Collected Works of Zane Grey

by Zane Grey

  “But Jake, I can’t help being myself,” she replied rebelliously.

  “Reckon I wouldn’t have you no different,” he went on. “But I love you somethin’ turrible, an’ if you play any more loose with me — there’ll be — I—”

  He choked and was silent. Then recovering, he went on in simple, intense eloquence to tell her of his love. She leaned against him, gazing up into his dark face, unresisting, carried away by the intensity of his love, reveling in it, finding it in all that she had yearned for, uplifted and transformed by the urgency and simplicity of his passion.

  “An’ now, Kitty, with it all told, I can come to somethin’ I’ve never said yet,” he ended, with his voice almost a whisper.

  “Yes, Jake?” she whispered.

  “Are you aimin’ to spend the rest of your life here in the Tonto?”

  “Why, of course. Father has got back his health. Mother likes the quiet — the green. And I — I love it.”

  “Then will you marry me?” he asked hoarsely.

  “I will Jake, I — I think I always meant to.”

  Later in the evening Verde presented himself for the dance that Kitty had promised him. Verde was so different from Jake. She trembled within. How handsome he was, and tonight how white his face and blazing his blue eyes!”

  “Kit, I reckon I don’t care about dancin’ this one little dance you’ve given me.”

  “Verde, you — you’re not very complimentary. I’d love it,” she replied, and it was the dancing devil eye that looked at him.

  Verde did not ask her to go outdoors. He simply seized her arm and led the way. And when she demurred about going without her coat he said she would not need it.

  “J-Jake and I had — a — an understanding,” faltered Kitty.

  “Reckon I’m powerful glad,” he returned. “You an’ I are goin to have one too.”

  “Oh!” she exclaimed as he led her, with firm arm under hers, out under the very pine tree where only a short time before she had betrothed herself to Jake. Kitty divined at last that she had been made a victim of her own indiscretion. How could she tell Verde about Jake? Regret and an unfamiliar pang knocked at her heart. She had meant well. These backwoods brothers, this Damon and Pythias twain, had needed a lesson. But something had backfired. Verde was not like Jake, yet how wonderful he was!

  “Ver — Verde, I’ll freeze out here,” she whispered, suddenly aware of the cold and of a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature.

  For answer, Verde caught her up off the ground and like a great bear hugged her close to his breast. She could see his white face, radiant and beautiful in the starlight, yet somehow stern. She felt her breast swell against his.

  “Kit, darlin’, this is our understandin’,” he whispered. “I reckon I’ve always been too easy with you. I never touched you — like this — never kissed you before like I am—”

  “Verde, you — you mustn’t,” she pleaded, trembling in his arms. He kissed her lips. She cried out in protest, yet with the realization of a tide that she could not, did not, want to resist. But she gazed up at him, wide-eyed, fascinated, struggling to remember something. Her lips were parting to speak when he closed them with kisses, and then her eyes.

  “Kit — I love you so!” he said passionately, hoarsely, lifting his face from hers. “Say you love me... or I’ll pack you on a hoss — off into the woods.”

  But Kitty could not speak.

  “Say it!” he commanded, shaking her, and he kept it up until she slipped an arm around his neck.

  Kitty was in a daze when once more she found herself among the dancers. Her partner, young Stillwell, claimed her, but the dance had become a nightmare. All the gaiety and excitement of the occasion were gone.

  The evening wore on toward the inevitable retribution which she knew was in store for her. At midnight a hearty supper was served. It was a hilarious occasion. Kitty’s vague fears seemed lost, for the moment, and she was almost herself again. She dared not look at Jake or Verde, yet an almost irresistible longing to do so seized her as she sat on a school bench with young Stillwell.

  At last the moment came when both Jake and Verde presented themselves for that third dance one of them was to get. Kitty seemed to sense that the hum of voices had ceased, to know that all the faces in the room were turned upon her, though a wave of terror was causing her to tremble as if from an ague.

  “My dance, Kitty,” drawled Jake.

  “Well, Kit, I reckon this dance is mine,” said Verde.

  “I — I’ll divide it,” she faltered, not looking up.

  “Not with me, you won’t,” retorted Verde, his blue eyes flashing fire.

  “Kitty, I hate to say it — but I cain’t share this with Verde” said Jake.

  “But I didn’t promise it to either of you,” she barely whispered.

  “Not in so many words,” returned Jake, attempting to grab her hand.

  That was the torch. Verde turned to Jake.

  “Are you disputin’ my lady friend’s word?” he asked belligerently.

  “Sure am,” replied Jake coolly.

  Verde stepped forward and slapped his brother’s face, not violently, but with what seemed to be slow deliberation.

  With the suddenness of a panther Jake lunged out to knock Verde down. Kitty screamed. The crowd gasped, then fell silent. Slowly Verde raised himself on his elbow. His face was changing quickly from red to white. He stretched up his free arm, and his extended fingers quivered.

  “Jake!”

  “Get up an’ ask the lady’s pardon,” demanded Jake wildly.

  “You hit me!” exclaimed Verde unbelievingly.

  “Nope. I just blowed a thistledown at you,” replied Jake.

  In one single bound Verde was on his feet. Tearing off coat and tie, he confronted the man who had been almost a brother to him. “Come out!” he challenged, his voice hoarse with rage. The circle of startled onlookers parted.

  In another moment they stood face to face in the light of the roaring bonfire. The crowd of men and boys, and a few of the girls, had poured out after them.

  Then like two mad bulls Jake and Verde rushed at each other. They gave flailing blow for flailing blow. They danced around in the red firelight, seeking an opening to deliver damaging blows that were intended to hurt and to maim. Tonto fights were usually marked by hilarity among the spectators. But there was none here. This was strange, unnatural, hateful — to watch these friends and brothers so deadly, so cold and savage, with murder in their every action.

  Their white faces and white shirts soon were bloody. They fought for a long time, erect and silent, knocking each other down, leaping up and rushing in again. Then they clinched, and wrestling, stumbling, they fell to roll over and over on the ground.

  That battle between the Duntons was the worst that had ever been fought at the old schoolhouse. It lasted two hours, and ended with Jake lying unconscious and bedraggled in the mud, and Verde, hideously marked and bloody, staggering to his feet and out into the gloom of the forest.

  CHAPTER III

  JAKE HAD BEEN so badly beaten that he was in bed for a week, during which time he saw only his mother. In summer and fall he and Verde always slept in the loft over the porch. But Verde had not been there now for many days.

  During this week of pain and shame, Jake’s mind had been a numbed thing, dark and set and sinister. He could not think beyond the fact that he had been terribly whipped and disgraced before a crowd of Tonto folk, one of whom had been Kitty Mains. She had seen him stretched in the mud, at the hands of Verde. His battered face burned with the disgrace of it. His scarred fists clenched and unclenched impatiently.

  Jake always turned his bruised and beaten face to the wall when his mother climbed the ladder to the loft, bringing food and drink he did not want and which he had to force himself to take. She had ceased her importunities on behalf of Verde. They were useless.

  At last Jake crawled down out of his hole, feeling as mean as he
knew he looked. He wanted to get away into the woods quickly before anyone saw him! That was the only thought in his mind.

  But while he was packing his outfit his father suddenly confronted him.

  “Your ma said there ain’t no use of talkin’ to you,” he began gruffly.

  “Reckon not,” replied Jake, turning away the face he was ashamed to reveal.

  “Wal, I’ll have a word anyhow,” rejoined the father. “From now on is this heah Tonto Basin goin’ to be big enough for you an’ Verde?”

  “Hell no!”

  “Ahuh, I reckoned so, an’ it’s shore a pity,” said Dunton sadly.

  “Where is Verde?” asked Jake.

  “I don’t know. He never come home. But he sent word that if you wanted satisfaction you’d know where to find him.”

  Jake made no reply. A smoldering fire of hatred within him would not let him speak to those who loved him. Old Dunton hung around, lending a hand at his son’s packing.

  “Wal, I see you’re off to set a string of traps,” he finally forced himself to say. “It’s a plumb good idee. Work’s most all done for the fall, an’ I can spare you. Mebbe you’ll be better for a lonesome trip. Nothin’ like the woods to cure a feller of most anythin’. But, Jake, I don’t like the look an’ feel of the weather. If I don’t disremember, it was this way one fall fifteen years ago. No rain. Late frost. Winter holdin’ off. But, Lord when she broke!... Washed the cabin away, that storm!”

  “It’s all one to me, Pa,” replied Jake dully. And leading his pack horse, Jake rode away from the ranch without thinking to bid his parents good-by.

  The day fitted Jake’s mood. The sky was overcast, dull, leaden gray, gloomy and forbidding, with a dim sun showing red in the west. The fall wind mourned through the pines. It was cold and raw, whipping up into gusts at times, then subsiding again. The creek had run so low that now it scarcely made any sound on its way down to the valley. Jake rode out of the pines down into the cedars and oaks and sycamores. In the still pools of water the bronze and yellow leaves floated round and round.

  At length, Jake reached the junction of the trail with the highway, and soon came to where it crossed the Verde Creek. Lost Boy Ford! He had never forgotten, until these last bitter weeks, the significance of this place. For a few moments a terrific strife warred within him. But he quelled it. Nothing could stand against his jealously and his shame. Kitty loved him dearest and best, but she must also have loved Verde, or he never would have acted as he had. The Tonto Valley was not large enough for both Verde and him. Who would have to go? That would have to be decided; and as Jake knew that neither he nor Verde would ever relinquish the field to the other, it seemed settled that death must step in for the decision. Jake realized now that he was no match for Verde in the rough and terrible Tonto method of fighting; on the other hand, he knew that in a battle with weapons such as must decide this bitter feud he would kill Verde. And such was the dark and fierce violence to which his passion had mounted that he brooded with savage anticipation over his power to rid himself forever of his rival.

  Soon he headed off the road into the thickets of scrub oak and jack pine, manzanita and mescal, and began to climb an old unused trail. It led up over the slope to the mesa, into the cedars and piñons and junipers, and at last into the somber forest again.

  Here it was like twilight, cool, still, and lonely. The peace of the wilderness tried to pierce Jake’s brooding, bitter thoughts, and for the first time in his life it failed. A monstrous wall of bitterness seemed to enclose him.

  He climbed high, riding for miles, in a multitude of detours and zigzags, along a trail thousands of feet above the basin below. The slopes grew exceedingly steep and rough. In many places he dismounted to make his way on foot. How dry the brush and soil! The tufts of grass were sere and brown; the dead manzanita broke off like icicles.

  At length he arrived at the base of the rim wall. It towered above, seemingly to the sky. A trail ran along the irregular stone cliff, and there were fresh hoof tracks in it. They had been made by Verde’s horse, and were a day or two old, perhaps a little more. If Jake had felt any uncertainty it ended right there. Verde had indeed known where to come to give him satisfaction.

  Jake rode on to a corner of the wall. Here the trail plunged down. A mighty amphitheater opened in the rim. It was miles across and extended far back. All around it the capes and escarpments loomed out over the colorful abyss. It seemed to be a scene of dying fires. The ragged gold of the aspens showed dim against the scarlet maples, the red sumac, the bronze oaks, the magenta gums, and all the dark greens. Yellow crags leaned with their great slabs of rock over the void. Here and there gleamed cliffs of dull pink, with black eyelike caves. Far down in the middle of this gulf there was a dark canyon. Black Gorge!”

  This was Jake’s objective. He gazed down with narrowed eyes, strangely magnifying. Ten years before he and Verde had discovered by accident a way to get down into this almost inaccessible fastness under the rim. They had named it Black Gorge. No other trappers or hunters or riders had ever penetrated it. As boys they had made it their rendezvous, Jake to trap and hunt, Verde to corral his wild horses. They went there several times each year, usually together, but sometimes alone. It grew to mean much to them, and they loved it.

  “Verde is down there waitin’,” muttered Jake, and the somber shadow that had closed over his mind seemed to come between his eyes and the wonderful beauty of the scene.

  A sudden rush of wind, wailing in the niches of the cliff overhead, turned Jake’s thoughts to the weather. The habit of observation was strong in him. He gazed down and across the basin. And he was suddenly amazed by the sight he saw.

  He had seen all kinds of light and cloud effects over the vast valley below, but never before one of such weird, sinister aspect. The sun was westering over the Mazatzals, and through the dark riven pall of cloud it shed a gleam of angry red. From the south-west a lowering multitude of pale little clouds came scuddling toward the rim. They were the heralds of storm. But as yet, except for the moan of the wind along the cliff, there was no sound. The basin lay deep in shadow. The cold gray tones near at hand, the smoky sulphurous red of the sunset, the utter solitude of the scene, the vast saw toothed gap in the rim wall, the distant forbidding shadow of Black Gorge, the bleak November day that was to mark the end of the lingering autumn, the all-pervading spirit of nature’s inevitable and ruthless change from lull to storm, from peace to strife, from the saving and fruitful weeks of the past to the ominous promise of sudden storm and destruction — all these permeated Jake’s being, and possessed him utterly, and sent him down the trail deaf at last to a still small voice that had been whispering faintly, yet persistently at the closed door of his heart.

  CHAPTER IV

  THERE WAS ONLY one entrance to Black Gorge that Jake had ever been able to discover. He had found various slopes along its three-mile zigzag length where an Indian or an agile young man might by supreme pluck and exertion climb out. But for the most part it was as unscalable as it was inaccessible. A signal proof of the nature of Black Gorge was the fact that in the late fall only a few deer and no bear frequented it.

  While it required hours to climb out by the only trail Jake knew, it took but a short time to make the descent. Without a horse Jake could get down in less than a quarter of an hour. That, however, was practically by sliding down. Now, with saddle and pack horse, Jake had all he could do to keep the three of them together. Finally his saddle horse got ahead. Several times the pack animal slipped; and it was difficult to adjust the ropes and bags on the almost perpendicular slope.

  Black Gorge deserved its name. It would have been black even without the somber, fading twilight. The walls of stone were stained dark, and in places where ledges and steps and slopes broke the sheer, perpendicular line, brush and moss and vines mantled them so thickly that they looked black in the gloom. At the lower end of the gorge, where Jake had descended, the stream had no outlet. The creek was dry now, but whe
n water flowed there it merely sank into the jumble of mighty mossy boulders. Once no doubt there had been an outlet, but it had been choked by the fall of a splintered cliff.

  Jake mounted to ride up a narrow defile. He was concerned at the moment about the water. Black Gorge had never, to his knowledge, been completely dry. But far up the gorge he knew of a spring that ought still to be alive. Besides, he began to feel a cool misty rain on his face.

  At this moment his mind reverted again to Verde. In the gathering gloom he could not see the trail, but he had no doubt about Verde’s tracks being there. He almost reined in his horse so he could wait and think what to do. But there was nothing more to be considered on that score. It was settled. When he faced Verde again, there would be need of but few words. The rest would be action. Even so, Jake felt a monstrous hand at the back of him, propelling him toward something that he had gladly and sternly willed, yet against which at odd moments his soul revolted.

  The gorge widened, the walls ceased to tower and lean, the slopes slanted up out of sight, and the gray gloom lightened considerably. The trail climbed from the dry stream bed to a bench that soon grew level. Jake heard the clucking of wild turkeys and then the booming flap of heavy wings in the branches of a tree. Toward the upper end this bench held a fine open grove of pines and spruce. Jake saw the dark spearpointed spruce that towered above the little log cabin he and Verde had built there years ago. So long ago and far away those years seemed now!

  Jake’s instinct was to dismount and draw a gun. Not to be ambushed or surprised! But he cursed the thought that was so unfamiliar to him.

  His expectation was to see the light of a camp-fire, or a flickering gleam from the door of the cabin, as he had many and many a time beheld with glad eyes. But the familiar space was blank, the cabin dark. Jake dismounted, and throwing his bridle, with slow step went forward. The cabin was deserted. It smelled dry and musty. No fire had been kindled there for a long time. He heard the rustling of mice and felt the wind of bats flying close by his head.