by Zane Grey
Soon after daylight the three were off again. At Benton, where they arrived in time for lunch, the gentlemen had to take a branch road, leading north. They were sorry that Martha Ann could not proceed further with them. She bade them good-by regretfully, promising to send them a post card when she had safely reached her destination.
Martha Ann faced the road alone once more, on foot, and somewhat forlornly. It seemed a long time since she had hiked even a short distance. All the old apprehensions trooped back into her mind. But when she saw great dark ridges rising above the horizon, and apparently not so very far away, she began to recapture her old adventurous spirit. These were the Black Hills. They thrilled her and also frightened her. Had she not been warned that she would never get through these lonesome hills alive?
A man and woman in a Packard stopped alongside the runaway girl, and the latter asked her if she would like a ride. Martha Ann smiled gratefully, and as the driver reached back and opened the door, she got into the back seat. They introduced themselves as Mr. and Mrs. Corbett of Chicago. In replying Martha gave her name, but neglected to add her address.
“Bet you are headed for Hollywood,” chuckled Mr. Corbett.
When she told them that Wyoming, not Hollywood, was her destination, the man said: “If I really thought you were a moviestruck kid, I’d turn you over to the authorities and have you sent home.”
Martha Ann realized that this very thing could easily be done. She could not prove that she was over eighteen. She earnestly explained that she was on her way to visit an uncle in Wyoming, and that she was hiking for the fun of it and to save money.
“All right, young lady, I’ll take your word for it,” replied Mr. Corbett. “I’m in the show business myself, but I am glad you’re not another girl who wants to be a star.”
They reached the next town in time for an early dinner, and then Martha accompanied them to a movie. It featured Tom Mix and his horse, Tony, in a Western. It was a romantic story which left the Chicago girl a trifle sad. How utterly impossible for anything like this picture to happen to her! The only romance so far on this long, long journey had been Andrew Bonning’s rescue of her from the clutches of a tramp. The memory of that occasion still warmed her heart. But his rude relegation of her to the ranks of a type of girl she despised had removed any possibility of romance from the episode. Where could he be now? Long ago he had passed by her on the road, perhaps too indifferent even to offer her a lift.
Since the Corbetts were remaining in this town to have extensive repairs made on the car, Martha left next morning on foot.
The air was cold, with a decided sharpness which the young traveler attributed to the altitude. Before noon she had received three uneventful rides, which brought her up into the wooded hills. Passing the beautiful hotel at the Springs, Martha Ann longed to spend a few days there. The tourists lounging around on the verandas seemed so carefree and happy. She wondered if any of them had to work for a living or had ever worried about anything in life.
She walked on to a roadside inn, where she had lunch, and then took again to the white ribbon of road through the black forest of firs. The fragrance of these trees made her short of breath and lightheaded with exhilaration. Except for an occasional car, the road was deserted. No hikers! No campers! Suddenly Martha heard a rustling in the brush, and saw a deer walk into an open glade to stand with long ears erect and watch her warily. How wild and beautiful appeared this creature of the forests — the only one she had ever seen in her whole life. She had a great desire to wander off the road, to mount up the steep slope where the tall dark fir trees shot up straight and spear pointed. She sat down on a rock to watch the trout in a clear pool. Shafts of golden sunlight pierced through the foliage, and a breeze sighed through the trees above her head. As she sat there in the sweet silence the hum of a motor broke in upon her meditations. She heard it almost with regret. And as she rose to resume her hike she determined that some day, far out in the wilds of Wyoming, she would find perfect loneliness where neither motor nor man would interrupt her thoughts.
A huge touring car caught up with her and stopped. She heard a terrier dog barking furiously and childish voices crying out: “Ride with us. Daddy says to ask you.”
Martha turned to face a welcoming family, father and mother in the front seat, and a boy, a girl and a dog in the back.
They were so friendly, so eager to have her join them, that Martha could not refuse. When she got in between the children, however, she found them suddenly shy.
“How do you like the Black Hills?” inquired the smiling lady in front.
“Oh, I love them!” exclaimed Martha. “And I had been so scared. People back along the road predicted all sorts of terrible things.”
“Nonsense, there’s no one to hurt you. We come here often...Tell us, where are you from and where are you going? We arrived at the inn just as you were leaving. A girl hitchhiker! We are dying of curiosity.”
“My name is Martha Ann Dixon. I live in Chicago, and am on my way to Wyoming to visit an uncle.”
“What part of Wyoming?”
“Randall.”
“Don’t know it. Must be far...Have you hiked all this way from Chicago?”
“Oh, no. I took a train to Omaha.”
“I see. Why didn’t you hike all the way?”
“Guess I didn’t want to meet anyone who might know me!”
“Naughty child!” interposed the lady. “Do you go to school?”
“Yes, to the university.”
“Wonder what your professors would say — to see their star student wandering through the Black Hills?” queried the man, with a smile to his wife, as if they both were familiar with the college and its teachers.
The car climbed higher. The air grew thin and cold. Martha experienced a faint giddiness. When she caught sight of patches of snow along the road, she found herself agreeing with the children when they clamored to get out of the car. They climbed still higher, until they could look out and down over the green slopes to the variegated mosaic of farmlands far below. The driver halted the car by the side of a huge snowdrift, announcing that the radiator was boiling and that they had better stop to let it cool.
Martha marveled at the lovely white snow bank on one side of the road and on the other, wild flowers and green things growing down to a wall of fir trees. From where she sat the eye was led down to the gray and green earth far below.
“No wonder you come here often,” sighed Martha.
Shortly afterward the family had to go off the road to a camp where their children were going later in the summer. They told Martha to proceed up to the lodge, where they advised her to take the bus to Rapid City.
She walked the all too short mile up to the lodge, which she expected to find on a mountaintop, but it stood near the edge of a beautiful little lake, under a lofty tower of gray, snow-patched rock. After a short wait on the cool porch of the lodge she found the bus was ready to start. By the time the bus had reached Rapid City night had fallen, and Martha was glad to find a comfortable hotel where she had supper and went promptly to bed.
Before starting out the next morning, she went into the office of the Chamber of Commerce, and of the three smiling occupants she asked collectively: “What is the best and quickest way to get to Belle Fourche?”
“Straight from here to Deadwood and then to Spearfish,” replied one of the attendants, spreading a map on the counter. “Where you hail from?”
“Chicago.”
Many questions followed which Martha answered good-naturedly and frankly. And when they learned that she actually was on her way to Wyoming, they had several sound suggestions to offer.
“Young lady,” said one of the men, “let me fix your packsack so it will be easier for you. I am an old-timer with packsacks. And yours is on wrong.”
“I’ll be eternally grateful,” replied Martha slipping off her pack.
He went into an adjoining room and returned with straps, buckles and tools. Then
he proceeded to alter the straps on the packsack, and to add more. The other two men kept offering suggestions, and between them all they managed to get it to suit them, whereupon they tried it on their visitor.
“I’ll choke. Straps all too high,” protested Martha. “No, you just imagine that. Doesn’t it feel easier — lighter?”
“I believe it does, at that.”
“Are you going to try to make Deadwood tonight?”
“I’ll try, you can bet. I’m falling behind my schedule.”
“Perhaps I can help you out. There’s a gentleman I know, and will vouch for, who intends driving to Deadwood today. May I call him up?”
Martha consented gratefully, and was promised her lift over the phone. She sat down to wait, thinking how many kind and nice people there really were. Presently two men came in, and Martha recognized them as people she had seen up at the lodge the day before. They greeted her in the manner friendly which she had come to expect as typical of the West. After being introduced one of the strangers said, “Well, Miss, let’s go.” They carried Martha’s baggage out, and making her comfortable in the back seat, alone, they drove off.
“I’d like to ask a couple of questions, Miss,” said the one who was not driving.
“A couple? That’ll be easy. I usually have to answer a hundred. And I have a lot of stock answers.”
“Did your parents give you permission to take this long trip alone?”
“No, indeed,” Martha confessed.
“You don’t need to answer this one: Have you a gun with you?”
“Oh, n-no.”
“Or any kind of weapon?”
“I guess I haven’t anything you could call a weapon. Except my little embroidery scissors.”
Martha’s questioner gave his companion a dig in the ribs. “Hear that, Jim Dawson?”
“Sure, I heard...We’re a couple of daffy brave firemen, believe you me.”
Then they both laughed loud and long. Finally the first speaker turned to Martha again: “Miss, this probably doesn’t seem funny to you. But it struck us as funny. We’re on a little trip in the hills. We bought two shotguns, a revolver, a hatchet, a billy, and two ferocious butcher knives. Each of us weighs around one hundred and eighty pounds...And here we meet up with a wisp of a girl, pretty enough to be a movie queen, hiking the highways alone, her only weapon of defense a pair of embroidery scissors!...Can you beat it?”
“Oh, I forgot to mention my hiking boots,” said Martha demurely.
The general laugh made them all good friends and that ride seemed to Martha to be one of the best of the whole trip. At Deadwood they insisted on taking her to dinner and letting the hotel people see that she had friends. Moreover next morning early they sent up word to her room that they had engaged a ride for her with a nice old couple driving on into Wyoming. The welcome news expedited Martha’s ablutions and dressing. The farther west she got, the more she was beginning to dread the lonely hikes.
In the lobby she was approached by an elderly couple, plain, substantial people whom she trusted on sight. The man might have been a retired country merchant, and his wife appeared to be a motherly soul. She had, Martha thought, rather a sad, sweet face.
They explained that they had been instructed to introduce themselves and offer her a ride as far as Randall.
“It’s just lovely of you both,” replied Martha feelingly. “I’m a lucky girl.”
Not a word about hitchhiking, parents, running away! They had breakfast together and while Mr. Jones went to the garage to get his car Martha helped his wife get together a lunch for the day.
Soon they were off in the bright keen morning, with the dark hills of Wyoming looming on the horizon. That ride almost spoiled Martha Ann forever for hiking. The car was comfortable, the old man drove leisurely and his wife appeared to consider it her duty to entertain their guest. That night when they stopped at an auto camp, Mrs. Jones hardly let Martha out of her sight. She even came into Martha’s cottage and tucked her in bed, something that both embarrassed and touched the young hitchhiker deeply.
“You must have a young girl of your own,” suggested Martha shyly.
“We were never blessed with a child, my dear.”
Before they left the camp next morning Martha came upon her friends in earnest conversation. Her presence ended it so abruptly that she surmised that she must have been the subject of it. And again at noon, when they had lunch along the roadside and Martha stretched her legs by walking to and fro, the earnest talk between the man and his wife appeared to be resumed. She became sure of it when that night at Aladdin, where they stopped, Martha heard Mr. Jones agree to something his wife evidently had been urging most earnestly, “But don’t ask her till mornin’,” she heard him warn.
All this greatly excited Martha Ann’s curiosity. She wondered if she had better get up very early and leave for Randall without bidding these people good-by. She could not understand what urged her to do such a thing, but she refused to consider it as ungrateful. At breakfast next morning, after Mr. Jones had gone out to look after the car, Martha realized that the moment had come.
“My dear, I want to talk seriously to you,” said Mrs. Jones, placing a gentle hand on Martha’s. “Please listen and don’t be offended. I am a childless old woman, but I have known hundreds of girls. I have been a teacher, a worker in our church. John and I did not believe the story your last two traveling companions told us. I know that this hitchhike of yours is more than a lark. You are running away from home. Some misunderstanding has driven you from your relatives. You are a spirited, wild little thing, but I am sure that you are innocent. And you are singularly lovable. Everyone you meet will be drawn to you. But this very attractiveness, this independence of spirit only add to your very great danger on this reckless adventure of yours. Now John has consented to let me ask you this: Will you come with us? We are visiting relatives on a ranch, and then will go on west, stopping where and when we like, on the way to California. Come with us, Martha. And if you ever can learn to love us as we love you, and if it can be arranged with your relatives, then we will adopt you as our own.”
Martha Ann’s surprising reaction to this proposition was to burst into sudden tears. “Oh, I-I’m such a big b-baby,” cried Martha, fighting to recover her composure. “It makes me — so — so angry that people take me for a g-good girl, when I’m really such a bad...I lied to Mother! And she’s the dearest mother in all — the world. She’ll never forgive me...But how can I ever thank you and Mr. Jones for your kindness to me? You have paid me a beautiful compliment, Mrs. Jones. I wish I could be your daughter, too. I know I’d love you...But I’ve got to go on with this foolish adventure — and God only knows what will become of me.”
Martha was in Randall at last! In the excitement of reaching her destination she forgot everything else, even to thank the farmer who helped her on the last lap.
It was about eleven o’clock in the morning. Having breakfasted very early Martha elected to eat lunch. After eating, she sallied forth to ask a few questions. The first person she interrogated was not acquainted with Nick Bligh. Martha reflected that a garage man or store keeper would be certain to know of her uncle. A boy at the service station told her to ask at Toiler’s store where every rancher for miles around the country dealt. A moment later, Martha Ann stepped into the emporium and asked for Mr. Toller. She was directed to a little, lean, gray man at the back of the store.
“Mr. Toller, do you know Nicholas Bligh?” she asked.
“Wal, I reckon I do, Miss,” returned the merchant, eying the strange girl up and down with friendly interest.
“I’m his niece — Martha Ann Dixon — from Chicago. And I’ve come to visit him. I want to be directed to his ranch.”
“Wal, wal, if thet jest ain’t too bad!” ejaculated Mr. Toller. “Nick never knowed you was comin’, thet I’ll swear.”
“No. I — I wanted to surprise him,” faltered Martha Ann, her heart sinking like a leaden weight in her bre
ast.
“Wal, Miss Dixon, your uncle left his ranch on the Belle Fourche several months ago. Jest as soon as the snow thawed. Drove his cattle south an’ west to a new range!”
“Gone! Oh, why did he leave his ranch?” cried Martha Ann on the verge of tears.
“Wal, bad luck one way an’ t’ other. Nick was no hand to keep cowboys an’ his stock got lost, mired in quicksand, an’ stole till he got mad an’ pulled up stakes. Reckon it was a good move.”
“Where did he go?” asked Martha Ann.
“Down on the Sweetwater — the best damn range in Wyomin’,” replied Mr. Toller. “He left his address. Split Rock is the Post Office.”
“How — far?”
“Matter of three hundred odd miles, I reckon, Miss.”
“So far!” Martha almost wailed. To travel three hundred miles in this rough country had taken her days, since she had had to hike part of the way. It was too discouraging! Martha had been having such good fortune of late that she was unprepared for such a blow as this.
“Yes, pretty far, an’ roundabout. But outside of a couple of short runs, like from here to Beulah, travel is all on state highways. Can be drove in a day — if you want to hire a car.”
“I’ve been hiking — and getting rides — when I could.”
“Miss, you can’t hike any more. Not safe. You’d be caught out all night.”
“But I’ll have to walk. I’ve no money — to hire a car,” faltered Martha, tears of disappointment trembling in her eyes.
“Then you’ll have to beg a ride, Miss Dixon. Perhaps I—”
“Thank you,” mumbled Martha, and fearful of breaking down before Mr. Toller and the clerks, she hastily left the store. What in the world could she do? Of course she could only go on as she had come thus far, but the distance was so great and her disappointment so keen that for the moment she simply could not face the problem. Blinded by tears Martha made slow progress to a bench at a filling station, and there she sat down, feeling very sorry for herself. She had just about decided to go back to Toller’s store when a young man came running up to her.