by Zane Grey
“I hope you rest and soon feel stronger,” she said, and left him.
Forrest thought it would be well to do just that thing, if he were ever to reach Las Vegas. Yet an inner conviction, more stable and determined today, assured him that such hope was no longer vain. He relaxed the tension which had upheld him, and closing his eyes, went back to the old ghastly strife with his pangs. Always he paid for exertion, and that meant of emotion as well as of muscle.
But outworn nature took a hand, and his surrender to reality was only a preamble to sleep. When he awoke the sun was on the other side of the car. Aware at once of relief, Forrest sat up. The flat green country and the wide farms, with their straight fences, told him Illinois was fast passing by.
The blond girl came down the aisle with an elderly woman, presumably her mother, and she smiled at Forrest.
“You had a long nap. I hope you feel better.”
“I do, thank you.”
“The porter was going to wake you — for lunch, he said — but we drove him off.”
“Thank you. I don’t need much to eat and it’s easy to get. But sleep is difficult. I guess I was just about all in.”
“You don’t look so — so bad now,” she concluded, with naïve encouragement.
The other girl was not in evidence. Forrest leaned on the window-sill and watched the flying landscape, scarcely believing that at last he was on the way home. There had come a break in his bitterness. The broad brown and green acres thrilled him. He had never appreciated his country. If he only could have had everything to do over again! There were horses in the meadows, flocks of blackbirds flying in clouds over the wooded creek bottoms. The lanes, recently muddy, stretched for leagues across the land, empty of vehicles clear to the horizon. How different in France! But America was endless and boundless. Wait till he crossed the Mississippi — then France could have been set down anywhere and lost!
Some one addressed him. Turning, he looked up into the bright face of the girl who had been so kind to him.
“You are better?” she asked, gladly.
“Yes, indeed,” he replied, and thanked her for her solicitude.
“Oh, but you had me scared!” she exclaimed. “Are you really as — as ill as you made me believe?”
“How ill was that?” asked Forrest, smiling up at her. The wholesomeness and artlessness of her drew him out of himself.
“When I first asked if you were a wounded soldier you said— ‘all that’s left of me.’”
“Well, isn’t it true?”
“I — I can’t tell,” she returned, the glad light fading. “You don’t look ill or weak now — only pale.” Here she sat down opposite him and clasped her hands over her knees. She had changed her dark traveling dress to one of lighter hue, and the effect was magical. “Truly, I hoped you were just spoofing — that day on the ship. This morning, indeed, I noticed you were a very sick boy...Still, when I saw you sitting up just now, I hoped again — —”
“Boy! — I am twenty-eight,” he interrupted, in pain that her kindness made acute. He faced again to the window, biting his lip. “And my doctors give me perhaps a month — to live.”
There ensued what Forrest felt to be a very long silence. He could not control remorse. But her youth, her abounding health, stung him into a revolt at he knew not what.
“How dreadful!” she answered, in a hushed voice.
“Only for the thoughtless — and selfish,” he returned. “Death is nothing. I have seen a hundred thousand young men like me meet death in every conceivable manner.”
“Yes, we are thoughtless — selfish, and worse. But how little we know! It takes actual contact.”
“Did you have a brother, a friend, or anyone dear — over there?”
“No. Only acquaintances, and I thought that hard to bear...Mr. Soldier, it is courteous of you to confide in me. I can imagine how you hate it...But one question more. You are going home to your mother?”
“Home to mother, thank God!” he whispered, dropping his head. “And dad! — I disgraced them. But this, I feel, has made it up. All I ask is to see them again, to learn all is well with them — and then it can’t come too soon for me.”
“I say, thank God, too,” she murmured. “Quíen sabe? Home might make you well.”
When Forrest recovered from this lapse into agitation, a most irritating and increasing habit that had grown upon him, the girl had gone back to her berth, which was across the aisle and the second down. She faced him, however, and thereafter, whether reading, or talking to the several members of her party, her glance came back frequently to his, as if unaccountably drawn.
The sight of her somehow gladdened him, in a way long foreign to him. Curiosity became added to the attraction he did not try to resist. Who was she? Where was she going? She certainly did not appear related to the pretty blond girl and her mother, nor to several young men who appeared very attentive. One of these, presently, noted her interest in Forrest, and did not take kindly to it. This byplay assured Forrest that he was not quite yet a disembodied spirit. He was still a flesh-and-blood individual over whom another could show jealousy.
He got out his magazines and a book and pretended to read, when in truth he merely wanted to watch the girl unobtrusively. She was quick to grasp his subterfuge, and adopted it herself, giving him a look and a smile that made his heart beat faster.
Gradually the exchange assumed the proportions of a flirtation, but not the frivolity of one. Her look answered to his, until a consciousness of it perhaps, made her shy. Not for a good while then did she reciprocate, but eventually he won her glance again. This time she laid the magazine in her lap and stared at him with wonderful eyes of sadness, of understanding, and more which Forrest could not define. But it seemed as if she were sending him a message — one which Forrest did not in the least know how to interpret. But as it seemed incumbent upon him to answer her challenge, he turned in his book to a favorite poem, which had in it the elements of his tragedy, and rising he walked down the aisle and handed it to her.
“I’d like you to read that,” he said, and went on to hold a little colloquy with the porter about dinner, which he ordered brought to him.
Upon his return one of the young men sat beside her, quite protectively, and he glared at Forrest, as he held out the book.
“Did you like the poem?” asked Forrest of the girl, while he took the book from her companion.
“Thank you. I — I didn’t read it,” she replied, with what he construed as coldness, and she averted a troubled face.
Forrest resumed his seat more shaken by the incident than he would admit, even to himself. But he was at the mercy of his emotions. Ruefully he opened the book and read the poem he had indicated. Surely there could not be anything in it to offend the most fastidious taste. Perhaps his intimation that her graciousness permitted him to grow sentimental and personal was accountable for the change. He withdrew into his shell and the strange radiancy which had opposed his realistic moods slowly turned to dead ashes. He had made a blunder, for which, however, he did not see the necessity of asking pardon. He did not probe into the nature of his error. Of what avail? How bitter to receive such a lesson amid such new and uplifting thoughts as she had aroused! He had been relegated to his lonely place.
He wondered if the sleek handsome young man beside her — surely an Easterner — had been in any way responsible for the snub. It was quite possible, considering his air of proprietorship. Also he wondered if that languid, prosperous-looking chap had been in the war. A little keen observation convinced Forrest that this fellow had never helped dig a trench.
Nor did Forrest require further observation to insure the fact that the girl with the chestnut hair studiously avoided looking in his direction. His resentment, however, did not augment to the point where he was oblivious to the absence of pride or vanity in her demeanor. Merely she had lost her warmth. Something had blunted her receptiveness. Well, what did it matter? What was one hurt more or less? He h
ad no time to sentimentalize over a woman, however bewilderingly charming she chose to be. He closed the book upon the page where long ago he had written his name. Had she seen that? But the unfortunate circumstance was closed.
The sun set red over the level land; dusk fell to shroud the flying farms and wooded lowlands. He watched the shadows over the fields, the pale gleams of light on ponds and streams, the bright windows of farmhouses that flashed by. Then the waiter brought in Forrest’s dinner.
The next event was one of momentous importance — crossing the Mississippi.
Forrest could only faintly see the rolling waters of the great river. But he knew from the sound of the train when it passed off the bridge on to Missouri land. West of the Mississippi!
Forrest lay awake that night while the train passed through Lawrence, Kansas, where five years before his brief college career had ended so ignominiously. What sleep he got was fitful. Next morning when he raised his head to look out of the window he saw the long gray gradual slopes of the plains.
Propping himself on pillows, he lay there watching. The brown ploughed fields, the gray bleached pasture-lands, the ranches few and far between, the dry washes, the gradual heave and break of continuity, the absence of trees or green growths, the tumbleweeds before the wind, the dust-devils rising in yellow funnels, the scampering long-legged, long-eared jack rabbits — all these were incense to Forrest’s lifting spirit.
The porter roused him. He got up, to find the morning half spent. While he was in the dressing-room, slow and careful about his ablutions, the train crossed into Colorado. The day then went like a dream. Twice that he noted, though he never raised his eyes, the girl across the aisle passed him. She was still on the train. What was it that had happened? But nothing could intrude into his obsession with the mountains. And all the rest of that day he watched the multitudinous aspects of the approach to and the ascent of the great Continental Divide. Such a sunset he had not seen since he had left the West. There was a rare blue sky, deep azure, cut by the white notched peaks, and above, some clouds of amber, purple, and rose, rich as the hearts of flowers and intense with the transparency of smokeless dustless skies.
His dinner he enjoyed. That night he slept and dreamed of his mother. Next morning the sage benches, the boulder-strewn arroyos, the bleached gramma-grassed open slopes rising to cedars and piñons, the black-fringed ranges of New Mexico!
For hours he pored tenderly over the infinite variety of landscape, which yet always held the same elements of rock and grass and timber and range. New Mexico in the spring was somberly gray, monotonously gray over the lowlands, black and white, wild, broken, and grand over the battlements of the heights. He had forgotten all except the color, the loneliness, the far-flung wandering lines, the solitude of the steely peaks. Raton! Lamy! Wagonmound!
There was Old Baldy, the mountain god of his boyhood, lofty, bleak as of old, white-streaked in its high canyons, capped with a crown of black timber, frowning down, unchangeable to the transient present. Forrest trembled and his heart contracted. Almost the little for which he had prayed had been granted. When the train pulled into Las Vegas, stopping before the Castaneda, Forrest sat stockstill, unmindful of the bustling important porter, not even surprised or interested to see that this also was where the girl with the chestnut hair disembarked.
He had to moisten his lips to thank the porter, and then he was almost wordless. There was a dry constriction in his throat. As he stepped down, the last passenger to leave the train, he gazed wildly about, as if he expected to see persons he knew. But there was no one familiar among the many Indians, Mexicans, railroad men, and others present. Forrest stood beside his luggage, seeing, hearing, feeling, though not believing. Almost he wished he had telegraphed his parents to meet him at the station. But he had clung to a reluctance to let them see the wreck of him until the very last unavoidable moment.
A chauffeur accosted him: “Car for hire, sir?”
“Do you know where Cottonwoods is?” asked Forrest, coming to himself eagerly.
“You mean the big ranch out heah?”
“Yes. On the road to Old Baldy, twelve miles out.”
“Shore do. Can I take you out?”
“Grab my bags.” Forrest followed the driver out to a line of cars. “Put them in the back seat. I’ll ride in front.”
“Reckon you ain’t keen on bumps,” returned the chauffeur, with a grin. “Wal, out a ways the road ain’t any too good.”
“It used to be plumb bad, before the days of autos,” said Forrest, as he got in. He had quite forgotten his condition. Indeed, he had no sense of incapacity whatever. He seemed full of pleasant whirling thoughts.
“You ain’t no stranger, then?”
“Not exactly. But I don’t remember you.”
“Wal, I’m new in these parts.”
So far as Forrest could see there was not one single change in the business section of Las Vegas. On the outskirts, however, he observed unfamiliar buildings and cottages.
“How’s the cattle business?” asked Forrest.
“Ain’t any. Thet’s why I’m punchin’ this heah car.”
Forrest concluded he would not ask any more questions. Besides, he wanted to see with all his faculties and all his strength.
The road began to climb. Out there, in front, the gray benches rose. Behind them frowned the mountains, steel-black, forbidding.
Away to the west stretched the magnificent desert, sweeping in noble lines down from the mountains, range after range of ridges that disappeared in the purple distance. Southward, far away, a gate opened in the wall of rock, and well Forrest knew how that led out to the wild country of sage and sand. Straight ahead the mountain blunted the view. It was too close, yet as Forrest remembered, began its foothill rise over forty miles away.
The higher the car got, and it was climbing fairly fast and steeply, the better could Forrest gaze out over that Western land of alternate waste and range. Here began the change of monotonous New Mexican gray to a hint of red and cream and mauve, that gathered strength over the leagues until it burst into the blaze of colorful Arizona.
Forrest could not get his fill of gazing. The car sped on, and soon it entered a zone which gripped Forrest’s heart and brought a dimness to his eyes that he had to rub away, and that continually returned. He saw a wide valley, triangular in shape, with the apex closing far ahead, where grand gnarled cottonwood trees, centuries old, brightly glistening in their first green spring dress, stood far apart, as if there were not enough water and sunlight for a closer communion. There were hundreds of them, and it seemed Forrest knew every one. The road wound along a beautiful stream that slid between green and flowered banks on its way to the famous Pecos, historic river of the West. Quail and doves, hawks and ravens, cottontails and jack rabbits, deer and coyotes, gladdened Forrest’s absorbing gaze. No change here! Wild and beautiful still! No fences, no fires, no ranches, no progressive improvements! Cottonwood Valley belonged to his father, who held on to the old West.
At last Forrest espied the white-walled, vine-covered, red-roofed rambling house. It had the same beauty against the green and bronze background. Forrest clenched his moist palms. This was home. The unreal and impossible had become a fact. He would soon be in his mother’s arms and be gripped by the hand of that great Westerner, his father, whom he had feared and loved, and looked up to with all a boy’s admiration for the pioneer, the fighter of early days. Surely they would be home, well, perhaps expecting him some time. For his mother’s letter was scarcely more than a month old.
Thus he eased the doubts of a straining heart, and gave himself over again to the joy of physical sight in beloved things. There, across the valley, where a branch creek ran down, nestled the adobe house that added another sweet thrill to his home-coming. Lundeen lived there, an enemy of his father, a nester who of all those who had squatted on the Forrest broad acres could not be dislodged. Forrest recalled Lundeen’s lass, a girl of fourteen, red-haired and pretty, who
m he might once have liked but for the enmity of the families. She would be grown now. He wondered. Married to a cow-puncher, probably, and not interested in crippled soldiers!
Forrest lost sight of the picturesque little house, that disappeared behind trees, and likewise the stately home on the knoll which guarded the apex of the triangular valley. It was high, and the driver now swung his car under the blunt, rocky, vine-covered face of the knoll. On the far side, the knoll sloped easily back to the level, and here, spread out across the neck of the valley, where the stream came tearing white and noisy over a rocky bed, were situated barns, sheds, corrals, bunk houses, lime kiln, blacksmith shop, store, and quarters of the Mexicans.
Forrest stared. The picturesque confusion in his memory did not include all of these landmarks. Some were new. Where, too, was the old leisurely atmosphere? What had come over his father, always a stickler for old things and ways? But Forrest scarcely caught a glimpse of the improvements, for the driver whirled him up the gray-walled road, under the flowered arches, out upon the sunlit level, and up to the house, with its many-arched veranda.
What the driver said Forrest did not catch. The moment was insupportably full. He got out, shaking in every limb. A big white automobile was backing down the courtyard. Forrest heard the murmur of gay voices, laughter. His heart lifted, ready to burst. He stepped forward.
Then a girl appeared in the arched doorway. She wore a long coat, and had her arms lifted to remove her hat. As she freed it from her hair she espied Forrest, and suddenly the hat dropped from her hand. Voice and smile froze on her lips. Dark red flooded neck, cheek, temple.
For Clifton Forrest a vague unreality cleared to a sense of calamity. Removing his hat, he bowed and strove to speak. But the whitening face of this girl — her eyes, that were telling him something too stunning to grasp — made his speech difficult and incoherent.
“What — are you — doing here?”
“This is my home,” she replied, and horror gathered dark in her eyes.
“Who — are — you?” he went on, hoarsely, and his hand groped for support.