by Zane Grey
“Reckon I did practice some.”
“Haw! Haw! Lucky you did.... I shore hated missin’ thet fight. But my pard, Sandy McClellan, seen it, an’ he told me. Buff, there’s been a lot bloodier fights than thet. I seen one at Bent’s Fort. Two ag’in’ nine, an’ by gosh! thet was lively. Bullets like bees hummin’.” Clint’s memory, probed and stimulated in this way, urged him to sharp yet shrinking curiosity, which he seemed reluctant to voice.
“Sandy seen your fight an’ he said it was shore nifty,” went on Curtis, in satisfaction, as he straddled a bench and sat down. “When you accused Blackstone of bein’ thick with the Kiowas an’ Murdock of houndin’ your girl, everybody knowed thet you was tellin’ them to draw. But McGill had drawed from behind Red Hawkins an’ floored you with a bullet. We figgered thet one took you in the shoulder. Wal, from the floor you bored Red, an’ when he sunk, you took McGill same place — an’ if you want to know thet was right over the top vest pocket on the left side. Meanwhile Murdock leaped up with his gun out, an’ Blackstone was shootin’ with his hand restin’ on the table. Your shot at Murdock was true, Buff, same as the others, but your bullet hit his gun an’ glanced up, takin’ Murdock on the cheek bone, an’ believe me, it left a groove as deep as the Old Trail. Thet put Murdock out, an’ Blackstone, the yellow sucker, ducked under the table. Your two shots laid him out, but the bullets went through the board legs of thet table an’ didn’t do Blackstone much damage. He was around next day.”
“How about — Murdock?” asked Clint, with a queer thrill that was quivering pain.
“Close shave there. The bullet took the top of his cheek bone. He was up in a week, but will be disfigured for life. Shore you’ll know him when you see him again.”
“Did they leave Larned?”
“Did they? Haw! Haw! They was told perlite to get out, an’ they got. Blackstone, an’ fifteen of his outfit, an’ Murdock. I never seen a sorer bunch of hombres. Blackstone went to the colonel, an’ from what I’m told he had to listen to some pert questions which he couldn’t answer. They packed an’ went south. Thet was three weeks or so ago. Naturally, we all figgered a lot, an’ tried to put two an’ two together. Blackstone had a bad name, but nobody knew anythin’ ag’in’ him till you accused him of bein’ thick with the Kiowas. Murdock was just a dandy gambler, keen about women, white or red, an’ some hasty with his gun. But Blackstone might be one of these caravan bandits thet have developed durin’ the war. Wal, anyway, last week Billy Weed, a trapper, came by a Kiowa village over on the Purgatory an’ he swears he seen Blackstone there. An’ he shore seen other white men. Billy was snoopin’ from top of a ridge an’ not takin’ any chances. Billy has been scout an’ plainsman. He’s reliable. So whatever Blackstone an’ his bunch figgered on the frontier before this caravan job from Santa Fé, they are now outlaws.”
“Has any word ever come in about thet Texas caravan?” asked Clint.
“Nary a word. But thet’s to be expected. No redskin is goin’ to fetch us word, you can bet on thet.”
“Aw — an’ what’s the opinion about Mrs. Clement an’ May Bell?” asked Clint, struggling to be coherent. “They left Santa Fé with Blackstone. Buell an’ others told me they saw them leave.”
“Wal, it ain’t hard to take Blackstone’s word fer what happened,” replied Curtis, thoughtfully. “Shore he’s a liar, an’ we don’t know how low down. But you seen the burned wagons — the dead Kiowas. An’ we know Blackstone rode in here with crippled men.”
“Dick — you don’t get the point. Somebody drove the Kiowas off. They’d never leave their dead. Blackstone sure didn’t do the drivin’. He ran for his life.... I’ve a hunch that second caravan came up in time to drive the Kiowas off, perhaps while they were firin’ the wagons, or even while the twenty-two freighters from Santa Fé were fightin’.... If Blackstone is in with the Kiowas, you can gamble he led that caravan into an ambush. An’ the second caravan did the fightin’.”
“Buff, there’s shore a heap in what you say. No one else ‘pears to have thought it out like thet.... Where are the twenty-two freighters who didn’t come in with Blackstone?”
“Dead an’ buried or else gone on with the second caravan. Because, Dick, it was a white man who ordered the dead Kiowas dragged back out of sight from the trail. Uncle Jim always did that. He’d stop the train to have a carcass moved out of sight, or buried if he had time.”
“Ahuh! You ain’t bad at figgerin’, Buff.... An’ it’s your hunch there’s a chance thet Mrs. Clement an’ your sweetheart got away with the Texas caravan?”
“I — I wouldn’t call it a hunch — only a hope.”
“But such a damn slim one, Buff. You know this here frontier. You better give up right now, else you’ll only suffer an’ live in hopes, an’ die in despair when you do find out. Reckon thet’ll be next summer. Somebody will give us a line on thet second caravan.”
In due time Clint recovered and divided the long hours between the hotel, Aull’s store, and Curtis’ cabin. Life was slow in winter, except for the gambling fraternity. Clint at times felt the urge to drink and gamble, solely to put his mind off its haunted track. He played checkers, sat beside a stove or before the open fire, read and reread all the reading matter available, and walked out in the open when weather permitted. As winter waned he grew strong again, and heavier than he had ever been. He had no work, not even wood to chop. Curtis had bought firewood already cut. Nevertheless, the days went by tediously in the passing, yet swiftly in retrospect.
In early April the Indians and trappers and hunters began to come down out of the hills with their pelts to trade and sell. Clint obtained credit for the money he had banked at Kansas City, and he bought and traded for a wagonload of very choice furs, which, if he ever got them to a city, would earn quadruple what they had cost.
From that time on the days were not so unbearable, and they gradually grew easier. By May the weather was pleasant, spring was at hand, and soon the first caravan would arrive from the west. Clint knew whose that would be.
Jim Couch was indeed the first, but he did not arrive until June. It so happened that the loquacious Dick Curtis, who had always regarded Clint as his protégé, got to Jim Couch before Clint.
Nevertheless, Clint had to repeat his version of his long lonely ride and the fight in Horner’s saloon. The old caravan leader appeared to take it all as a matter of course. Upon meeting Clint, he had hugged him like a grizzly bear, but he wasted no words of praise, as was his wont before Clint had become a man.
“Wal, it’s hard to believe any white man would lead his fellow-men into an ambush for the redskins to murder,” he said. “Blackstone sure was a hard nut. But let’s give him the benefit of a doubt. We’ll find out soon enough.”
Couch stayed at Fort Larned for two days, adding fifty-odd wagons of pelts to a caravan that was already large. Dr. Culbertson, the army physician at the fort, advised Couch to persuade Clint to rest a few more months. One of Clint’s lungs had been nicked by a bullet. The wound had healed, yet it might be wise to give it more time. Clint accepted this advice without any comment. It suited him to remain at Fort Larned until Couch’s return trip in October. Clint wanted to interview freighters and soldiers, even Indians, who arrived at Fort Larned from the south and west.
Couch had noted the remains of the burned wagons on the Dry Trail, and the skeletons of horses, but there was nothing to show him that Indians had been killed in this fight. The Kiowas had come back to carry away their dead.
For once Clint saw Couch ride away without suffering any yearnings to go with him. Thereafter every single day dawned welcome to Clint because it might be one that would bring news of some kind. About the end of June, and high time for the first caravan to arrive from the east, a company of soldiers who had been down on the Pecos River arrived at Fort Larned. About a hundred miles south of the Dry Trail they had come upon evidence of the massacre of a medium-sized caravan. Only the iron rims of the wagon wheels remained, with black p
iles of embers. Thirty ghastly skeletons of what had been white men lay scattered about, some of the bones dismembered by the jackals of the plains. There was nothing to prove the exact time of this massacre, but Captain King’s old plainsman said it had been less than a year before, because he had been over that trail with soldiers from Fort Union.
Clint’s last tenacious hope died. Bitter as gall — yet a relief! He believed that had been the caravan the movements of which had been of such vital importance to him. The frontier had only taken its toll of two more women. Clint could count hundreds he had known of, and these not rumors. His mother had been the first in his experience. How long ago! He was now a man. The last was May Bell. Mother and sweetheart! May and Mrs. Clement were no better than the many other brave pioneer women who had found lonely graves on the prairie. The difference was to Clint.
Shortly after these soldiers from New Mexico left the fort the first eastern caravan straggled in. It did not take an experienced eye like Clint’s more than one glance to see what that caravan had encountered. The feathered shaft of an arrow, imbedded in a wagon, sent a fiery thrill down Clint’s spine. And that was the first wagon to roll in. Clint looked no more, but repaired to the store to wait for Eastern newspapers.
Presently Dick Curtis came along with a Kansas City Daily Times and a St. Louis Globe Democrat.
“Come on home, pard,” said Dick, gaily. “‘Cause if we don’t go we’ll be drunk pronto. Papers full of war news. The rebels are licked, an’ you bet thet’ll go hard with some of the hombres here.”
Clint did not require a second invitation. Possessing himself of one of the journals, he read as he walked along. Curtis, who deciphered with difficulty, but was proud to show his education, kept reading aloud. Once back in their cabin, they became absorbed in news two months old.
“My Gawd! Buff, the war must be over!” ejaculated Dick for the tenth time.
“You should say, ‘Thank God!’” retorted Clint. “An’ shut up, will you? I can read.”
It took hours, but these two frontiersmen read every word in both papers. Clint, profoundly stirred by the news of the approaching end of the war that had practically ruined the South and broken the North, maintained silence, as was usual with him when deeply roused. Curtis, however, had to talk, and seeing he could make no impression on Clint he went out.
Clint heard some one ask Curtis:
“Say, does Clint Belmet stay here?”
“Sure. But no one knows him by that handle. His name is Buff. He’s inside.”
This visitor approached and knocked at the open door. Clint rose and guardedly stepped into view. He did not risk chances with strangers. Outside stood a sturdy freighter, ruddy of face and red of beard, with frank blue eyes which took quick stock of Clint.
“Howdy! I’m Clint Belmet. What do you want me for?”
“Glad to meet you, Belmet,” replied the freighter. “I’ve fetched a letter for you. The clerk in the P.O. give it to me. An’ he said if I didn’t find you on the way out to leave it with Buell at Santa Fé. I’m darned glad I can get rid of it. We had two brushes with Injuns on the drive out, an’ I worried like hell wonderin’ what’d become of the letter if I got shot.”
“Thanks — stranger,” said Clint, huskily, stretching out a big hand that shook. A letter for him!
“My name’s Paul Davis. I used to drive for Jim Waters.... There you are.”
He unwrapped soiled ragged paper from a letter and handed it over to Clint with a flourish. He spoke again cheerily, but Clint did not hear what he said nor see when he departed. A thick dirty envelope lay in his hand. A letter — from whom? The handwriting, level and clear, stared at him from the faded soiled paper. The postmark had been obliterated. Whipping out his knife, he slit the envelope. Inside was another, fitting tightly, and this was clean and white. A faint sweet perfume assailed Clint’s nostrils. It gave him a shock so that for a moment he was helpless. But his senses were deceiving him. How often had little things hurt terribly! Quickly he opened the second envelope, bent on killing the illusion that mocked him. A sheaf of small thin pages covered with small writing in ink! Wildly he shuffled them to the last, and there, halfway down the page, in a wavering handwriting that denoted spent strength, he read, “Yours faithfully and always — May.”
“So help me God!” groaned Clint, staggering into the cabin. He fell into the rude armchair and stared dazedly at the dead gray ashes in the fireplace. He was shot through and through with terror. This letter was old — months old — years old. And he divined that it would all but mean death to him. He stared in fascinated horror at the outside envelope. It gave mute but indisputable evidence of having been across the Great Plains time and time again. Sickening to realize — it might have crossed even with his own caravan! Then, in desperation, he drove himself to read.
MAXWELL’S RANCH
DEAREST CLINT:
Oh, why did you run away without giving me a chance to explain! As soon as I could get up I ran after you — in the dark — calling. They found me lost out there.
This morning before the sun rose you were gone. Gone with the caravan! How could I know you would go without seeing me? I thought you a wild jealous boy. I thought you would come back and beg my forgiveness. But you did not — you did not! And my heart is breaking. We go on to Santa Fé, and it will be months before I can see you. But I will send this letter, which I am assured will follow a month behind you. I pray that you may stay long enough in Kansas City to receive it.
Clint, it’s nothing now, but I must explain that you hurt my feelings at Maxwell’s store. How could you be so rude, so harsh! Even if you were jealous! That thrilled me — the proof you cared so much. But I am not a flirt. I have loved you since I was ten years old, more and more every day of my life. I never went to bed without praying for you, or awoke at dawn without thinking of you first. You did not know that, but I did.... Then, yesterday, you roused the very devil in me — a devil I didn’t even know I possessed. I would teach you a lesson if I had to demean myself to do it.
I planned to have you see me with Lee Murdock. I was mad to do it, for I had no idea of your mood. I meant to make you utterly miserable and then — when you were sufficiently punished, I would make up to you — even more loving than that last night on the wagon seat. Oh, Clint!... But the instant you came toward me I realized my mistake. I had not taken you for a man. And when you said you had come to say good-by, my poor heart froze. And — when you asked Lee Murdock if he had his gun I almost fainted. I realized then. But what could I do? I was paralyzed. You looked so stern — so white and terrible. If I had been able to move I would have fallen at your feet.... Then you struck him! He lay there on the grass — bloody and still. I didn’t care. That didn’t hurt me. I think I had a strange hot gladness, something new and wild in me — satisfaction.
I don’t know what I did or said. Then you seized me like a savage.... Oh, my darling! What I am writing now could never have been written now, if you had not done that. You frightened me — you took my strength. I did return your first kiss. I did, Clint. But it had nothing of the love you awakened in me after that. I will cherish those terrible moments through all my life. I love you — I love you! The childish worship — the girlish affection are gone — burned up in a woman’s love. It grows as I write. I can stand this agony if only you know.
Sweetheart, I don’t blame you now, but you misjudged me. You listened to our kind friend, Mr. Maxwell, who thinks he understands women. You did not wait to find out the truth. Lieutenant Clayborn was nice and amusing. I liked him, even though he was a little sure of conquest. But, Clint, my heart was yours. It is yours. As for Murdock, I had grown to fear him, despise him. I never permitted myself to be alone with him, unless someone was near. These natural actions of a young woman are Greek to you. I have already confided in Mr. Clement, this day, and have besought him to have a care of me while Murdock is with us. The moment you read this letter you will know what I would have told you, last night
, with my arms round your neck — if you had not been such a wild buffalo-hunter! But Murdock’s insult revealed to me that I was proud of my wild buffalo-hunter. I love this glorious West, though it appalls me. I will be true to it and to you. I will not shirk the labor, the loneliness, the peril. Only I must be with you or I cannot endure it.
Mr. Maxwell told me that you were a born plainsman, like Kit Carson. But for such men there would never be any settling of the West. It is a noble, heroic calling. I would not ask you yet to sacrifice that for me. But I am waiting your plainsman’s pleasure.
Clint, at the deep of my heart there is assurance of your love and forgiveness. The boy I knew could never have grown into a man too hard and cruel to love and forget. Yet I have been ill since you left — cold with torture and dread — sick with the longing that was dammed up and which you didn’t wait for.
Hurry back to me. Remember every mile of the long, long road, of the waving gray prairie we gazed across together, hand in hand — remember I love you with all the heart of a girl who is alone.
Yours faithfully and always
MAY.
CHAPTER 17
THE HOPES OF the overland freighters that the end of the war would better their condition and lessen their terrible risks proved utterly futile. By 1866 the riffraff from both armies had spread over the frontier, becoming desperadoes of the worst type, as bad as the very worst of the savages.
Charley Bent became the leader of one of the most ruthless and bloodthirsty bands that ever harassed the Old Trail.
Clint Belmet had heard of Charley Bent many times. His name was a camp word on the frontier, and after the government offered a large reward for him alive or dead his story became known.
He was the son of a pioneer named Bent, who lived on the frontier, and who was married Indian fashion to a Cheyenne squaw. He had sent his half-breed son to St. Louis, to be cared for, and later put in school and educated as a white man. Charley Bent, when twenty-one years old, returned to his father. Meanwhile his mother had died. Bent kept a trading store, which he put in charge of his son. The old pioneer was getting on and wanted to retire. One spring day at the end of a good selling season Charley ran off with all the money.