by Zane Grey
“Hurry — what’d Ina do?” burst out Ben.
“Huh! She just slapped the stuffin’ out of him an’ said she’d never speak to him again. He went home red-headed. An’ dad had to hustle off to Klamath to pay money he’d borrowed from old McAdam. I heard dad tell Ina that an’ a lot of other guff. Ina swore she’d go to work waitin’ on table in the Hammell hotel before she’d marry McAdam. That’s what kind of a sister I got.’
“You — don’t — say!” replied Ben, in smothered voice, bending over Marvie’s tackle. But this attempt to hide his ridiculous state of sudden ecstasy availed him nothing.
“Ben, you’re fond of Ina,” went on Marvie, seriously now, with the accent of a big-brother guardian.
Looking up, Ben realised that the truth was best, whatever it cost him.
“Boy, I should smile,” he replied, but he did not smile. “Had a hunch you was,” continued Marvie, with satisfaction. “Got it that night we met Hettie.”
“Yes?” inquired Ben, encouragingly. He wanted to hug the lad. How Marvie reminded him of Ina when she was a youngster.
“Ben, does she know you’re fond of her?”
“Why, Marvie — I’m not sure — reckon she doesn’t,” answered Ben, helplessly.
“It’d be a darn good thing for her to know, Ben,” went on the lad, earnestly. “Ina has a rotten time of it, tryin’ to brighten mother up an’ keepin’ dad from drivin’ her. Say, them Sundays when McAdam was with us all day — gee! they were tough. But he’s gone now.’
“Marvie, you’re old enough to know that I can’t go to your sister and — and tell her such a thing,” said Ben, striving to be clear. “My dad threw me out. People believe I deserved it — that I’m a no-good horse hunter — and worse.”
“Scat!” exploded Marvie, in fine scorn. “Ina has heard all that. I’ll bet it’s only made her like you more.”
“Ah, son, you must be wrong,” murmured Ben, hanging his head.
“If I’m wrong she acts darn funny. But I’ve a hunch I’m right,” returned Marvie, stoutly. “Would Ina send you messages if she didn’t like you?”
“Messages! By whom?” cried Ben, jerking up quickly.
“By nobody but me, Ben Ide,” declared Marvie triumphantly.
“You little son-of-a-gun! You’ve been here hours without telling me? Hurry, or I’ll be Injun giver and take back your wild horse.”
“Huh! Thought that would fetch you,” said the lad, with a grin. “Well, I’m sorry I got your hopes way up, ‘cause Ina didn’t really give me much to tell you. She sent her regards—”
“Yes?” cried Ben, eagerly, as Marvie paused to watch impressions.
“An’ was glad about your wild-horse catch.”
“Yes?” not so eagerly or hopefully.
“An’ about your fight with Setter an’ the way he looked when he got back she said to tell you—”
Ben could scarcely keep from choking this tantalising young rascal.
“What?” he demanded “She was tickled to death!”
Ben drew a deep breath and glared suspiciously at Marvie. Could this clear-eyed boy be guilty of terrible duplicity?
“Son, if you could lie to me about such a thing!.. No horse, no fishing, no pardnership with me!”
“Ben, I’m tellin’ you true,” protested Marvie, with sudden haste. “Ina said that, an’ what’s more she said somethin’ you’ll like a dam sight better.”
“Then for Heaven’s sake, tell me!” said Ben, suddenly weak.
“She said, ‘Tell Ben to come over.’... Now, Ben Ide, what’ve you got to say?”
“I’m beyond words, son,” rejoined Ben, experiencing the swell of an emotion that would render his reply true. Then for the lack of speech he dragged the boy with him, out of the yard, beyond the barns and corral, to the pasture. There seemed to be a thrumming song in his ears; the sky shone a deeper, intenser blue than ever he had seen; the dry fragrance in his face, a message, a symbol of life; the vast pillared clouds, pearly and golden, gorgeous thrones of gods, hung motionless from the dome of the heavens He could not explain the transformation in the aspect in nature, nor the ringing, singing self within himself.
He shared Marvie’s delight in the whistling, racing wild horses; in the black-and-white pinto colt some day to be the boy’s very own.
“Come, son, don’t hang here all day,” said Ben, finally dragging Marvie off the fence. “We’ll likely find some grasshoppers along the river. I like them best as bait for trout.
But they’re getting scarce. This dry spell has killed them off.”
“I’ve got fishin’ worms, if we can’t get grasshoppers,” replied Marvie, with the confidence of a fisherman.
“Where on earth did you get worms at this dry time?” asked Ben, in surprise.
“Got them at home, in one of the ditches,” replied Marvie. “Brought them along with me, packed in wet moss, an’ feed them milk. See — look.” And Marvie produced a wide flat tin box full of long, fat, shiny angleworms.
“Say, son, these big rainbows will break their necks after those worms,” exclaimed Ben, enthusiastically. “But let’s catch some grasshoppers, anyhow.”
They had a hot, merry, exciting chase through the dead grass, which ended in their exhaustion and the capture of a few great yellow grasshoppers.
“Gee! they’re dandy big ones. Regular tobacco-chewers,” declared Marvie, with the eye of a connoisseur. “I wish Ina had come with me.”
Forthwith Ben led his visitor along the river bank to the break where willows and cat-tails and tule flags were green, in vivid contrast with the sun-seared sage. The river was like a pond thick with green scum, but between the high bank and a jutting cape covered with willow lay a deep swirling pool of clear water. Marvie showed amaze and delight. He heard the babble and tinkle of Ben’s priceless spring as it burst from under the bank. This pool was not very wide, though fairly long, extending for some rods before the clear running current slowed and disappeared in the yellow stagnant water of the river. Swamp blackbirds and green-backed frogs and basking turtles were much in evidence.
“Now watch,” said Ben, and taking one of the grasshoppers he threw it down into the pool.
Flashes of gold, pink, silver elicited a yell from the lad. Trout appeared swift as light. There was a smash on the surface of the pool, and a trout as long as Marvie’s arm beat the others to that grasshopper.
“Oh, Lord!” whooped Marvie, and he sat down as if his legs had buckled under him.
“He was a big one, about eight pounds, but there’re some that’ll make him a baby,” announced Ben. “Say good-bye to your Christmas gift tackle.”
Marvie seemed obsessed with the mystery and beauty in the depths of that pool. They were fascinating, and Ben recalled the days when he was Marvie’s age.
“I told Ina I could bank on Ben,” Marvie soliloquised impressively. He was manifestly making a most momentous decision.
“Come on,” called Ben, gaily, rousing the lad. “We’ll climb down up here, and get on that point. It’s the best place, though when I want a trout to eat I just yank him up from here.”
“Yank one of those big ones?” queried Marvie, incredulously.
“No, not the biggest,” laughed Ben. “But the small ones, say one to two pounds, sometimes more. They’re best to eat.”
It was necessary for Ben to help Marvie down the high bank and out to the end of the cape. The footing was precarious, and though Marvie was valiant he did not possess length of limb to conquer certain steps without help. The point, however, afforded a comfortable and safe place from which to fish. Ben did not miss the trembling of Marvie’s hands or the startled, dreamy, expectant light of his eyes.
“Try a worm bait first,” advised Ben. “Then maybe you’ll catch a few before some big lunker takes that outfit away from you.”
Marvie seemed speechless, but he gazed up at Ben with a fleeting glance of ecstasy. Then he baited his hook and cast it out. Scarcely had it time to
sink before a trout seized it and ran. Marvie jerked so hard that he pulled the trout unceremoniously out, to drop flopping on the bank, where he and Ben frantically pounced upon it. Ben secured it, a nice fat rainbow about a pound in weight.
“Gee!” whispered Marvie very low. “Biggest trout I ever caught!”
“Son, he’s a baby,” said Ben, stringing the fish on a willow. “His great-great-great-great-granddad is in that hole.”
“Oh, why wouldn’t Ina come!” cried Marvie poignantly.
“Wouldn’t she?” asked Ben, in apparent innocence.
“No. Girls are queer. Said she couldn’t run after you. I’ll get her to come yet.... Now, Ben, here goes again. You’ve got me scared stiff. But, oh, this’s heaven.”
Marvie found himself at once attached to another trout, not much larger than the first, but one that got his head and gave the lad some trouble and immense excitement before it was landed.
On a third cast a fish took the wiggling worm right off the surface, exciting Marvie to the extent that he jerked too soon and missed.
“Let them have it a little bit,” advised Ben. “You’re too nervous. Take time, son, take time.
“Say, if you felt like me?”
Then, in quick succession, Marvie captured three more rainbows, averaging slightly heavier than the others.
“Don’t wake me up, Ben. Let me go on dreamin’ — What a place to fish! This darned hole is deep an’ full of hungry trout.... Now we’ll see.... There! Wow, Ben — I can’t budge him! Am I snagged on a log? Oh no! No!”
That’s a big loggy one,” shouted Ben. “Play him easy, Marvie. Don’t lift so hard.... See, you pulled the hook out.”
“What’d I do then?” asked Marvie, after a long gaze of realisation.
“Too strong. You should have let him run round and round till he was tired — Don’t look sick, boy. There’s a wagon load of trout like him in that hole. Put on a big grasshopper now, and cast over here under the willows in the shade.”
Marvie did as he was bidden, carefully, earnestly, with bated breath and an air of certain calamity. His education had begun. He realised something electrifying and terrible was about to happen.
Ben saw a huge rainbow gleam out of the black depths and smash a hole in the surface on his rush for the grasshopper. He was so savage and fast that he hooked himself. Out he leaped, two feet long, broad and rainbow-hued, glistening in the sun. Sight of him absolutely paralysed Marvie. He could not lower the rod, and when the big fish surged down the pool there came a snap. The rod broke in the middle. Marvie presented a spectacle for fishermen. The trout again leaped, headed away. Marvie’s line whizzed off the reel, overrun, tangled. Crack! The reel came off the rod and fell, to bound and dart like a live thing as the big trout dashed on with more line. Then, before Ben could move, the reel bounced up from the ground, caught against the guides on Marvie’s nodding rod. The line whizzed harder, rasped and twanged. Down jerked the rod. Marvie staggered forward in bewilderment, made a misstep and plunged into the water. Ben leaped to catch his legs and haul him out.
Blinking, dishevelled, dazed, the lad got his equilibrium, and gazing from the broken rod and limp line up into Ben’s convulsed face he sputtered: “What — come off?”
“Haw! Haw! Haw!” exploded Ben, shaking with mirth. “Guess the trout come off. And the reel — and line — and you!”
“He got away.... Was that a fish?” murmured Marvie, wide eyes on the pool.
“Son, he sure was a whopper. Twelve or fifteen pounds, I’d say. He wrecked your outfit, and he’d have drowned you but for me. Didn’t you see him?”
“I saw somethin’ with jaws open. Must have been a flyin’ alligator,” returned Marvie, his gaze transfixed on the quiet pool.
“Well, you’ve got a nice mess for supper. Five, and all together they’re heavy enough to lug. Next time fetch a strong outfit or use mine.”
The words “next time” recalled the lad to the fact that, dolorous as was the hour, life was still worth living, and future fishing called. By the time Ben got him back to the cabin he was almost cheerful again. Modoc served them with something to eat, and after they had talked awhile it was time for Marvie to leave.
“Ben, I’d rather live here with you than in our big house on Tule Lake,” he said, from the back of his pony. “An’ I’ll bet Ina would, too.”
“Pard, it’s different with girls — about homes,” returned Ben, trying to be natural when he wanted to stand on his head. “We fellows like the open range, you know, horses and outdoor work, hunting and, sure, fishing. But girls like comfort, luxury, people, amusement, and all that.”
“Mebbe, some of them. But not Ina. She loves all those things you said, same as you an’ me. Besides, she’s crazy about you, Ben. Aw, she’s a girl an’ she can’t fool me. I know darned well she is.”
He rode away, leaving Ben standing there as still and staring as if lightning had struck him. And that mental fixity, if not the physical, abided with him in the cabin, where he lay on his couch for a long while, staring straight through the rough shingles of the roof. He roused, at length, to the ring of iron-shod hoofs on stone. Going outside, he espied Nevada riding up. He had forgotten Nevada completely, and at sudden sight of him the former anxiety and dread returned tenfold.
“Where you been?” he queried, shortly, as Nevada rode up.
“Howdy, Ben! Heah you had company?” countered Nevada, nonchalantly. He seemed more than usually his virile, cool, and lazy self. Ben groaned inwardly. How he loved this lithe, long-haired, dark-skinned rider!
“Where you been?” repeated Ben, impatiently.
“Me? Oh, I been ridin’ around over the lone countree,” returned Nevada, as he stepped out of his saddle.
“Where the hell have you been?” shouted Ben. His partner was most irritating to contemplate when he wore this gay, cool, aloof mask.
Nevada turned from uncinching his saddle and gazed with mild amaze at his friend.
“Ben, you’re shore powerful curious aboot me.”
“Yes, and I’m quite capable of licking you good,” declared Ben.
“Wal, reckon you’ve got the ornery cross-grained disposition too, but, Ben, old pard, you ain’t big an’ strong enough to lick me.”
“For Heaven’s sake, don’t torment me now with your cowboy gags. I want to know. Did you ride off to find Less Setter?”
“Ben, it wouldn’t have done no good if I had. Setter’s away gettin’ new teeth, so I heah.”
“Answer me, did you ride out to meet him? If you went without a word to me, I’m going to take it pretty hard.”
“Wal, pard, fact is, if I gotta be honest, I never thought of that pop-eyed rustler boss.”
“Nevada, you wouldn’t lie to me?”
“No, ‘cept for your own good.”
“You called Setter rustler boss. Nevada, isn’t that just some more cowboy talk?”
“Shore, an’ this heah cowboy is talkin’ straight. Some day, Ben, if you live out the summer, you’ll have the fun of heahing me call Setter that to his damn lyin’ face.”
In the speech Nevada passed from jest to earnest.
“But you rode over to the new Blaine ranch?” went on Ben, hoping to worm at least something from this exasperating Nevadian.
“Ben, you’d shore make a great scout, figgerin’ things so correct.”
“What’d you go for?”
“We had a day off, didn’t we? An’ I had a fresh hoss. I wanted to look over our neighbours. I had a hunch aboot Hart Blaine, an’ as usual I was right. He meant to make that ranch the first of a string of ranches includin’ Forlorn River, all the way to his holdin’s round Silver Meadow, an’ he’ll play hob doin’ it.”
“Who’d you see?” hurried Ben, irresistibly driven.
“Wal, Marvie Blaine for one. Met up with him out heah on the trail. Near talked my head off about fish an’ hosses. Nice kid, Ben. He shore thinks a heap of you.”
“Yes — who else?”
“Wal, I was lucky. Findin’ out Setter an’ Blaine were away, I scraped acquaintance with some of the hands. Cowboys all gone. Ben, what do you make of Blaine ridin’ over heah south of us, with chuck wagon an’ outfit?”
“Blaine is just branching out — grasping sounds better.”
“Ahuh. Wal, your cute little pardner didn’t talk to them hands for nothin’. Blaine took a wagon besides the chuck wagon, an’ it was full of tools — shovels, picks, axes, a plough an’ scraper, an’ some cans of giant powder.”
“Well! That means road work.”
“I’ll hit their trail to-morrow an’ see what he’s up to. It fussed me some, but after thinkin’ aboot it I come to the conclusion roads are shore goin’ to make our property twice as valuable.”
“That’s so. I forgot we owned four ranches.... Well, who else did you see?”
“Reckon nobody else.... Oh yes, I did, too. Saw your girl, Ina Blaine. I knowed her, Ben, quick as you could snap your quirt.”
“You saw her!” ejaculated Ben, in great excitement. “But not to speak to?”
“Shore did, a little bit. She was darned sweet to me. An’ if I wasn’t plumb crazy aboot Hettie I’d take Ina away from you. She’s as pretty as — as — oh, Lord! I never seen anyone or anything as pretty. No wonder you cain’t sleep or eat or rest or work, or even be decent to your pard. A girl plays hell with a man, doesn’t she?”
Ben stared fn impotent agitation at his loquacious and imperturbable friend. Behind all Nevada said and did there hid inscrutable mystery. Ben had to content himself with what little grist he could grind from Nevada’s utterances. But recalling the past, and puzzling over former complex situations, he realised that Neyada’s motives, strange and obscure as they seemed at first, always turned out to be clear as crystal and pure as gold. Ben had to face the monumental truth that Nevada seemed to think only of him.
“Nevada,” he asked, in grave finality, “did you talk with Ina alone?”
“Shore I did, a little.”
“About me?”
“Why, of course! You don’t suppose the girl would want to heah aboot me? An’ you don’t suppose I’d lose any chance to boost you?”