by Zane Grey
“By Jove! So that’s your trouble. Does Helen know?”
“Yes, I told her. It was after she asked me to come and stay at Star Ranch. Said she would never feel safe again unless I came. So I had to tell her.”
“Declare I don’t blame her. I’d feel a little safer myself. That devil Hays left his trade-mark on me. Look here. . . . By thunder! Wall, it’s a blooming mix. I understand you, and think you’re a man to respect and like. Can’t we get around the trouble somehow?”
“There is no way, Herrick.”
“Helen has her own sweet will about everything. If she wants you to stay, you’ll stay, that I can assure you. Is there any honorable reason why you ought not stay — outside of this unfortunate attachment to Helen?”
“I leave you to be judge of that,” replied Jim, and briefly related the story of his life.
“Deuced interesting, by Jove! Let’s drink to it.”
“One more, then,” laughed Jim, with a load off his mind. Somehow he had wanted to stand clear and fair in this Englishman’s sight.
“Damn me, I like your West. I like you Westerners!” Herrick exploded. “Whatever Helen wants is quite right with me. . . . I can’t conceive of her insisting on your staying here — unless there is hope for you.”
“My God! That is wild, Herrick. I can’t conceive of such a thing. It wouldn’t be fair to take her seriously — after the horror she’s been through — and her intense gratefulness.”
“Beyond me! — Let’s have another drink.”
Long Jim paced to and fro under the rustling pines that night, favoring the shadow because the stars somehow mocked him. Yet a sense of worthiness, almost happiness, abided with him for the first time in many years. Who was he to have had such an opportunity, not only to do good, but to lift himself out of the depths? His gratitude to chance, to life, to whatever had guided him, was intense.
The ordeal was over. It seemed scarcely likely that the Herricks would be subjected to another such raid. Such things as Hank Hays had evolved never happened twice in the same place. Jim felt it incumbent upon him to give Herrick some strong advice about running a ranch. For a moment Jim allowed himself the pleasure of dreaming over what a wonderful and paying ranch he could make it, had circumstances permitted him to accept Herrick’s offer.
As for himself and his future, he had a singular optimism. He felt the meanest of labor could never detract from the glory and the dream of the thing that was his. Some men never lived at all; a few lived well or ill; it was given to one here and there to live some extraordinary experience that sufficed for all the remaining years.
The rangeland and the ranch-house were locked in slumber. Jim listened for the old familiar night sounds, but the only one was the song of the pines. That seemed everlasting. Pine needles, like aspen leaves, were never still. At length Jim repaired to the room assigned him by Herrick, and having extended his powers of mind and body to their limit he dropped into heavy slumber.
When he awakened it was the sense that during his sleep something vital had been decided for him. Star Ranch would see the last of him that day, if he had to walk away.
As he dressed, his thoughts dwelt upon Helen. Probably he would spend most of his waking hours with her in mind, from this day on. But what a beautiful and incomprehensible woman! At supper she had appeared in a white gown, in which he did not know her, so lovely was she. Not a word, not a sign that the Robbers’ Roost incident had ever transpired! How was it possible for any woman to hide emotions that still could not be effaced? But Jim paid mute tribute to the nerve and poise of these English. As soon as they learned the West they would fit into it, and by their character and work make it better.
Helen came in to breakfast attired in the riding-habit she had worn on that never-to-be-forgotten day of their last ride. She was cool, sweet, and her eyes were audacious. The thrill that enveloped Jim’s frame seemed equivalent to a collapse of bone and muscle and structure.
“By Jove!” exclaimed Herrick. “If I were you, I’d never want to ride again.”
After greeting her, Jim could only look his admiration and wonder.
“I am taking up my ranch life where it left off — with reservations from sad experience,” replied Helen, as she took her seat. “Bernie, we had to trade Jim’s horse, Bay. What can he ride today?”
“He may take his choice. There are any number of good beasts.”
“By the way, Jim, I told Tasker to follow us at once with our horses. I shall treasure that horse, Bay. A robber’s horse! . . . Tasker ought to be here soon, maybe tomorrow.”
Jim felt the solid earth slipping from under his feet.
“I expected to leave today,” he said, casually. “But I’ll wait till tomorrow. Bay is a horse I hated to part with.”
“So soon!” exclaimed Helen, with dark inscrutable eyes on him.
“You are home. All is well with you. . . . I must be on my way.” It seemed a forced, cold speech from a man inwardly burning.
“Bernie, could you not induce Jim to stay?” she queried.
Herrick waved a deprecatory hand and went on with his breakfast. She smiled at Jim as if in explanation. “Bernie has consented to let me share his ranching enterprise. I’d like to see it pay — a reasonable interest, at least. And I have rather conceived the idea that it’d be difficult, if not impossible, without you.”
“Not at all,” replied Jim, constrainedly.
Presently she arose. “Come, let us ride. We can discuss it better in the saddle. . . . Bernie, will you come?”
“No, thank you. I want to stow away all that money Wall returned to me,” rejoined Herrick, and as Jim followed Helen out, he called after them. “Jim, look out for kidnappers!”
“Whatever did he mean by that?” ejaculated Jim as they went down the steps of the porch.
Helen laughed. “Bernie is clumsy in humor. I rather think he meant I might try Hank Hays’ way with you. . . . Jim, entirely aside from my wishes, my brother wants you to stay. He needs a man he can trust — one who can see through these riders — especially one who will be feared by those with reason to fear.”
Jim could not find his tongue. He was vastly concerned with this ride. After it, would he be as strong as he was now? To be near her —
Barnes led the onslaught of ranch-hands upon Helen, and the welcome she received could not have been anything but gratifying. Helen replied to one and all, and ended with the simple statement, subtle as it was strong: “Hays made way with me to Robbers’ Roost. Heeseman trailed us. There was a fight, which wiped out all of Hays’ gang and most of Heeseman’s. Jim killed Hays and brought me home.”
Barnes gave Jim such a glance as a man might receive once in his life. “All the time I knowed it! Shore all the time!”
He did not vouchsafe what he knew and perhaps from any point of view that was superfluous.
Soon Helen was mounted. “Barnes, we will not want the hounds or any attendants today. I cannot ride far or long.”
Jim got on the horse Barnes saddled for him and followed Helen, who, to his surprise, took the road back up to the ranch-house. Perhaps she had forgotten something. But when he turned the bend she was mounting the trail that led up the ridge. If there had been giants on huge steeds pulling Jim back, he still would have kept on. When they got up to the level ridge, among the pines, he trotted to catch up with her. But she kept a little ahead. Jim’s thoughts locked around one astounding fact — this was the trail they had ridden down, after that encounter when he had kissed her. Sight and hearing, his sense of all around him, seemed strangely intensified. The pines whispered, the rocks had a secret voice, the sky burned blue, the white clouds sailed, the black Henrys loomed above, and the purple-gray valley deepened its colors below. There was as much presagement in the air as on the day he plunged down the slope into Robbers’ Roost with the news that the enemy was upon them. But how vastly different!
Helen halted her horse under the very pine where they had stopped to listen to t
he hounds and cowboys racing up the ridge after the deer.
“My sense of direction seems to be all right,” said Helen, turning to face him. But her flashing eyes and her pallor rendered her levity null.
“Helen, I fear it’s better than your sense — of kindness, let me say. . . . Why did you bring me here?”
“Please look at my cinch,” she replied, coolly.
Jim dismounted, more unsure of himself than ever in any of the many crucial moments of his career. He did not understand a woman. He could only take Helen literally.
Her saddle-cinch was all right, and he rather curtly told her so.
“Then — maybe it’s my stirrup,” she went on, lightly, as she removed her booted and spurred foot.
“Well, I can’t see anything wrong with that, either. . . . Helen. . . .”
Something thudded on the ground. Her gloves and her sombrero. But they surely had not fallen. She had flung them! A wave as irresistible as the force of the sea burst over him. But he looked up, outwardly cool. And as he did, her ungloved hand went to his shoulder.
“Nothing — the matter with — your stirrup,” he said, huskily.
“No. After all, it’s not my cinch — nor my stirrup. . . . Jim, could any of your Western girls have done better than this?”
“Than what?”
“Than fetching you here — to this place — where it happened.”
“Yes. They would have been more merciful.”
“But since I love you—”
“You are mad,” he cried.
“And since I want you — presently — to behave somewhat like you did that day.”
He reeled under that. The truth was almost overwhelming. The strong, earnest light of her eyes told more than her words. Her pallor had vanished. She was no longer cool.
“Jim, you might have saved me this — this abandon. But perhaps it is just as well. You are laboring under some delusion that I must dispel. . . . I want you — ask you to stay.”
“If you are sure — I will stay. Only, for God’s sake, don’t let it be anything but — but—”
“Love,” she added. “Jim, I am sure. If I were going back to England, I would want you to go, just the same. . . . It’s what you are that has made me love you. There need be no leveling. I lived years down in Robbers’ Roost. That changed me — blew the cobwebs out of my brain. This hard, wonderful West and you are alike. I want both.”
“But I am nobody. . . . I have nothing,” he cried, haltingly.
“You have everything a woman needs to make her happy and keep her safe. The fact that I did not know what these things really were until lately should not be held against me.”
“But it might be generosity — pity — the necessity of a woman of your kind to — to pay.”
“True. It might be. Only it isn’t. . . . I brought you here!”
Jim wrapped his arms around her, and for the reason that he was ashamed to betray the tears which blinded his eyes he buried his face in her lap, and mumbled that he would worship her to his dying breath and in the life beyond.
She ran soft ungloved hands through his hair and over his temples. “People, cities, my humdrum existence, had palled on me. I wanted romance, adventure, love. . . . Jim, I regard myself just as fortunate as you think you are. . . . Lift me off. We’ll sit awhile under our pine tree. . . . Jim, hold me as you did that other time — here!”
THE END
The Hash Knife Outfit
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER ONE
IT WAS A rainy November night down on the Cottonwood. The wind complained in the pines outside the cabin and whispered under the eaves. A fine cold mist blew in the open chinks between the logs. But the ruddy cedar fire in the huge stone fireplace gave the interior of the cabin a comfortable aspect and shone brightly upon the inmates scattered around. A coffee-pot steamed on some coals; browned biscuits showed in an open iron oven; and thick slices of beef mingled a savoury odour with the smoke. The men, however, were busy on pipes and cigarettes, evidently having finished supper.
“Reckon this storm looks like an early winter,” remarked Jed Stone, leader of the outfit. He stood to one side of the fire, a fine, lithe figure of a man, still a cowboy, despite his forty years and more of hard Arizona life. His profile, sharp in the fire glow, was strong and clean, in no way hinting of the evil repute that had long recorded him an outlaw. When he turned to pick up a burning ember for his pipe the bright blaze shone on light, rather scant hair, on light eyes, and a striking face devoid of beard.
“Wal, early or late, I never seen no bad weather down hyar,” replied a man back in the shadow.
“Huh! Much you know about the Mogollans. I’ve seen a hell of a winter right here,” spoke up another, in a deep chesty voice. “An’ I’ll be trackin’ somethin’ beside hoofs in a couple of days.” This from the hunter Anderson, known to his comrades as Tracks, who had lived longer than any of the others in this wild section, seemed to strengthen Stone’s intimation. Anderson was a serious man, long matured, as showed in the white in his black beard. He had big deep eyes which reflected the fire-light.
“I’ll bet we don’t get holed up yet awhile,” interposed Carr, the gambler of the outfit. He was a grey-faced, grey-haired man of fifty. They called him Stoneface.
“What do you say, Pecos?” inquired the leader of a long-limbed, sandy-moustached Texan who sat propped against the wall, directly opposite the fire.
“Me? ...Shore I don’t think nothin’ aboot it,” drawled Pecos.
“We might winter down in the Sierra Ancas,” said Stone, reflectively.
“Boss, somethin’s been eatin’ you ever since we had thet fight over Traft’s drift fence,” spoke up Croak Malloy, from his seat against some packs. His voice had a peculiar croaking quality, but that was certainly not wholly the reason for his significant nickname. He was the deadliest of this notorious outfit, so long a thorn in the flesh of the cattlemen whose stock ranged the Mogollans.
“I ain’t denyin’ it,” replied Stone.
“An’ why for?” complained the croaker, his crooked evil face shining in the red light. “We got off without a couple of scratches, an’ we crippled them two Diamond riders. Didn’t we lay low the last nine miles of thet fence?”
“Croak, I happen to know old Jim Traft. I rode for him twenty years ago,” answered Stone, seriously.
“Jed, as I see it, this drift fence of Traft’s has split the range. An’ there’ll be hell to pay,” snapped the other.
“Do you reckon it means another Pleasant Valley War? That was only seven years ago — thereabouts. An’ the bad blood still rankles.”
Croak Malloy’s reply was rendered indistinguishable by hot arguments of Carr and Anderson. But the little rider’s appearance seemed silently convincing. He was a small misshapen man of uncertain age, with pale eyes of fire set unevenly in a crooked face, and he looked the deadliness by which he had long been known to the range.
Just then the sodden beat of hoofs sounded outside.
“Ha! that will be Madden an’ Sonora,” said Stone, with satisfaction, and he strode to the door to call out. The answer was reassuring. He returned to the fire and held his palms to the heat. Then he turned and put his hands behind his back.
Presently a man entered the cabin, carrying a heavy pack, which he deposited against the wall, then approached the fire, to remove dripping sombr
ero and coat. This action disclosed the swarthy face and beady bright eyes of the Mexican whom Stone had called Sonora.
“Glad you’re back, Sonora,” said the leader, heartily. “How about things?”
“No good,” replied Sonora, and when he shook his head drops of rain water sputtered in the fire.
“Ahuh!” ejaculated Stone, and he leaned against the stone chimney, back in the shadow.
The other rider came in, breathing heavily under another pack, which he let fall with a thud, and approached the fire, smelling of rain and horses and the woods. He appeared to be a nondescript sort of man. Water ran off him in little streams. He hung his coat on a peg in the chimney, but did not remove his battered black sombrero from which the rain drops dripped.
“Wal, boss, me an’ Sonora got here,” he said, cheerfully.
“So I see,” returned Stone, quietly.
“Bad up on top. Snowin’ hard, but reckon it won’t last long. Too wet.”
“What you want to bet it won’t last?” queried Carr.
Madden laughed, and knelt before the fire, his huge spurs prodding his hips.
“Lemme eat,” he said. “It’ll be the first bite since yestiddy mornin’.”
The youngest of the group, a cowboy in garb and gait, rose to put more wood on the fire. It blazed up brightly. He had a weak, handsome face, with viciousness written all over it, yet strangely out of place among these hardened visages. No one need have been told why he was there.
The returned members of the outfit did not desist from appeasing their appetites until all the drink, bread, and beef were gone.
“Cleaned the platter,” ejaculated Madden. “Gosh! there’s nothin’ like a hunk of juicy salty meat when you’re starved...An’ here’s a real cigar for everybody. Nice an’ dry, too.” He tossed them to eager hands, and taking up a blazing stick he lighted one for himself, his dark face and steaming sombrero bent over the fire. Then he sat back, puffed a huge cloud of white smoke, and exclaimed: “Aghh!...Now, boss, shoot.”