by Zane Grey
Ben fell upon his knees and gathered her in his arms, hammock and all. An interval followed, devoid of clear sight, and reason, and consciousness of emotion, except for something exalting and unutterably sweet. And then it was Ina who brought him back to his senses.
“Dad said that ten thousand dollars — and you — and California Red — would all be in the family?” asked Ina, rapturously, after Ben had narrated the proceedings in her father’s office.
“Yes. You could have knocked me down with a feather.
... Asked me to dinner, too! But I can’t stay. Modoc and I will have to hurry back to California Red. We’ve got him tied down in the corral.”
“Oh, it’s all too good to be true!” murmured Ina. “This will teach dad some sense. And your dad, too.”
Ben hung his head.
“You let him make up with you, of course?”
“I did not.... Never looked when he called,” replied Ben hoarsely.
“He called you? Oh, Ben, you should have gone to him! He’s old, and it was his very love for you that hurt him so — made him hard.... You forgave me. Now forgive him.”
“I’m afraid I never will.”
“Ben! That’s not like you. It’s cruel, bitter. It’s not Christian. Be magnanimous. Be big like Nevada!”
“Don’t speak of him,” whispered Ben.
“Oh, dearest, forgive me,” entreated Ina. “It’s too soon to think of him — and your father.... Now, Ben, take up your work — the life you love — before you were forced to fight.... What you do I will do — what you love I will love.”
“It’s settled then? Ina, you will marry me?”
“Yes,” she answered, softly.
“When?”
“Whenever you come for me. Dad said he would pack up at once for Tule Lake Ranch. That means work.... As soon as I get home I’ll go at once to see your mother and Hettie. Imagine their joy! Oh, it will be happiness to tell them.... You will find me at home — waiting.”
“You — you angel,” whispered Ben, unsteadily. Then with a tender touch on her flushed cheek he stood up again, with decision and renewed energy. “I’ll hurry back to California Red. I’m the richest man in the world with you and him.... Ina, that reminds me, I must have ten or twelve thousand dollars in the Hammell bank. For wild horses! Poor dad, I’d like to show him that bank account. So you’ll not be marrying a poor man, exactly.... As soon as I break Red I’ll come to you, Ina. I want to ride Red into Hammell — to Tule Lake Ranch.... Yes, I want my father to see that horse.... But, Ina, I couldn’t sell him.”
“I should think not. He belongs to me,” replied Ina archly. “Of course he does, but you belong to me,” returned Ben, with happy significance. “And now I must go, Ina. I see Marvie and Modoc waiting with the horses. By George! there’s my black stallion — one we caught in the caves. Judd found him, brought him in. Luck! luck!... And now, if it’ll only rain!”
“It will, Ben. I know. An old wild goose honked it down to me not long ago.”
Of all the wild horses Ben had ever broken — and they numbered hundreds — California Red turned out to be the easiest to handle, the most intelligent, the most responsive. Considering the spirit of the great stallion and his years of absolute mastery of the wild range, Ben thought his capitulation most remarkable. And he put a good deal of it down to the treachery of the ice, making the capture of Red so quick and easy. Ben made a mental reservation, growing out of his experience with wild horses, that Red would never again, in all his life, trust himself on ice.
With infinite patience and kindness, yet with arm of iron and inflexible will, Ben broke the stallion after a method of his own.
One sunset in early October, when the day’s work was done and Ben allowed himself to dream of his triumphal ride into town, he observed Modoc most attentively watching the last flight of wild geese toward the south. The familiar honk, honk, honk seemed singularly full and significant of the beauty and strangeness of nature.
“What do they say, Modoc?” he queried.
The Indian turned his gaze on the darkly sinister red-and-purple sunset, and from that to the wonderful panoply of clouds over the grey sage hills.
“Heap storm soon. Heap rain — snow — big winter,” replied Modoc, with his inscrutable mystic gleam of eye, and his slow majestic gesture toward the horizon.
Then into Ben’s heart full of thanksgiving and joy there crept a cruel recurrence of a new pang. Nevada! His friend would not be there to revel in the rain, to share his gratitude that the stock of the ranges and the wild creatures would be saved. Nevada was gone, surely to some unknown range, never back to his old life, whatever that had been. Setter’s recognition of Nevada had been illuminating with its terrible significance.
Morning brought a leaden, swiftly moving canopy of clouds, and a fine drizzle. All day the storm gathered, slowly, as if the forces of nature moved ponderously to this long-neglected task.
Night brought the bursting of the flood gates of the heavens. Such a deluge poured down upon the little cabin that Ben feared the roof would cave in. How he revelled in the roar and patter and gust and ceaseless drip, drip, drip.
It rained all night, and all the next day, and for six succeeding days and nights there were only few intervals when rain was not roaring over the land.
Muddy streams poured off the hills; raging torrents tore down the canyon beds; the sage flats around Mule Deer Lake were submerged with water; Forlorn River emptied a wide turgid yellow flood into the swelling lake.
When at length the black pall of cloud broke, and the sun burst through, it shone down upon a brightened and freshened land. The clouds lifted, dispersed, and blew away on a bracing October wind. After seven years of unparalleled drought Northern California was saved.
Of an Indian-summer day, when the golds and crimsons and purples of autumn flamed on the hills, Ben rode California Red into the village of his boyhood, from which he had been an outcast, and where he discovered he had become a hero.
The great stallion created more of a sensation than any circus that had ever visited Hammell.
Quite by accident, or incredible good fortune, or through fate — Ben could not decide which — he met Ina and Marvie and Hettie on the main street of Hammell. They drove up in a new shiny buckboard just as Ben mounted Red to ride out to Tule Lake Ranch. Marvie yelled and Hettie screamed, while Ina clasped both hands to her breast and gazed at Ben’s horse in such mute rapture that it seemed she never saw Ben at all.
Ben’s star was in the ascendant that day. The surprise of meeting him shocked Ina from her balance; the manifest change of public opinion about him quite overwhelmed her. He never knew what prompted him to importune her, when they had a moment alone, to marry him then and there.
Ina had no resistance. Her eyes hung upon his, fascinated, in a mute transport.
“Dearest, I didn’t intend this,” he went on, swiftly. “It’s just happened. This is my day. Make it perfect.... Marry me now. We’ve Marvie and Hettie to go with us to the minister’s.”
“Oh, Ben — it’s so sudden,” she gasped. “I know I promised — I should — I must keep it.... But, oh! — Why, I’m not dressed to — to — and what will they say at home?”
“Just think what it’d mean to me to ride up to Hart Blaine and say, ‘Meet my wife!’... I hope I’m above revenge, Ina, but that thought stampedes me.”
“It’d — it’d — make you very — very happy?” she faltered.
“Such a question! I can’t tell you. Please, Ina, please — darling! What difference does a day or a week matter?”
She was pale now, with a pallor that made her eyes dark purple gulfs. She was earnest, grave — and Ben trembled at what he saw.
“If I consent — when we’ve told mother and dad — will you let me take you home to your father?” she flashed.
“Ina!” he cried, in poignant distress. The thought pierced his happy ardour. He had forgotten the hard old man who had never understood him, never
believed in him. A wrenching pang brought back the old trouble and the new conflict. This time it seemed to rend his soul.
“I’ve seen your dad,” went on Ina. “His heart is breaking. At last he sees that he should have let you choose your own life.... Ben, say you will forgive him.”
Her hand was on his; her eyes were shining with divination of her victory.
“Yes — yes, I will,” burst out Ben, and it seemed that with those words rancour and bitterness passed out of his heart.
So they were married, and Ben rode California Red alongside the buckboard, from which Marvie shot naïve remarks, and where Ina sat as one in a dream, and Hettie smiled mysteriously, as if she was in possession of vast love secrets herself.
Ben rode up the lane ahead of the buckboard and into Tule Lake Ranch, finding at the sunset hour a horde of noisy cowboys home from work. With Bill Sneed at their head they ringed the great stallion, raising a clamour that filled a long empty void in Ben’s heart.
In the midst of the excitement Hart Blaine strode out, his grey hair standing, his ruddy face wreathed in a smile of welcome and wonder.
“My land! I seen him from the house. So this is California Red?... Reckon at last I understand you, Ben.... Ride over an’ show him to Amos Ide.”
Marvie drove the buckboard in with a grand flourish and he stood up to yell: “Ben, have you told dad yet?”
Ben vibrated to that, as if he had been suddenly galvanised, but he was panic-stricken. Ina made the situation worse by blushing scarlet at Marvie’s words and beating a precipitous retreat to the house.
“What’s up, Ben?” queried Blaine, with his characteristic bluntness, but he was grinning. “You look sort of white round the gills.”
“I forgot to tell you,” blurted out Ben, “Ina and I got married in town... I — I should have spoken out at once, sir, but I forgot.”
“Haw! Haw! Haw!” roared Blaine, slapping his leg with a broad hand. “Wal, reckon it’s a wild-hoss hunter’s way to be sudden.... Come in an’ tell mother.... An’ that cheque for California Red squares me for a weddin’ present.”
The afterglow of sunset kept the day lingering as Ina led California Red across the intervening fields, with Ben walking between her and Hettie. The wire fences had gates where the old path used to cross and a new path showed well trodden. It led into the yard, where at the wood pile Amos Ide in his shirt sleeves was wielding an axe. He did not hear until they were quite close. Then, springing erect, he dropped his axe and became riveted.
One glance filled Ben’s heart with remorse, but he clung to his preconceived plan of a meeting with his father.
“Hello, Dad,” he said, cheerfully, as if they had not been separated for more than a few days, as if no dark obstacle had ever loomed between them.
“My son!” exclaimed Ide, huskily.
“Brought my wife and California Red home,” went on Ben, with extended hand.
The old man fought valiantly to rise to Ben’s idea of reconciliation — to realise his astounding statements without being utterly overcome.
“Ben? — Your wife! Daughter of Hart Blaine.... You’ve come home — back to the old man?”
“Sure, Dad. Back to you and mother, for a visit, anyhow. I always was coming.... Take a peep at my bank book, Dad, and at this cheque Hart Blaine just gave me!... And look at this girl!... All in one day, Dad!... Now what do you think of your wild-horse hunter?”
THE END
Nevada
The 1928 novel Nevada is a sequel to the previous year’s Forlorn River. The narrative portrays how, restless with the rancher life, Ben Ide moves his family to Arizona, ostensibly for his mother’s health, but also to search for his missing partner, Nevada. Ide buys a handsome ranch, in a territory known for cattle rustling. The deal soon turns sour as he struggles to keep his cattle and prize horses from the network of rustlers about the wild country of Arizona, no longer sure who he can trust. Hettie Ide pines away for the missing Nevada, meanwhile fending off a horde of suitors.
Nevada, having escaped the end of Forlorn River with only his life, resumes the life of an outlaw, seeking a way out of his situation, but working his way deeper amidst the labyrinthine social network of Arizona, in which everyone is a rustler and no one will say who leads the gangs.
The first edition
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER ONE
AS HIS GOADED horse plunged into the road, Nevada looked back over his shoulder. The lane he had plowed through the crowd let him see back into the circle where the three men lay prostrate. The blue smoke from his gun was rising slowly, floating away. Ben Ide’s face shone white and convulsed in the sunlight.
“So long, Pard!” yelled Nevada, hoarsely, and stood in his stirrups to wave his sombrero high. That, he thought, was farewell forever to this friend who had saved and succored and uplifted him, whom he loved better than a brother.
Then Nevada faced the yellow road down which his horse was racing, and the grim and terrible mood returned to smother the heart-swelling emotion which had momentarily broken it.
There was something familiar and mocking about this precipitate flight on a swift horse, headed for the sage and the dark mountains. How often had he felt the wind sting his face on a run for his life! But it was not fear now, nor love of life, that made him a fugitive.
The last gate of the ranch was open, and Nevada flashed through it to turn off the road into the sage and go flying down the trail along the shore of the lake. The green water blurred on one side of him and the gray sage on the other. Even the winding trail was indistinct to eyes that still saw red. There was no need now for this breakneck ride. To be sure, the officers of the law would eventually get on his track, as they had been for years; but thought of them scarcely lingered a moment in his consciousness.
The action of a swift and powerful horse seemed to be necessary to the whirling of his mind. Thoughts, feelings, sensations regurgitated around that familiar cold and horrible sickness of soul which had always followed the spilling of human blood and which this time came back worse than ever.
The fierce running of the horse along the levels, around the bends of the trail, leaping washes, plunging up and down the gullies, brought into tense play all Nevada’s muscular force. It seemed like a mad race away from himself. Burning and wet all over, he gradually surrendered to physical exertion.
Five miles brought horse and rider far around to the other side of the lake. Here the trail wound down upon the soft sand, where the horse slowed from run to trot, and along the edge of the lake, where the midday sun had thawed the ice. Nevada had a break in his strained mood. He saw the deep hoof tracks of horses along the shore, and the long cuts and scars on the ice, where he and Ben and the freed outlaws had run that grand wild stallion, California Red, to his last plunge and fall. Nevada could not help but think, as he passed that place, and thrill as he remembered the strange lucky catch of the wild horse Ben Ide loved so well. What a trick for fortune to play! How mad Ben had been — to bargain with the rustlers they had captured — to trade their freedom for the aid they gave in running down the red stallion! Yet mad as that act had been, Nevada could only love Ben the more. Ben was the true wild-horse hunter.
Nevada reached the bluff where Forlorn River lost itself in the lake, and climbed the sloping trail to the clump of trees a
nd the cabin where he and Ben had lived in lonely happiness. Ben, the outcast son of a rich rancher of Tule Lake — and he, the wandering, fugitive, crippled gunman, whom Ben had taken in with only one question.
“Where you from?” Ben had asked.
“Nevada,” had been the reply. And that had been the only name by which Ben had ever known him.
It was all over now. Nevada dismounted from his wet and heaving horse. “Wal, Baldy,” he said, throwing the bridle, “heah we are. Reckon the runnin’s aboot over.” And he sank heavily upon the porch step, pushed his sombrero back to run a hand through his wet hair, smoothing it away from his heated brow. He gazed across the lake toward the dots on the far gray slope — the dots that were the cabins and barns of the Blaine ranch. With the wrench which shook him then, the last of that icy nausea — that cold grip from bowels to heart — released its cramping hold and yielded to the softening human element in Nevada. It would have been better for him if that sinister fixity of mind had not passed away, because with its passing came a slow-growing agony.
“Reckon I cain’t set heah mopin’ like an owl,” soliloquized Nevada, getting up. “Shore, the thing’s done. An’ I wouldn’t have it otherwise. . . . Dear old Ben!”
But he could not just yet enter the cabin where he had learned the glory of friendship.
“He was the only pard I ever had, except a hoss or two. . . . Wal, Ben’s name is cleared now — thank God. Old Amos Ide knows the truth now an’ he’ll have to beg forgiveness of Ben. Gosh! how good that’ll be! But Ben, he’ll never rub it in on the old gent. He’ll be soft an’ easy. . . . Hart Blaine will know, too, an’ he’ll have to come round to the boy. They’ll all have to crawl for callin’ Ben a rustler. . . . Ben will marry Ina now — an’ he’ll be rich. He’s got California Red, too, an’ he’ll be happy.”
From the lake Nevada gazed away across Forlorn River, over the gray sage hills, so expressive of solitude, over the black ranges toward the back country, the wilderness whence he had come and to which he must return. To the hard life, the scant fare, the sordid intimacy of crooked men and women, to the border of Nevada, where he had a bad name, where he could never sleep in safety, or wear a glove on his gun-hand! But at that moment Nevada had not one regret. He was sustained and exalted by the splendid consciousness that he had paid his debt to his friend. He had saved Ben from prison, cleared his name of infamy, given him back to Ina Blaine, and killed his enemies. Whatever had been the evil of Nevada’s life before he met Ben, whatever might be the loneliness and bitterness of the future, neither could change or mitigate the sweetness and glory of the service he had rendered.