Collected Works of Zane Grey

by Zane Grey

  “How about Arlidge?”

  “He’s a ridin’ rustler, sah. He led de outfit dat fust drive — before you-all come wid Lindsay. I heerd him tell Gaines dat Lindsay had bought Allen out.”

  “Wal, jest who rode in thet drive, Sam?” went on Laramie.

  “Dar wuz Gaines an’ Juan an’ me, an’ Arlidge — an’ dats all I remembers, sah.”

  “Don’t lie, Sam. Heah’s the time to save yore neck. Try to remember.”

  “Wal, sah, dere was Fork Mayhew, an’ — an’ — —”

  “Me!” chimed in Wind River Charlie, with passion. “But, Laramie, I swear I didn’t know thet drive was rustlin’. Not till after. Me an’ Fork an’ Red wasn’t in the secret. We didn’t like the deal, but we didn’t pry into it. Afterward Gaines told us Lindsay had bought Allen out an’ we was really rustlin’.”

  “Ahuh. Thet was Arlidge’s hold on yu, Charlie?”

  “Yes, boss, an’ no more.”

  Laramie lifted a hand to signify he was through with the proceedings. Lonesome whipped the rope so that the noose jumped from round Johnson’s neck.

  “Make way, Sam. . . . Ted, will you prod thet gent over heah?”

  But no amount of prodding with a rifle could move Price. His dead weight clung to the wall. Whereupon Lonesome grasped the noose, and pulling the lasso over the rafter to sufficient length he took three long strides and cracked the loop over Price’s head.

  “Price, you remember when you did thet same trick to me once,” he said, cold as steel. More than border justice rang in that terse statement. Price appeared far gone, at the mercy of primal instincts, but even so he saw the uselessness of supplication.

  Lonesome strode back to leap high and drag down the end of the lasso. “Ted, Dakota, come lend me an’ Charlie a hand.”

  The four hauled in unison, dragging Price away from the wall, over the bench, and upsetting the table, and then with a concerted heave swung the rustler into the air.

  “Hold — there,” panted Lonesome, and while the three sustained the straining Price at that height Lonesome tied the end of the rope to one of the loft supports. “Leggo. Reckon thet’ll do.” As they complied the lasso strung and stretched, letting Price down a foot, but it held. Then Lonesome, hands on his hips, his short stature and sturdy bow-legs singularly expressive, stood at gaze, watching the strangling man.

  Laramie sat in the doorway, likewise watching. He had been present at numerous lynching bees, first of that most hated of border outlaws — the horse-thief, and then of late years the rustler. It was a common practice, inaugurated, he remembered, in order to intimidate cow-punchers going wrong. Not greatly had it succeeded.

  This crude justice brought home to Laramie now its hideousness as well as its futility. He seemed to be sitting in judgment upon Price and his kind, and his executioners, of whom surely he was one. Had he not hauled on many a rope? But he seemed also to be sitting there and seeing this appalling spectacle with Hallie Lindsay’s eyes. She had changed him. The law of the West was what it was, and he could not alter it. But he divined here that the advent of women on the frontier would alter it. Price in his contortions kicked so violently that he got to swinging to and fro across the center of the cabin space. Once a jumping-jack kick nearly reached the statue-like Mulhall. That indeed jerked the avenging rider out of his rigidity. He wheeled away, his face gray and dripping with sweat.

  “Pack this grub outside, boys,” he said, huskily, “I’ll fetch some fire.”

  That broke the suspense. They all leaped into action. Laramie, diverted as well, was about to rise and step forward when he heard a gasp behind him. Swiftly he wheeled in time to see Lenta sink to the ground beside the door. The incorrigible girl had watched from behind his back, had been a witness to this gruesome spectacle, and at last had succumbed to what indeed would have been sickening and devastating to the hardiest of pioneer girls.

  Laramie turned to pick her up in his arms. She was a dead weight. This time she had fainted. “Dog-gone,” he muttered, as he carried her out under the spreading tree. “But I never thought. She shore beats hell, this kid.”

  He laid her down on the grass, deciding that it would be well not to help her return to consciousness. Then he lent a hand to his comrades. They carried out the packs and the camp utensils with the food. They built a new fire for light, as well as shoveling out the red coals to cook upon. Johnson was brought out to be sat by the wall. Then Laramie went to find his horse. It was dark under the trees, but in the open places the starlight enabled him to find his way, and eventually the horse. He removed saddle and bridle. These he carried back to the cabin, plainly visible in the camp-fire glow. The riders moved to and fro, dark suggestive forms, fitting the scene. Lenta lay as he had left her. Laramie dropped his burdens and went back into the woods to cut some pine or cedar brush for her bed. Securing a bundle, he retraced his steps, to find Lenta sitting up.

  “Wal, heah yu air all right again,” said Laramie, cheerfully, as he dumped the fragrant mass. “We’re shore goin’ to have a soft bed for yu so yu can sleep some.”

  “Sleep. Will I ever again?” she asked, huskily.

  “Nature is wonderful, lass. . . . Now see heah. I spread the pine nice an’ thick. An’ a saddle blanket on top with another to go over yu. An’ a chunk of wood for a pillow. There!”

  “Laramie, will you stay right close — by me — all night?” she queried, falteringly. “Now that it — it’s over I’m losing my nerve.”

  “Shore. I’ll set right heah an’ hold yore hand all night. Reckon I ain’t sleepy. But I can sleep settin’ up jest the same.”

  “Some one doused me with water. Do you think it was — Lonesome?”

  “Like as not. He’s most unconsiderin’ when he’s riled.”

  “Riled? Uggh! If he only was mad!”

  “Wal, don’t pay no more attention to him, Lent.”

  But she evinced an inability to keep her dark haunted eyes from following the little rider everywhere. He kept busy around the camp fire, lending a hand to Charlie, who was cooking supper. Finally Ted came over.

  “How are you, Lent? This has been the toughest deal I ever saw a girl stack up against. Flo would have croaked.”

  “Ted, I’m sorta sunk. Feel like a poisoned pup.”

  “Some nice hot potato soup will be good for you.”

  “Come an’ get it,” sang out Charlie.

  “I’ll fetch yu some,” said Laramie, suiting action to his words.

  “Laramie, you flatter me. I haven’t had a mouthful since yesterday. But I can’t eat,” replied the girl.

  Lonesome pricked up his ears in a manner that suggested they were keenly sensitive in a certain quarter. He was kneeling with a heaping pan in his hands.

  “Say, young woman, do you want to give us pore devils more trouble?” he asked. “We got two hard days ridin’ an’ one fight sure before we can get you home. An’ if you won’t eat you’ll give out an’ delay us.”

  “I — I’ll eat,” hurriedly whispered Lenta, receiving the pan from Laramie. And she did eat, though she forced every swallow. Laramie felt sorry for her and angry with Lonesome. Certainly it was no time for sentiment, yet Laramie saw no reason for Lonesome to be as hard as flint. The only break in the silence after that was when Lonesome told Dakota to untie the negro and let him eat.

  “I’m so stiff and sore,” said Lenta, presently, and got up. “I’ll walk a little.”

  “Thet’s a good kid,” rejoined Laramie. “Dog-gone-yu, lass, I’m beginnin’ to like yu again.”

  “Thanks, Laramie. I’m suffering a change of heart, too.”

  Laramie arranged his saddle and a blanket on the other side of Lenta’s bed, so that she would be between him and the tree.

  “Pard, do yu reckon there’s any chance of thet greaser prowlin’ round to take a pot shot at us from the dark?” queried Laramie.

  “Not if I know greasers,” replied Lonesome.

  “One saddle-hawse missin’,” ad
ded Dakota. “I reckon Juan got it. He’s pushin’ leather now.”

  “All the same, we’ll keep guard,” said Lonesome. “An’ I’ll be first on.”

  “There won’t be a hell of a lot of sleepin’, I reckon,” added Laramie.

  Lenta came stealing back to plump down on her bed and stretch out. Her eyes appeared unnaturally large and bright in her pale face.

  “It’ll be cold towards mawnin’,” said Laramie as he covered her partly. “Then I’ll pull this up over yu.”

  “You’ll stay close all night?”

  “Shore, lass.”

  “I never was afraid of the dark and I never had nightmares. But . . . let me hold your hand, Laramie.”

  She held his hand in both hers, and then her heavy eyelids fell. Laramie expected her to go to sleep, and she did, almost immediately, when she unconsciously released her hold on him. Laramie sat gazing down upon the disheveled head, the pale face, the gently heaving breast, with mingled feelings. If this experience would be a lesson to her, all would yet end well. He decided it would be — even for such a madcap as Lenta Lindsay. And he rejoiced. After a while he softly arose to approach the squatting riders.

  “Wal, you old wiz, how’d you come to be in thet cabin, waitin’ fer us?” queried Lonesome.

  “Wal, after I left yu pretty soon the trail forked back an’ up over the hill. I got leary an’ reckoned there was more’n yu hard after Gaines. When thet trail took off the ridge I searched the valley with my glass. Soon saw Gaines an’ his outfit with the kid. I figgered I might haid him off by ridin’ fast an’ gettin’ down. I did. I found this cabin an’ I seen hawses comin’. But one was white an’ then I was shore some one else had haided off Gaines, too. Thet was Price. So I took to the loft.”

  “You old wolf!” ejaculated Ted, warmly. “It was Lonesome who split off after Price. I rode slow, and soon Charlie and Dakota caught up with me. We saw Price’s outfit pile down the hill and sneak after Gaines. So we waited for Lonesome. When he come we expected you soon afterward. But you didn’t come pronto, so we knew you were up to your old tricks.”

  “Wal, we shore had luck,” drawled Laramie. “If I hadn’t been in the loft some of us would have got plugged. Thet stranger, Beady somebody, who was with Price — he sized up dangerous to me. He was playin’ Price against Gaines. An’ when Lonesome opened the ball I had an eye on Beady.”

  “Wonder who he was. What’d he do, pard?” returned Lonesome, in gruff curiosity.

  “Wal, Gaines hadn’t stopped fallin’ when thet Beady leaped behind the door, his gun throwed. . . . I hope yu wasn’t about to step in, then.”

  “I was, you bet. I had my foot up when your gun bellared. You see our plan was like this. Dakota was to take care of the two hawse wranglers, Charlie an’ Ted was to be ready at thet back door, while I’d plant myself by the front door. Course it was on the cairds thet I’d pay my compliments to Gaines. Then the idee was for us to bust in quick, not givin’ them a chance to hide, an’ hold’em all up.”

  “Well, it’d sure been all day with you, an’ me, too, and maybe Charlie if Laramie hadn’t been here,” broke in Ted, gravely.

  A sober little silence ensued. Lonesome poked the red embers with a stick. “Another time — huh?” he queried, with an odd break in his voice. “Wal, I own up to recklessness— ‘cause of the girl. . . . But you was there, pard.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  HALLIE SANK BACK upon the soft hay, blinded by tears, so shaken and overcome with emotion that her mind seemed a whirling chaos. But the burn of Laramie’s rude kisses upon her cheeks and neck, the sting of them on her lips, suddenly realized, cleared her consciousness at least of uncertainty.

  She struggled up wildly, wiping her wet eyes. Gone! She heard trampling, jingling steps wearing away. She peered out of the stall. No other rider in sight! That catastrophe had had no witness. “Oh-h!” she whispered, thickly, as she gazed at her disheveled blouse and felt of her hair. One sleeve was up above her elbow. A fine dust of hayseed covered her habit. “The — savage! . . . He nearly — tore me to pieces. . . . And I — I — Oh-h — —”

  This poignant expression, dying in her throat, had not to do with the furious blow she had dealt Laramie. That sprang from a panic-stricken shame — at a fearful realization. Laramie’s volley of kisses had reacted terribly upon her — to her undoing. She could not comprehend, but she knew. They had seemed to burn some cold strange barrier from around her heart and set it free to leap up against his. First she had been shocked, inflamed, then carried away on a rising flood of strong, sweet, irresistible madness.

  There it was! Tragically she whispered the inevitableness of it. What a wreck she felt — what a wreck she must look! She brushed off her clothes and buttoned her sleeve. There was a red stain on the wristband. Blood! Whose? Then she remembered his bleeding lips. And he had kissed her with them! Frantically she found her handkerchief and wiped her face. Yes — more red — more — ! She tried to stop her stream of consciousness — as if to dam a torrent. She picked up sombrero, gauntlets, quirt, and fled out at the back of the barn like a guilty thing. No rider in sight! She ran under the cottonwoods into the trail and far from the corrals; in a shady green covert she fell spent and breathless, to lie there staring up at the blue sky.

  At last she agonized it out. Laramie had sickened of the Lindsays — of their milk-sop idea of ranching. And like other riders, in a reckless and perhaps poignant moment, he had responded to such an opportunity as they all answered. He had kissed her. Then, at her blow, enraged, he had — what had he not done — the brute? But the fierce, hard, brazen primitiveness of him had transformed her into his mate. One more moment of his strangling embrace — nay, one more rough kiss — would have seen her arms close around his neck. That was the terror of her realization. Oh, she knew! She could not delude herself. One hand had gone around his neck and the other was on the way to meet it when he had torn free. He did not know — he had not dreamed of her wild response. What had this West done to her? It had made a wife of Florence before she was out of her teens, it had ruined Lenta, it had torn her asunder, her — Harriet, who had been through with love — it had found in her depths another woman like a savage, a tigress, free, defiant, who loved with blood, flesh, mind, in a passion that relegated her old attachment to the strength of a candle-flame.

  * * * * *

  A grind of wheels rolling down the gravel road brought Hallie’s long vigil to a close. Peeping out through the foliage, she espied two buckboards going by down to the barns. Horses, vehicles, drivers were all strange to her. Company! She was startled. What a time to be visited by some of the friendly ranchers whom the Lindsays had met at La Junta!

  This event changed the current of Hallie’s thought. She hurried up the valley trail and reached her room without meeting anyone. Here she proceeded to remove the stained and wrinkled riding-garb, which she vowed with a queer passion she would never put on again. Then she dressed hurriedly and endeavored to look as if the world had not come to an end. She essayed a smile, and her mirror told her that that would do much to eliminate the havoc from her face.

  Jud scowled at her as she passed his open quarters. “I don’t want any lunch, Jud,” and he replied that she did not eat enough to keep a jack-rabbit alive. Laughter and voices from the living-room confirmed Hallie’s suspicions about company. Presenting herself at the open door, she looked in.

  Flo, looking unusually excited and therefore lovely, sat holding the hand of a striking brunette girl of about nineteen, who was certainly a sister of Ted Williams. Then Hallie, suddenly breathless, espied her mother, radiant as always when she had company. A handsome gray-haired woman of distinction sat with Mrs. Lindsay, and beyond were two men talking to Hallie’s father.

  “Here she is,” said Flo, leaping up.

  Lindsay called, gaily. “Come in, daughter. Mrs. Williams, this is my eldest girl, Harriet. . . . Mr. Williams, you and Strickland meet the boss of Spanish Peaks Ranch. . . . Hallie, of all the g
ood luck! Ted’s mother, father, and sister have come west to find Ted. . . . And this gentleman is Mr. Strickland, whom you met at La Junta. He is the largest cattle-dealer in eastern Colorado.”

  “I’m happy to meet you, Harriet,” responded Mrs. Williams, graciously, as she extended her hand. “I’m glad there’s one of the Lindsays who hasn’t eloped yet.”

  Ted’s sister, Kitty, had a shy greeting for Harriet. Mr. Williams was gay and flattering in his acknowledgment of the introduction, and Mr. Strickland, a tall, eagle-eyed tanned Westerner past middle age held Hallie’s hand gallantly. “Miss Landsay, I shore am glad to meet you again. An’ if you’re the boss of the Peak Dot Ranch I’m confident of the success of my call.”

  “Mr. Strickland, are you like all the rest of the young Westerners?” queried Hallie.

  “Wal, if I was twenty years younger, you’d see about that,” declared the rancher, with a hearty laugh.

  “It is too bad you-all did not come a day sooner,” said Hallie, to the visitors generally. “We are upset. Lenta has — run off, and Ted, with the other riders, has gone to fetch her back.”

  “Married or no?” asked Mrs. Williams, with a smile.

  “In any case.”

  “Do you approve of the young man?” queried Mr. Williams, jocularly.

  “Hardly. He is handsome, and wild enough, surely, even for my wild little sister. But he has — scarcely any more to recommend him.”

  “And how do you feel about our son running off with your other sister?” added the smiling mother.

  “I’m very happy about that.”

  “Oh, so am I,” murmured Kitty. “And just crazy to see Ted.”

  “I knew you at once to be his sister. . . . Ted is very handsome.”

  “Thank you. Handsome riders must be plentiful out here. Can’t you find me one? I’ve heard enough about this Laramie Nelson to make me eager to see him.”

  “Oh, Laramie—” replied Harriet, constrainedly, conscious of a queer sinking sensation within her breast. “Yes, he is quite good-looking, too. . . . Perhaps with all their talk they have not told you, he’s a gun-fighter. It was he who led the riders after Lenta. I dare say Laramie has killed some one already.”