suddenly ceased.
“Mother!” called Ben, unable to keep silent longer. Two strides brought him into the glare of the lamp. She saw him, recognised him. The grief, the care, the age of her sweet face vanished marvellously.
“Ben! My son — oh, my son!” she cried, holding out her arms.
A little while later Hettie led him out through the yard, now moonlit in places, shadowed in others, to the gate.
“Let’s wait here. I’m expecting someone you might like to see,” said Hettie, drawing him to a bench in the shade. “Oh, Ben!... my prayers are answered. Somehow I knew what mother needed was to see you — and find out what I always felt — that these stories about you are lies. You convinced her. She is a changed woman. Oh, it will all come out well, now. Father can’t help coming round.”
“Humph! He’d never forgive me in a million years,” returned Ben.
“Little you know him! If you made a success of the very thing he hates, he’d sing a different tune. Father worships industry, success, money. Too much! Ben, before I forget, let me tell you that he and Mr. Setter are going to buy up homesteads out in Forlorn River country. Prick up your ears, Ben. If there’s to be a boom in land and cattle out in your wild-horse range, get in on it yourself.”
“Nevada had the same hunch,” replied Ben, thoughtfully. “We each have a homestead, and we can buy up three more. How many acres in five times one sixty?”
“Why, you dunce, eight hundred acres, of course!”
“Whew! That’s a lot of land. But I’ll risk it. I’ll sign up for those three homesteads to-morrow. Moore and Sims are sick of the long dry spell. Want to sell quick and cheap. But I’ve got mighty little money. It may ruin me.”
“It will be the making of you,” declared Hettie, vigorously. “Be sure you have those homesteads when father and Mr. Setter ride out there to buy. I’d like to see their faces.... Ben, I wrote you I didn’t like Mr. Setter. He tried to be too — too familiar with me.”
“That’s something else and worse against Less Setter,” muttered Ben, grimly.
“He is to blame for most of this new talk about you, Ben. For the life of me I can’t see why he should lie about you. He gives me a creepy feeling. But father thinks he’s a big booster for Tule Lake, and he’s thicker than hops with Mr. Blaine.”
“Don’t bother about Setter, but keep out of his way,” said Ben. “I’ve a hunch this summer will surprise some folks. Hettie, now I’ve seen you again, it’ll go harder with me to lose you for a long time.”
“You’re not going to lose me,” declared Hettie, hugging his arm. “Oh, I’m an arch-plotter, and I’ve got somebody wonderful to help. We’re going to keep sight of you and Nevada.”
“We? Who’s the other arch-plotter?”
“Ina Blaine,” whispered Hettie.
“You talk — like — like a book,” said Ben, incredulously. Yet he thrilled all over. The circumstances of the last twenty-four hours were too much for his hardened bitterness. He had softened. He could not resist Nevada and Hettie and Ina Blaine, if they persisted in this talk.
“Just you wait till you see Ina,” went on Hettie, forcibly. “Hettie, I have seen her. I met her to-day in Hammell. She asked me to meet her here when she comes to see you.”
“Well, I never! Of all the luck! Doesn’t it prove what I hinted?”
“Hettie, it proves nothing except that Ina is as sweet, kind, good as ever. She’s heard about my downfall. She’d risk her reputation to show she still believed in her old friend.”
“Friend, nothing!” scouted Hettie, warmly. “You and Ina were sweethearts. I tell you she loves you, Ben. I know it, if no one else does.”
“For Heaven’s sake, Hettie, don’t talk nonsense!” burst out Ben, passionately. “You’ll drive me mad.”
“Don’t you love Ina still?” queried his sister, inexorably. “Love her! Never ‘ thought — of that,” returned Ben, huskily. “No — of course not. How’d I dare? Hettie, you forget I’m a poor horse hunter, disowned by my family, disgraced, branded as an outcast and thief.”
“Hush! Here comes Ina now,” whispered Hettie. “Marvie is with her. He’s true blue, Ben, and worships you. Talk to Ina as you did to mother.”
Rising, she left Ben and went out into the moonlit lane to meet two dark figures approaching. Ben crouched there, fighting a strange wildness that threatened to master him. His mother! Hettie! They had unnerved, uplifted him. And he trembled at the approach of that slim, tall figure in the moonlight.
Hettie met Ina and Marvie in the lane and led them through the gate. Ben could see clearly, himself unseen. Ina stood bareheaded, her hair waving in the slight breeze. How fair her face! She seemed intent upon Hettie’s whispers. The boy clung to her. Then Hettie said: “Come, Marvie, walk with me a little.”
Ina came slowly out of the white moonlight into the black shade. She walked as if into obscurity, holding out her hands. She bumped into the bench.
“Ben,” she whispered breathlessly.
“Ina,” he replied.
“I was afraid you might not wait,” she went on, seating herself beside him. “I’m late.”
She bent closer to look at him, evidently with her eyes still affected by coming suddenly out of the bright moonlight. But Ben saw her eyes clearly enough. Too clearly for the composure he struggled to attain! How dark, eloquent, wonderful they shone out of her white face.
“Hettie said you saw your mother — left her better, happier. Ben, I’m so glad I — I could cry.... You denied all this vile talk?”
“Yes,” muttered Ben.
“You swore it was false? Made her believe you? Vowed you’d outlive it? You were honest, you’d be honest. You’d work, you’d keep sober, you’d save money, you’d show your hard old father that he’d have to be proud of you in the end. Come to you on his knees?”
“Yes, Ina, I’m afraid I committed myself to all you’ve mentioned,” replied Ben, hoarsely. “But though I meant it all, I’m afraid it’s too much. Hettie’s faith, mother’s love, made me weak. I’d have
sworn anything.”
“Ben, it was the best in you speaking. You must live up to it. -. Not Hettie, nor even your mother, believes in you any more than I do.”
“Ina! Don’t talk — nonsense,” stammered Ben. “What do you know of me now — after all my wandering years out there?’’
“Has your heart changed?” she asked, softly.
“No, by Heaven! it hasn’t,” he muttered, dropping his head.
“Have you wronged anyone since you became a wild-horse hunter?”
“No,” he declared, “unless it was a wrong to mother not to obey father. But, Ina, I couldn’t stick to farm work. Father always gave me ploughing, milking, digging, fencing, errands — anything except the work of a cowboy or range rider. He wanted to kill my love for the open country. But he only made it worse.”
Stirred by these few full utterances, Ben burst into a swift, tense story of his free, lonely life on Forlorn River — of his faithful friends and dumb companions, of the wild horses shining on the hills, of the glory of California Red as he raced like a flame through high grass, of the dawns and sunsets at Clear Lake, of the geese and deer and wolves, of all that made his home among the sage slopes something that he could not forsake.
“Ben, if your father was human he’d recognise the opportunity for you in the country you love,” replied Ina, gravely. “And he would help you. But he is as hard as the lava out yonder. You must go it alone, Ben.... My father is more set in his mind than yours. Then wealth and dreams of more have turned his head. I was wildly happy to get home. But gradually it dawned on me that home was not what I had left. It was no longer a home. Mother is out of place and does not understand. She has no sense of humour. She is obsessed with the vast change in our circumstances. She is absent-minded. She forgets that she must not churn butter. Oh, it is pathetic. Kate has been affected differently. She has become a snob, and she’s engaged to a city man, who, I sadly fear, has his eye on her prospects. My older brothers are no longer cowboys. They lean cityward, and Tule Lake Ranch will surely lose them. Marvie and Dall are still kids. They are my insolation. I’ll stand by them and fight for them. Father and I clash. And the first time, by the way, was through a man named Less Setter, one of father’s stock partners. This Setter accused you of being a horse thief, and I told him he lied. I also told him that if I had not forgotten Ben Ide he would have to prove what he said.”
“Ina you stuck up for me that way, before your father?” queried Ben, huskily.
“I did. And that was the cause of our first quarrel. We’ve had others since. I believe, though, that after he gets over his anger he has a sneaking admiration for me. I hear him championing me to Kate My older sister doesn’t like my looks, my ideas, my clothes. We don’t get along at all. But mother and I, when we’re alone, do better all the time. I’m helping mother, Ben, and I shall stick for her sake and the youngsters’.”
“I never thought you’d have trouble at home. Aw, what a shame! These old farm hands grown rich!... But Hart Blaine will marry you to some partner of his, like Setter, or — or that nincompoop McAdam I hear so much about.”
Ben’s feelings, flowing and augmenting with the outburst of his words, ended in misery. It confounded him with a possible revelation of the true state of his heart, of an appalling trouble that he dared not face.
“You flatter me, Ben,” returned Ina, with something keen edging into the softness of her tone. “You’ve forgotten me — and many things.”
“No, no. — Forgive me, Ina. It’s you who forget. I’ve lived a lonely hard life since we — since you left. Straight, I swear to God, but nothing to help me toward your level... Only don’t you dare say I’ve forgotten you.”
“I understand you, Ben,” she said, in sweet earnestness. “You’ve suffered. You think you’re bitter, hopeless, no good. Oh, Ben, what a blunder! You’re hurt because of the infamy which has been heaped upon you. Because you imagine you’re an outcast from your father’s house. Because you must meet me, your old playmate, in secret. You’re proud. I would not have you any different, except to see things clearly.”
“I don’t understand you. I can’t follow you, Ina. I’m only a poor, stumbling fool. Even your kindness amazes me. We were schoolmates — playmates, childish sweethearts — and I’ve never had another in any sense, but that’s all past. It’s over, done, buried. I’m a poor wild-horse hunter, to say the least.
You’ve come home a lovely girl, educated. You’re the pride of a rich old farmer who wants to hobnob with city folks. That’s how I see it. And I’d far rather—”
She rose abruptly and standing over him, her face finding a ray of moonlight that penetrated the leafy foliage, she placed a hand on each of his shoulders. Ben’s instinct was to sink under that touch, but some magic in it or her look caught his spirit, and he seemed to be uplifted Before she could speak Hettie came running to them, panting and excited.
“Ben — father is driving — down the lane,” she said. “I must be with mother — when he comes. Good-bye. Send Nevada for letters. Good night, Ina. You and Marvie better slip through the field.”
Ben had risen while Hettie was speaking, and as she hurried away he noticed a boy standing near.
“Hello, Marvie! Take care my father doesn’t see Ina here,” he whispered. “Come out to Forlorn River and fish with me.”
“You bet I will,” replied Marvie.
Above the clatter of rhythmic hoofbeats Ben heard the sound of his father’s voice. It turned him cold. Ina stood there calm, white, as if all the cruel fathers in the world could not concern her. Ben felt, as he leaned toward her, that the great, dark eyes would haunt him.
“You’ll never know my gratitude,” he whispered. “I’ll try to live up to — try to be... Good-bye, Ina.”
“Not good-bye, Ben,” she returned.
He touched her extended hand, then leaped away into the dark shade of the yard and ran on until he reached the fence that bordered the field. As he paused he heard the clatter of hoofs pass up the driveway to the house.
Like a fugitive Ben stole along the shadow of the fence to where he had tethered his horse, and he rode away from the Ide Ranch as if he were being pursued. He was pursued by remorse, by resolves that mocked him, by an unknown emotion he could not stifle and feared to face.
Clouds covered the moon, and as he began to climb out of the basin he drew away from the pin-pointed lights in farmers’ houses and from the barking of dogs. At last he mounted the rough slope of the basin rim, leaving the low country behind out of sight. He felt safer then; he breathed freer; he could think. A terrible sense of havoc confounded him. He rode on through the dark, cool spring night, immeasurably glad for the lonely melancholy silence, the smell of sage, the looming domes of the mountains. But would these ever again suffice for his happiness? Happiness was nothing save a dream word. He did not want that or need it, or anything unless it was the something about his wild horses, his little cabin, his Forlorn River that made life there sweet.
Coyotes barked from the sage slopes. Wild geese honked overhead. The rhythmic hoofbeats of the tireless horse thudded softly on the dusty trail. Ben rode round the western bulge of the mountain and soon felt the sweep of wind from the great depression of land from the bottom of which Clear Lake gleamed pale and obscure. Some time after midnight he reached his homestead, and turning the horse into the corral he walked wearily to his cabin. Nevada and Modoc would not have returned from their scouting trip back in the direction of Silver Meadow. Ben sat down on the porch. Sleep seemed to be something impossible.
Hours of intense thought and feeling had followed his first wild state when he had fled from the Ide Ranch. He no longer hated his father. It had come to him how to overcome that dour individual. Remorse for the grief he had caused his mother and Hettie had turned away with the realisation that he could make up for it all. As he gazed out over the dark river and lake he grew conscious of how these things pertaining to his family had changed, lessened, faded in the tremendou
s might of Ina Blaine’s place in his life.
He worshipped her. He would never have run away to be a wild-horse hunter if she had stayed at home.
“What did she mean? What was she going to say when she put her hands on my shoulders?” He whispered aloud what he had thought a thousand times in agony during that ride. “I believed it just big-hearted Ina’s way. She would not forget an old schoolmate. She would never listen to gossip or care what people said.... But the look of her — those lovely eyes — the tremble in her voice — the straight, noble talk! Was that merely friendship? I’d be a fool to think so. She doesn’t know yet, but the old feeling has grown along with her to womanhood.
... She didn’t know, but she was waiting for me to take her into my arms. My God! If I’d guessed that, no thought of my honour or her good name would have stopped me. But I didn’t see.... Oh, the sweetness of her! Ina, my little sweetheart — a woman, fine, strong, splendid, sensible. Just to think of her raises me out of the dust. But I must not let her go any farther. She would be ruined, disgraced. Her heart would break.... Yet, it might be that — Oh, it’ll take me years to clear my name. Years in which she’d have to wait for me and suffer the scorn of her people, the gibes of friends. And I — consumed by longing, jealousy! No, it can’t be. Ina Blaine’s not for me. I will not see her again. So best can I prove worthy of her faith.”
CHAPTER V
BEN’S RESTLESS SLUMBERS were disrupted at dawn by a noisy trampling of boots on the cabin porch. Nevada and Modoc had returned.
“By golly! he’s heah in bed!” declared the former, stalking in.
Sitting up abruptly, Ben surveyed the cowboy with magnificent disfavour.
“I’ve a mind to lick you,” he shouted.
“Now, pard, what’ve I done?” queried Nevada, incredulously.
“You woke me up,” yelled Ben.
“Shore. It’s time. Was you havin’ pleasant dreams?” returned the cowboy, grinning.
“Dreams? No! But I was dead to the world. You tramp in here — wake me up — bring it all back.”