by Zane Grey
“Mormon girls like Lespeth don’t get any lovemakin’ before they’re married. An’ a lot of it after. Well, I’m a Mormon. . . . But there’s a girl who’s jest dyin’ to be made up to. Talked soft an’ sweet to an’ patted an’ kissed an’ hugged!”
“Wal, I’ll be dog-goned!” ejaculated Ames, red in the face, as much from consciousness of his own sudden thrilling rush of blood, as shame at the brazen Mormon who could propose such a thing.
“You’re a queer cowboy, if you are a Gentile,” went on Heady. “Can’t you see what I’m tellin’ you is so?”
“Reckon I cain’t. But, by gosh! I can see you’re a mushy cuss who hasn’t any respect for good women.”
“Aw, go ‘long,” laughed the Mormon. “Even if you did get tolerable thick with Lespeth you’d be doin’ her a favor. But all I mean is, if you don’t want to stay here an’ make a go of it — an’ you could do worse, my friend — why, stay long enough to love her a little.”
“Lord! . . . You take my breath.”
“Not me. It’s thought of Lespeth thet does thet.”
“Heady, if I’d ever been a fellow to make up to girls — an’ I never had a chance — I reckon I couldn’t make up to Lespeth unless I meant it serious.”
“All the better. Then be serious. Marry her! — I’ll let you in on this much of the secret, because I trust you, Ames. . . . Lespeth’s mother was a Gentile. But she doesn’t know it.”
“Say, man, you’re figurin’ me in deep. An’ it’s all nonsense. That girl couldn’t see me with a spyglass. I’m no more than another wanderin’ cowboy.”
“All right. Have it your way,” replied the Mormon, resignedly. “I was only givin’ you a hunch. You could rest right here, my wanderin’ cowboy, all your life, an’ with thet girl it’s sure a soft place to light.”
“Too good for me, Heady. Thanks all the same.”
“Arizona, I figger from your talk thet you never had a sweetheart. But didn’t you never love no one? No woman?”
“Shore. My twin sister. Her name was Nesta. She looked like a gold columbine as much as this Lespeth looks like a rose,” replied Ames, and he gazed away over the green fields, out over the desert and the darkening walls, without seeing them.
“Twin sister? She must have been a beauty. . . . An’ I reckon you ruined yourself fer her! . . . All right, take it or leave it. But I’m wonderin’ at you. How any fellar who could have Lespeth in his arms an’ wouldn’t take her — I jest can’t understand.”
Ames sustained what seemed a strange, vague knocking at his heart, as if life were clamoring at a closed door he had never known was there.
A mellow bell rang. Then a voice that seemed as sweet gayly called, “Come to supper, Arizona Ames!”
Heady laughed cheerfully. “See, she doesn’t even think of me. Come on, you Arizona Gentile, an’ take your medicine.”
Ames felt like a lamb being led to slaughter, which was something he certainly attributed to this loquacious Mormon. As they neared the house he saw that the supper table had been set upon the porch, and that Lespeth had changed her plain linsey dress to a white one, which even at a distance, transformed her incredibly.
“Crawl, you Arizona iceberg,” whispered Heady, as they reached the steps.
Morgan met them, courteous and dignified, with the air of one who considered hospitality a matter of the spirit. Lespeth stood by his side. Her golden head reached to his shoulder. Little trace of shock lingered on her face; she now seemed shy, fascinated, eager, yet unable to meet Ames’ look.
Ames remembered to hold a chair for her, but when they were all seated it took a kick from Heady to acquaint him with the fact that the venerable head of Lespeth’s father was bent. He asked a blessing that sounded beautiful to Ames. And while he supplicated for this stranger within his gates, Ames watched the girl, whose face was lowered. It seemed to have more than mere beauty — fair, strong, resolute, with a suggestion of austerity that required the fire of eyes and smile of lips to hide its loneliness.
“I would not have recognized you, Arizona Ames,” she said, looking up.
He had not been aware that the blessing had been concluded. And no doubt she had been prepared with that pretty speech before she raised her head, but certainly not prepared for Ames’ absorbed gaze. Her confusion added to her simplicity and charm.
“Shore you’re wonderful changed yourself,” he replied.
A pleasant-faced woman brought in the food.
The ordeal of the meal began, and it was almost beyond Ames. Here he sat a starved beggar at a feast, and he desired to watch Lespeth and at the same time appear well to her.
“Ames, is this your first visit to Utah?” asked Morgan.
“Yes, an’ I happened to come by accident.”
“Indeed it was a fortunate one for Lespeth and me. How did it come about?”
“Well, I cain’t stick at one job any length of time. I’m always ridin’ on. An’ I was in Williams, where some boy told me to cross the Canyon.”
“Our Lord works in strange ways. To think of a boy’s chance remark directing you to us! To think of the terrible Colorado River! I have always believed things happen for some definite reason. Back of all is the Divine Mind.”
“Mr. Ames, you swam your horse across the Colorado?” asked Lespeth, her eyes wide.
“He swam an’ I held to his tail.”
“Oh, how wonderful! — Father, you remember the Stuart boys crossed at the Shinumo. Jack told me about it once.”
“I reckon the danger wasn’t really as great as it looked. An’ I shore have a horse.”
“He’s splendid. I love horses, Mr. Ames. . . . Would you let me ride him?”
“Shore I’d be delighted — that is, if you can ride him.”
“If I can! — Mr. Ames, I can ride any horse in Utah,” she retorted, with spirit.
“Wild or broke?” drawled Ames.
“Well, I draw the line at wild horses.”
“Ames, I’ve been a horse raiser and dealer all my life,” said Morgan. “I knew Bostil, of Bostil’s Ford, probably the greatest of Utah horse-breeders. He was wont to say his daughter Lucy had been born on a horse. I can almost claim that for Lespeth.”
“Bostil’s Ford. Where’d I heah that name?”
“Some old horseman likely spoke of it. The ford is gone these many years. . . . You like horses, Ames?”
“Reckon I do. Much better than cattle.”
“How would you like to see how long you can hold a job with me?” queried Morgan, directly.
“I — well — thank you, Mr. Morgan. I — I’ll think it over,” replied Ames, in embarrassment. “But shore I’m likely a hard proposition. I cain’t keep out of fights.”
“Ames, I know men. You don’t strike me as a drinkin’, quarrelsome rider.”
“Shore I’m not either,” said Ames, quickly, and he looked straight at Lespeth. “But I’m always gettin’ mixed up in other fellows’ troubles. I just cain’t keep out of things.”
“Mr. Morgan,” interposed Heady, “Ames should have said takin’ up other peoples’ burdens.”
“You see. Heady would make you a Christian whether you will have it or not. . . . Ames, I’d like to ask a blunt question, if you will permit me?”
“Shore you can ask me anythin’,” replied Ames, with a smile. But inwardly he quaked.
“Are you a fugitive from justice?” asked the Mormon, gravely.
Ames met that kind, penetrating regard with a level glance and a clean conscience.
“No, I’m not. Years ago I shot a man to save my sister. He had relatives. An’ this I should tell you happened in the Tonto Basin, where feuds are the rule. Then, not so long ago, I took a cowboy’s petty thievin’ upon my shoulders. He was to marry the daughter of a rancher he stole from. She loved him, an’ I thought she might make a man of him. So I rode away. . . . That is the black mark on my name, Mr. Morgan.”
Ames had never told so much to any man, but he wanted thi
s fine old Mormon to know he had a clear conscience. How much the girl influenced him in this confession he found it hard to define. He had not meant to make of himself a hero, but he instantly feared that in Lespeth’s case he had done so. Solid ground seemed slipping from under his feet.
“Thank you, Ames,” returned the Mormon. “Please recall that I offered you a job before I asked you the personal question. And what you have told me only adds to my interest in you and my desire to have you work for me. . . . Come, let us go out before the light fades. I want to show you my alfalfa-fields.”
They walked through the orchards and along the fields with the afterglow of sunset reflected from the lofty eastern wall of the valley. The ranch was a rich fertile spot in the desert. Morgan’s likening it to a “milk-and-honey land” seemed felicitous.
In the twilight on the return, Ames found himself delivered to Lespeth. It was like a dream, that walk in the gathering dusk, under the shadow of the towering walls, with drowsy summer evening trilling to the melody of innumerable frogs. They walked under the cottonwoods, and it was the girl who talked — of how she loved the ranch, the horses, life in this lonely southern Utah; then of years when her father had been prosperous and she had attended school in Salt Lake City; and lastly of her father’s friendship and business relations with Gentiles.
Night fell and the round golden moon soared above the wall, silvering the dark desert. An overwhelming sense of the peace and beauty of this lonely valley flooded Ames. What a haven of rest for a tired and unhappy cowboy! But he did not deserve that, or at least the bewildering possibility which did not now seem remote. All the numberless nights of his watching and riding on the ranges plunged back upon him, as if to crowd upon him the difference between them and moonlit nights like this with the wide-eyed Lespeth.
They were left alone on the porch and Ames realized he was too silent, too unresponsive to this glorious night. And this girl of Utah.
“You spoke of a sister,” said Lespeth, softly. “What was her name?”
“Nesta. We were twins.”
“What a sweet name! Nesta. Tell me about her.”
In that hour, after the strenuous day for body and mind, Ames seemed impelled to tell that story as it lived in his heart. The girl’s interest tugged at the gates of his reserve.
Brooding mystery lay like a mantle over the valley. The fragrance of verdant fields, the music of murmuring stream, the dreaming trill of frogs, the splendor of moon-blanched walls — these were not new to Ames, but this responsive girl was, this Mormon who could ride like a cowboy, to whom hard work was natural and right. He found himself telling Nesta’s story. Lespeth’s eyes turned dark in the moonlight, her strong hands grasped Ames’, her breast rose and fell.
“You will go back some day — to see Nesta — and that boy named after you? Oh, you will go back?” she pleaded.
“Yes, some day, an’ seein’ you makes me wish it could be soon.”
“Am I like Nesta?”
“You shore are, somehow.”
Ames suddenly realized that he had a tremendous longing to take Lespeth in his arms. All at once there seemed a great aching void that she could fill. The temptation was almost overwhelming with its astoundingly fierce sweetness, its shame and its regret. What would she do? Struggle, protest, and then perhaps she would cease resisting and she would. . . . He dared not listen to his insidious imagination.
“Father likes you,” Lespeth was saying.
“Shore seems so. I’m glad. I know I like him,” returned Ames.
“Will you stay and work for him?”
“It’d be fine, but it’d hardly be fair. I shore cain’t stay long anywhere, an’ — —”
“But you might stay long — here?” she went on.
“Shore I might — at that,” said Ames, helplessly.
“We have several boys, but no rider now. Father needs one.”
“So I reckoned. I — I’d like to, but — —”
“Arizona, I will ride with you.”
He stared at her in the light of the moon. He felt as if the very fiber of his being dissolved in water.
“We shall race. I on your horse. You on mine. . . . Oh, what a race that will be!”
“Girl, you — don’t know what you ask,” he replied, almost roughly.
“I do know — and I do ask.”
“But I am only a wanderin’ cowboy,” he protested. “I have nothin’ except a horse — an’ this blood-stained gun. You’re a Mormon. Shore I’ve no religion, but your people would never accept me.”
“You are a man. Father and I will accept you.”
Ames looked sadly down upon the dreamy face. He could never hide the truth.
“Shore I’d only fetch you more trouble.”
“Stay, Arizona!” she whispered.
That seemed the moment for which all the terrible journey across the canyon had been undertaken, and the fatal crisis under Hurricane Ledge. Something rose up in him, out of the long past, it seemed, to prop his failing manhood.
“Lespeth, I’m only human. An’ I’d fall in love with you.”
“Would that be so terrible?”
“For me, an’ shore for you. Because you’ve a longin’ for you know not what. Even if you overlooked the Mormon barrier it would yet be bad. . . . Like as not one of the enemies I’ve made would cross my trail again. . . . Always that step on my trail, Lespeth! It would be disgrace for one of your creed. . . . No, lass, I’d better leave in the mawnin’.”
“But — if I am like Nesta?”
* * * * *
That sweet, almost insurmountable appeal rang in Ames’ sleepless ears all night, mingling with the tinkle of the running water and the rustle of the leaves, rang still in the soft dark dawn when he rode away like a guilty man, torn by doubts, sustained only by the conviction that he was doing what was right.
CHAPTER XIII
AUTUMN BURNED CRIMSON and gold and purple in the valley of the Troublesome.
The noisy, quarrelsome stream might have had a quiet birth somewhere up in the Flat Tops of Colorado, but when it emerged from the rocks to wind its swift course down between the great grassy timberless hills, it fretted here and roared there, tarried surlily in a bend only to rush on, jealous of time, and pour its amber current over a succession of low falls, step by step, petulant and reluctant, at last to race in a long frothy incline by the only habitation of the valley — Halstead’s ranch — and thunder its wrath into the dark green gorge below.
Forest fire in bygone years had denuded these numberless slopes, some of which rolled up to the dignity of mountains. No green trees were left on the heights, but in patches branchless bare poles, sharp as masts, some charred black and others bleached white, stood silent, ghastly, mute monuments to the archenemy of the woodland. Everywhere, on all the slopes, fallen timber lay in windrows, thick as fence pickets, up to the scattered groves of aspens, saplings grown since the fire, and now shining exquisitely gold and white in the sunlight. Of late years grass had sprung between the fallen trees.
And since Esther Halstead had left school in Denver, to take her mother’s place in Halstead’s household, each succeeding year had added more grass to the burned slopes; and amber moss and scarlet vines, and the beautiful blue lupine, and such amazing and glorious beds of purple asters and Indian paint-brush and columbines that never bloomed so profusely anywhere else on earth.
So Esther thought, as she feasted her eyes upon the autumn hills. Winter was a long, cold, shut-in season at that altitude, and though Esther thrilled to see the lines of elk troop down the snowy white slopes and the mountain sheep come to the garden with the deer, she did not love the Colorado winter. Spring was raw, wet, windy, muddy — a trying time for new ranchers in a new country. Summer was wonderful, but fall a time of enchantment.
Esther needed some compensations for the trials and hardships of this lonely life. She had been born and brought up in Missouri, had attended school there from six years of age until twelve,
when, owing to the failing health of her mother, she had journeyed with her family across the plains to Denver, where they lived awhile and she went to school again. Then John Halstead had adventured into the wild northwest corner of Colorado, first lured by the gold-fields at Yampa. Later he had wisely settled down to learn the less glamorous but more stable value of the soil.
At fifteen Esther had come to Troublesome to take charge of the children and otherwise, as best she could, to make up to them and her father for their mutual loss. She was now nineteen, and not the eldest, for Fred was two years her senior. He scarcely counted, however, as far as the manifold tasks were concerned, though when he was at home he did keep the household supplied with fresh meat. Fred had reacted disappointingly to ranch life, which had been his father’s hope for him. He had fallen into questionable habits with young men of Yampa, the mining town a day’s round journey from Troublesome. Then there were Ronald, aged six, and Brown, a year older, and their sister Gertrude, who was nine, all of whom Esther had to try to control and teach. Her great difficulty lay in restraining them from running wild, a task which required a never-ceasing vigilance and restraint. These children were doing their best to revert to the wild, something Fred had already succumbed to, and to which Esther herself had strange secret leanings.
In winter-time she managed to make them study and learn. But the other seasons were blank so far as education was concerned, unless contact with wild nature held some elements of education. Ronald was a born hunter, Brown had a passion to fish, and Gertrude loved the wild flowers, of which there were a hundred varieties at Troublesome.
The circumstances of the Halsteads were still comfortable, though of late Esther had reason to be concerned. They had a camp cook, Joe Cabel, a most excellent cook, a man with the kindest of hearts, the most amiable of dispositions, and a vast sense of humor. But he had one glaring fault. He could not distinguish between profanity and the ordinary use of words. From him the children were beginning to learn the most terrible language, which was Esther’s despair. At present Halstead employed a teamster, a farmer, and two riders; and he was wont to say that he accomplished more work than all of them.