by Zane Grey
“Rich, I’m thanked enough,” laughed Tanner. “It’s something to knock the pins out of you Arizona twins. I’ve been layin’ to do it.”
“Ahuh, I see. . . . All right, Cap. What I’ll do aboot it I can’t say now.”
Tanner bade his friends good night and went out. He thought Nesta might be waiting to waylay him outside, but she was not. No doubt she had been struck even deeper than Rich. How strange that she had burst out crying! She seemed quite beyond his understanding, but this did not mitigate his gladness at having given her things her heart desired. Nesta’s lot had not been an easy one, nor had that of any of the Ameses, though for Rich no life could anywhere have been preferable to this wild Tonto. Their father came of fine Southern stock, probably Texan, and once he had been better off. Tanner had always inclined to the conviction that Ames had been involved in some feud in the South and had left to escape it. But he had only prolonged fatality. Though he had not been an active participant in the notorious Pleasant Valley war, he had been a victim to it. The Tonto had linked the name of Tate with the murder of Ames, but like many another of the legends of this wild lonely basin, it had never been verified.
The old trapper wended a thoughtful way along the trail under the bold black slope. The night was now cold. A keen wind made him draw his coat tight. The stars shone white out of a dark-blue sky; the creek ran with low murmur under the rocky banks; a pack of wolves were running prey over the top of Dead Horse Hill.
He had brought happiness to the Ameses and thereby to himself. But was all well with them? One of the things about the Ameses that had so appealed to Tanner was their devotion to one another. Could the loss of little Tommy and the advent of suitors for Nesta account for something the old trapper sensed yet could not define?
The trail through the break in the cliff lay in deep darkness, and Tanner, after half a year’s absence, had to go slowly over the boulders. He gained the valley presently and soon reached his cabin, and without making a light he went to bed.
Then he did not at once fall asleep, as was usual with him. The branches of spruce and maple that overgrew the cabin brushed against the roof and the leaves rustled. The wind under the eaves had a wailing note. It brought to Tanner more than the meaning of November.
* * * * *
He awoke late for him, and when he went out to the spring with his pail the gray frost on the grass sparkled in the clear light, and far above, on the west rim of the valley, the fringed line of pine burned gold in the sun. A thin film of ice covered the still pool below where the spring gushed out. He saw fresh deer tracks. While he was retracing his steps to the cabin he heard faint but sharp rifle-shots from the flat below. Rich Ames was out testing the new Winchester. He expected Rich to come stalking along any moment now, but he had cooked and eaten his breakfast, had cleared his utensils away, and was unpacking supplies when a familiar soft footfall thrilled him.
Rich entered the cabin, seeming to fill it with a potential force. He radiated youth, vitality, and that flashing fire characteristic of the Ameses, but this morning he was not gay.
“Howdy, Cap! Look at that,” he said, holding up his old sombrero.
Tanner espied three bullet holes through the crown of it. “Pretty good, if you wasn’t close.”
“Cap, I was close — fifty feet or so.”
“Humph!” ejaculated Tanner, and laying the hat on the table he flattened the crown, and put a silver dollar over the three holes. It hid them.
“If thet’d been at a hundred steps, I’d say tip-top.”
“Cap, I couldn’t hit a barn door with the rifle,” replied Rich, grinning. “I shot at rocks an’ things all aboot, but either I’m no good or the Winchester shoots high. I reckon it does. I put those holes in my hat with the Colt. — First three shots! Just throwed the gun — you know — an’ I was thinkin’ aboot Lee Tate.”
“Rich! — What kind of talk is thet?” rejoined Tanner, with reproof. “Reckon your shootin’ was wonderful, but your talk is crazy.”
“Shore it is, Cap. But don’t mind. I just was in fun. He’s been a lot on my mind lately.”
“Ahuh! Wal, forget him, an’ all the rest of the Tates. . . . Throw a stick on the fire and set down.”
Rich laid aside the rifle and replenished the fire, after which he settled himself in his favorite seat.
“I had a fight with Nesta this mawnin’,” he announced.
“Fight! What you talkin’ about, boy?”
“Twice I caught her slippin’ out. She wanted to get to you first.”
“Wal, I reckon I’m between the devil an’ the deep sea,” returned Tanner, ruefully.
“Meanin’ me as the devil, an’ Nesta as the deep sea! — It’s shore aboot right. I’m gettin’ mean an’ Nesta is deep. But she wouldn’t lie to me. I know that. . . . My Gawd, Cap — how I love her! — We Ameses are a queer outfit. Reckon it’s because so many of us are twins. My father had a twin brother. An’ there were twins among his people before. But never brother an’ sister. Nesta an’ I are the first. . . . If anythin’ bad happened to her it’d be like cuttin’ part of me out. . . . Nature plays some tricks, Cap. An’ she shore hasn’t any respect for anybody. There was a family over heah named Hines. They had twins — an’ they were fastened to each other in a way that if they’d lived would have been shore horrible. We had a cow once that gave birth to two calves fastened together. We had to kill them. I reckon it doesn’t make no difference to nature whether it’s cattle or people. Anyway, Nesta an’ I are awful close together. It scares hell out of me lately. I feel so much the way she feels that it’s hard to be myself.”
“Ahuh. — Wal, Rich, what’s on your mind?” returned Tanner, straddling a bench.
“There’s shore a lot. But Nesta first an’ most. . . . Cap, it was darn good of you to fetch us all those presents. Only if you had to give all that pretty stuff to Nesta I wish you’d waited. Till Christmas, anyway.”
“Why so, lad?”
“Nesta’s been strange this summer an’ fall. Now she’ll be plumb out of her haid.”
“Rich, are you afraid the pretty clothes will hurry her into marryin’?”
“Lord! I wish they would!” ejaculated Ames. “Cap, the truth’ll sound sort of silly, I reckon. But I cain’t help my feelin’s. . . . Lil Snell is goin’ to be married this month at Shelby. Hall Barnes is the fellow. I reckon you don’t know him. I do — a little, an’ I’m not crazy aboot him. Nesta went to school with him. You know father sent Nesta back to Texas before an’ through the cattle war heah. Well, she knows Hall an’ says he’s not such a bad sort. Maybe it’s true. But he’s related to the Tates, an’ he’s thick with Lee. . . . Well, Nesta wasn’t goin’ to this weddin’ because she hadn’t no dress. An’ I was plumb glad. Now you’ve gone an’ fetched her one! — Cap, last night after you left she came runnin’ in on us, dressed all in white. My Gawd! You should have seen her! Well, she raved aboot goin’ to the weddin’. An’ mother raved with her.”
“Wal, lad, there’s nothin’ hardly worrisome in thet,” rejoined the trapper. “I think it’s fine. An’ I’m goin’ to show up in Shelby, jest to see Nesta in thet white outfit.”
“Cap, Nesta has got you the same way she’s got Sam,” expostulated Rich.
“Humph! An’ how’s thet?”
“Plumb out of your haid.”
“Haw! Haw! Is thet why she wanted so much to see me before you?”
“Shore, so far as I know. But Nesta has got me guessin’. — Now, listen, old timer, an’ bear in mind I wouldn’t lie to you. . . . When Sam Playford came heah last April he fell in love with Nesta just like that. Head over heels! An’ Nesta fell in love with him. She told me. Up till lately she never had any secrets from me. Reckon I sort of took father’s place. Well, she told me, an’ as I thought a heap of Sam myself, it was all right. Mother, too, was pleased, an’ relieved, I reckon. Pretty soon Sam went down in the dumps an’ Nesta got her haid in the air. They quarreled. Sam wouldn’t tell me what
aboot. An’ for the first time in her life Nesta kept things from me. She’d been goin’ to Shelby to dances — stayin’ overnight with Lil Snell, at her home. Sam didn’t go to some of these latest dances. He roamed around like a lost dawg. . . . Well, I took up the trail. An’, Cap, so help me Heaven, I found out Nesta was carryin’ on with Lee Tate.”
“No!” repudiated Tanner, passionately, jerking up with fire in his eye.
“Yes! — It’s damn hard to believe, Cap, but it’s true.”
“Aw! . . . Then she’d broke off with Playford?”
“Not a bit of it. They stayed engaged, an’ they’re still engaged. Now what do you think aboot it?”
“You said Nesta was carryin’ on with Tate. Jest how do you mean? Carryin’ on?”
Rich Ames shrank from the query. He writhed with his strong brown hands clenched between his knees, and the blue flash of his eyes centered with piteous doubt and entreaty upon the fire.
“If it was any girl but Nesta, I’d say she’d been more’n foolish,” he went on, slowly. “Nesta isn’t like any other girl. An’ I don’t mean headstrong an’ proud an’ moonstruck. Most girls are that way. I don’t know just what I mean. But Nesta is different. She might be mad at Sam. She shore hates to be bossed. All the same, lettin’ Lee Tate make up to her was daid wrong.”
“It was,” agreed Tanner, soberly. “Tate is a handsome fellar.”
“Shore. An’ he’s slick with girls. On an’ off he’s had most of the girls in the Tonto crazy aboot him. Nesta may be innocent of goin’ that far, but she shore has the name of it. Well, I didn’t believe much of the gossip. But when I watched Nesta an’ Tate one night at a dance, an’ later found out she met him at Snell’s, I got pretty sick. Then if I’d gone at Nesta sort of kind an’ understandin’ it’d been better. But I didn’t understand, an’ I was shore sore. So I made it worse.”
“Ahuh. Natural enough. Looks like a bad mess, Rich. But I’ll withhold my judgment till Nesta tells me her side.”
“Shore. You cain’t do no less. Lord! I’m glad you’re heah, Cap. Nesta is fond of you an’ she’ll listen to you. But, just now, if this goes on it’ll get beyond you an’ me. An’ poor Sam — why, he’s the laughin’-stock of Shelby! He knows it, too, an’ he doesn’t go there. I must say he has been fine. Never a word against Nesta! But it’s hurtin’ him.”
“Wal, I shouldn’t wonder. It hurts me deep, Rich. I don’t quite savvy. Thet’s not like Nesta. What’s got into the girl?”
“Cap, there’s bad blood in the Ameses. I’ve got it, an’ I’m scared. Maybe it’s comin’ out in Nesta. Mother now — she took Nesta’s part. You’d think she was proud of the girl’s conquests. Mother must get somethin’ out of it herself. I shore couldn’t talk more aboot it.”
“Ahuh. I see your side, Rich. You not only feel bad about Sam, but you’re worried for Nesta. An’ if Lee Tate bragged, you know — —”
“Cap, he has already bragged,” interrupted Rich, darkly. “That’s Lee’s way. Girls are easy for him. So far his talk hasn’t been — well, any shame to Nesta. But it’s most damned irritatin’.”
“Wal, Rich, his talk an’ Nesta’s odd behavior have got to be stopped.”
“Right, old timer,” returned Ames, quickly. “I reckon if we can fetch Nesta to her senses we won’t have to go further.”
“Don’t say ‘if,’ Rich. We’ll do it. An’ is thet all you’ve been worryin’ over?”
“Shore. Everythin’ else concernin’ us couldn’t be better. We’ve got over two hundred haid of cattle now. In another year Sam an’ I will need help. This heah is a fine range. In dry seasons the cattle browse up high while those down in the basin starve. No rustlin’ to speak of on this side. I can see how in a few years we shore will be rich. We live off the farm. An’ Sam is doin’ mighty fine. If Nesta will only settle down now we’ll all be happy, with the brightest prospects. Next year we’ll send the twins to school.”
“Wal, wal! — Thet’s good news. But it’d be sad if thet big-eyed lass spoiled it all. . . . I don’t believe she will, even allowin’ for the freaks of life. I know Nesta an’ I trust her. I’ll bet when her side of the story comes out we’ll see the thing different.”
“Cap, you cheer me up,” replied Ames, rising with brighter face. “I’ll chase myself now. An’ if Nesta doesn’t come heah, you find her. An’ if you cain’t talk her out of goin’ to Lil Snell’s weddin’ we’ll all go.”
“It’ll be better to do our talkin’ afterward,” said Tanner, sagely.
Tanner busied himself in and around his cabin, an expectant eye on the trail for Nesta. Some of the Ameses’ hounds came over to make friends with the trapper again. But Nesta did not put in an appearance. Tanner’s optimism began to fail and he grew troubled. Whereupon he sallied forth to find the girl.
The noonday sun poured warmly down into the valley. The heights looked clear and cold. There was a tang in the air, and the oak slopes gleamed steely gray. Deer and turkey watched the trapper as he plodded down the trail. He halted in the shady gulch to rest and ponder, then went on, to repeat the performance out in the flat, and he sat a long time on the old log. When he finally arrived at the Ames cabin the afternoon was well advanced.
Cappy found Mescal and Manzanita very much the worse for a prodigious consumption of candy. “Little pigs!” averred Mrs. Ames. “I had to take the candy away from them.” Mescal was sick in bed with colic, and Manzanita gave a capital imitation of a torpid lizard motionless in the sun.
“Cappy, you shore gave us a wonderful evenin’,” said Mrs. Ames. “But I’m afraid you’ve spoilt us.”
“Aw, what’s a little spoilin’?” laughed the trapper. “Once or twice a year won’t hurt nobody. Where’s Nesta?”
“She was flittin’ around like a butterfly all mawnin’,” rejoined Mrs. Ames. “Singin’ like a lark one minute, then mopin’ the next. She’s outdoors now. You’ll find her somewhere dreamin’ under a tree.”
“Mrs. Ames, what ails the lass?”
“Ails Nesta! — Nothin’ in the world. You men just cain’t understand us women.”
“Wal, perhaps not. But I’m tryin’ hard. An’ I reckon Rich an’ this Sam Playford are wuss off than me.”
“Rich been talkin’ to you?” queried the mother, sharply.
“Yes, a little. The lad is worried about Nesta. An’ I reckon he has cause.”
“I’m not gainsayin’ that, Cappy. He an’ Sam worship Nesta. An’ they haven’t sense enough to let the poor girl alone. Nesta is goin’ through a bad time. Her first love affairs. She was late startin’. Before I was sixteen I had half a dozen.”
“Aw, I see,” said Cappy, but he did not see at all. “So it’s love affairs.”
“Shore. She’s in love with two young men I know of. There might be another. This heah Sam Playford is a mighty fine boy. He’s good an’ gentle, an’ he’s powerful ugly. Now this Lee Tate is a handsome devil. He’s no good, an’ I’ll vouch he has a rough hand with girls. I’ve been tryin’ to make Rich an’ Sam see that they must let her alone. Sam is beginnin’ to. But Rich is like all the Ameses.”
“But, Mrs. Ames,” expostulated Cappy, “if they or all of us let Nesta alone, she — she’ll get a bit between her teeth an’ — an’ I don’t know what.”
“Cappy, she has done that already. An’ if we nag her she’ll ride off wild. I know girls. I was one once. An’ Nesta is an Ames clear through. My advice to you is to let her alone, agree with her, pet her. An’ if you have to talk, why, praise Lee Tate to her.”
“Good Lord, woman!” ejaculated Tanner, in bewildered disapproval.
“Cappy, take my word for it. If there’s any harm done it’s done. You cain’t help it. Nesta is genuinely fond of Sam Playford. But she’s also fascinated by this young Tate. That’s natural. Sam will get her, though, if he doesn’t make a jackass out of himself. He’s not worryin’ me much. Sam is a reasonable fellow. He rings true. But Rich will give me gray hairs. He’s his father over
again. An’ more — Cappy. He’s the livin’ likeness of his father’s twin brother, Jess Ames. An’ if ever there was a fightin’ Texan it was Jess Ames. Their father was Caleb Ames, who fought in the Texas invasion in the ‘forties. He was a Texas Ranger. Rich is a grandson of that old warrior. You see what kind of blood he has. An’ he hasn’t any reason to love the Tates, has he?”
“I reckon not,” rejoined Tanner, gloomily, yet he thrilled in his gloom.
“It’s Rich I’m afraid of, an’ not Nesta.”
“Wal, it’s the other way round with me,” returned Tanner, and he went out to look for the girl.
He sought her at the barn and the corral, along the trail, up the gulch at his own cabin, and farther on, without success. Mescal Ridge could easily have hidden a thousand girls. Then returning to the creek valley he went farther, and at last espied Nesta’s fair head shining in the sun. She was sitting above the Rock Pool. This was a deep dark eddy at the head of the valley, a lonesome spot, where the slopes met in a V-shaped notch. Only from one place could Tanner have espied the girl, and it had been just accident that he had done so. He descended the bank and clambered over the boulders, and eventually gained the huge flat rock upon which she sat.
Tanner was old in years, yet at close sight of Nesta Ames he grew young again. She personified youth, beauty, love, tragedy. The environment seemed in harmony with all these. It was a wild, romantic spot. The leafless sycamore branches spread out over the rocks and the dark pool. A low roar of falling water came from up the creek. Opposite the yellow cliff bulged out, with its niches of green and its red-leafed vines. Downstream the whole of the gorge opened clear to the sight, to where it turned into the shadowy Hell Gate.
Under Nesta Ames’ blue eyes were dark circles. Her fair face showed the stains of recent tears. At sight of Cappy she seemed divided between gladness and resentment, neither of which she could control.
“Howdy, lass!” said Cappy, mildly.
A curved arm of the great sycamore reached out low over the rock. Nesta leaned against it. Manifestly this was a favorite retreat. A layer of pine needles made a comfortable seat. Cappy sat down close to her and leaned against the branch.