by Zane Grey
“Shore. But her name’s Gloriana.”
“An’ she’s a city girl from the East?”
“Yes. An’, Jed, she’s come to live out West always.”
“Fine, if you can keep her. Proudlookin’ lass! Won’t this little adventure sicken her on the West?”
“It’ll be the best thing that ever happened to her,” avowed Molly, with bright eyes. “Jed, she shore was aboot the proudest girl I ever met. An’ Jim’s sister. His family, really! Gosh! it was hard on me. I made a mess of things. Jed, I went back on Jim because I thought I wasn’t good enough for him — for his aristocratic family. But he kidnapped me — thank the good Lord. I reckon I was jealous, too.”
“Small wonder, Molly. It was tough on you — to stack up against these Trafts, you just fresh from the Cibeque. But you’re good enough fer anybody, Molly Dunn. I shore hope it’ll come out all right.”
“Oh, it will, Jed,” replied Molly, hopefully. “Glory has a heart of gold. I love her — an’ indeed I believe she’s comin’ to love me. But she can’t savvy me. Heah I’ve had only two years schoolin’, an’ lived all my life in a log cabin no better’n this, almost. Never had any clothes or nothin’. An’ she has had everythin’. Uncle Jim says the West will win her an’ thet she an’ I will get along an’ be sisters soon as Glory is broke in. He says she must get up against the real old West — you know, an’ thet will strike the balance. I don’t savvy jest what Uncle Jim means, but I believe him.”
“Molly, I reckon I savvy what Uncle Jim is drivin’ at,” replied Stone, smiling thoughtfully at the earnest girl. “The real old West means hard knocks, like this one she’s gettin’, cowboys an’ cattle, work when you want to drop, an’ no sleep when you’re dyin’ fer it. Cold an’ wet an’ dust an’ wind! To be starved! To be scared stiff!...A hundred things thet are nothin’ at all to you, Molly Dunn, are what this city girl needs.”
“Jed, thet’s exactly what Uncle says...I’m to marry Jim soon,” she went on, with a blush. “They all wanted it this spring, but I coaxed off till fall.”
“Ahuh. I reckon you love him heaps, Molly?”
“Oh! — I’m not really Molly Dunn any more. I’ve lost myself. I’m happy, though, Jed. I’m goin’ to school. An’ if only Glory could see me as I see her!”
“Wal, I’ll help her see you true, Molly,” returned Stone, patting her hand. “Now, I’d better go outside while you fetch her to. Sight of the desperado who came a-rarin’ in here, swearin’ an’ shootin’, mightn’t be good.”
“Jed, she was simply crazy aboot desperadoes,” said Molly, “An’ I honestly believe she was tickled when Malloy carried us off. Leastways, she was till he got to pawin’ her.”
“Dog-gone! Thet’s good...Now, Molly, don’t you say one word aboot me till I think it over. I’ll go outside an’ see to my horse. An’ when she’s all right, you come out to tell me. Mebbe by then I’ll have a plan.”
“Jed Stone, never in my life — an’ I’ve always know you — did I ever think of you as a rustler, a killer, a bad man. An’ now I know you’re not really.”
“Thanks, Molly; thet’ll be sweet to remember,” he replied. “Fetch her to, now, an’ say nothin’.”
Stone went outside, unsaddled his horse and turned him loose, then walked to and fro, in his characteristic way when deep in thought. Presently Molly came running to him. What pleasure that afforded the outlaw whose life had been lived apart from the influence of women!
“She’s come to, Jed. An’ she’s not so knocked out as I reckoned she’d be,” said the girl, happily. “I darn near exploded keepin’ our secret — thet we’re safe with you an’ will start in the mawnin’ fer Yellow Jacket.”
“Wal now, Molly Dunn, you stick to me,” rejoined Stone, eagerly. “We’ll let on I’m wuss than Croak — thet I jest killed them fellars an drove the third off so I could have you girls to myself. It’s a good three-day ride to Yellow Jacket, fer you, anyhow. Thet gives us time to cure Miss Gloriana of all her bringin’-up. I’ll be real shore enough desperado — up to a certain point. Savvy, Molly?”
“Oh, Jed, if I only dared do it!” exclaimed Molly, pale with excitement. How her dark eyes glowed! “But she’ll suffer. An’ — an’ I love her so!”
“Shore. All the same, if she’s got the real stuff in her thet’s the way to fetch it out. It’s the only way, Molly, to strike thet balance between you an’ her which your Uncle meant. If you’ve got the nerve, girl, an’ do your part, you’ll never regret it.”
“Jed, you don’t mean never to tell Glory you’re good instead of bad. I couldn’t agree to thet.”
“Wal of course, she’s bound to find out sometime thet I’m not so bad, after all. But I’d advise you to put Uncle Jim wise an’ keep the secret for a while. Molly, I’ll be disappointed in you if you fall down on this chance. I’ll bet you young Jim would jump at it.”
“He would — he would,” panted Molly. “Jed, Heaven forgive me — I’ll do it. I’ll trust you an’ do my part.”
“Thet’s like a girl of the Cibeque,” replied Jed, heartily. “Go back now, an’ tell her you both have fallen out of the fryin’-pan into the fire.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
STONE ENTERED THE cabin, as once he had seen the villain in a melodrama. The Traft girl was sitting up, with Molly fluttering around her. He sustained a shock — like wind rushing back through his veins to his heart. It was as if he had not before seen this girl. In all his life such eyes had never before met his. They were large, dark violet, strained with an expression which might have been horror or terror, or fascination. How wondrously lovely. Stone doubted that he could play his part before their gaze.
“Wal, what’d this Dunn kid tell you?” he demanded, with a fierce glare.
“Oh — sir — she said you — you were Jed Stone, the desperado,” faltered the girl, in haste. “That we’d fallen out of the frying-pan into the fire — that you killed those men so you could have us all — to yourself.”
“Correct. An’ now what do you think?” queried Stone, studying the girl. She was frightened, and still under the influence of shock, but she was no fool.
“Think? About — what?”
“Why, your new owner, of course. Reckon I always was jealous of Croak Malloy — of his gun-play an’ his way with wimmen.”
“Mister Stone, when you came in this cabin — when that little beast was tearing my clothes off — I knew you were going to save me from him.”
“Wal, you’re the smart girl,” he replied, and almost wavered before those searching, imploring eyes. “Shore I was.” Then he reached down with a slow hand and clutched the front of her blouse and jerked her to her feet. Holding her to the light, he bent his face closer to her. “You’re a beautiful thing, but are you good?”
“Good?...I think so — I hope so.”
“Wal, you gotta know if I ask you. Are you a good girl?”
“Yes, sir, if I understand you.”
“Wal, thet’s fine. I’ve shore been hungry fer one of your kind. Molly Dunn there, she’s a Western kid, an’ a little wildcat thet’s not afraid of desperadoes. She comes of the raw West, same as me. She’ll furnish game fer me. But you’re different. You belong to the class that made me an outlaw. An’ I’m gonna take twenty years of shame an’ sufferin’ out on you...Make you slave for me!...Make you love me! Beat you! Drag you down.”
She sagged under his grasp, without which she would have fallen. Her face could not have been any whiter. “I — I am at your mercy...But, for God’s sake if you had the manhood to kill those brutes — can’t you have enough to spare us?”
“If you’re gonner flop over an’ faint every time I grab you or speak to you this’ll be a picnic fer me,” he said, disgustedly. “Where’s your Traft nerve? Thet brother of yours, young Jim, has shore got nerve. He braced me an’ my whole outfit. Come right to us, an’ without a gun. I shore liked him. Thet was the day he knocked the stuffin’s out of Croak Malloy...No, Gloriana, you ain�
��t no real Traft.”
That stung red into her marble cheeks and a blaze to her wonderful eyes.
“I haven’t had half a chance,” she flashed, as much to herself as to him.
“You’d never make a go of the West, even if you hadn’t had the bad luck to run into Jed Stone,” he went on. “You’re too stuck up. You think you’re too good fer plain Western folks, like Molly there, an’ her brother, an’ me, an’ Curly Prentiss. An’ you really ain’t good enough. Because here it’s what you can do thet counts. Wal, I’ll bet you cain’t do much. An’ I’m shore gonna see. Come hyar!”
He dragged her across the floor to the fireplace, where Madden had opened packs and spread utensils and supplies.
“Get down on your knees, you white-faced Easterner,” he ordered, forcing her down. “Bake biscuits fer me. If they ain’t good I’ll beat you. An’ fry meat an’ boil coffee. Savvy.”
With trembling hands she rolled up her sleeves and began to knead the flour Madden had left in the pan. Stone observed that she was not so helpless and useless as he had supposed. Then he turned to Molly.
“Wal, my dusky lass, you can amoose me while Gloriana does the housework.”
“I shore won’t. Stay away from me!” shouted Molly, bristling like a porcupine. When Stone attempted to lay hold of her person she eluded him, and catching up a pan she flung it with unerring aim. Stone dodged, but it took him on the back of the head with a great clang, and then banged to the floor.
“You’ll pay fer thet, you darned little hussy,” he roared, and made at her.
Then followed a wild chase around the cabin, that to an observer who was not obsessed with fear, as was Gloriana, would have been screamingly funny. As an actor Jed was genuine, but he was as heavy on his feet as an ox, and he had to face the brunt of missiles Molly threw, that never failed to connect with some part of his anatomy. When she hit him on the knee with a heavy fruit-can he let out a bawl of honest protest. Molly finally ran behind the half-partition which projected out from the wall, and here allowed Jed to catch her. The partition was constructed of brush. He tore out a long bough and cracked the wall with it.
“Take thet — you darned — little Apache squaw,” he panted, and he whacked away with his switch. Then he bent over Molly, who was convulsed on the pine-needle floor, and whispered in her ear, “Yell — scream!”
Whereupon Molly obeyed! “Ah...Oh!...Ouu!”
Stone paused for effectiveness, while he peeped through the screen. Gloriana knelt erect, her breast heaving, her eyes wildly magnificent. They were searching round for a weapon, Jed concluded.
“Now — Molly Dunn — mebbe thet’ll learn you not to monkey with Jed Stone...Come hyar, an’ kiss me.”
He had to shake her to keep her remembering her part. Stone made smacking sounds with his lips, capital imitations of lusty kisses.
“Oh — you crazy desperado!” burst out Molly, choking. “Jim Traft — will kill you — for this!”
“Haw haw! Thet’s funny...Now, you be good fer a minnit.” Whereupon he picked her up and carried her, along with the wicked whip, out to the couch, where he dropped her like a sack of potatoes. Molly’s face was a spectacle. It was wet and working. She hid it on the green spruce boughs and then she kicked like a furious colt. Her smothered imprecations sounded like: “Brute! Beast! Coyote! Skunk!”
Stone had made a discovery. His keen sight caught Gloriana concealing the butcher knife, clutched in her hand and half-hidden in the folds of her dress. She, too, was a spectacle to behold, but beautiful and marvellous to him — her spirit so much greater than her strength.
“Say, what’re you goin’ to do with thet knife?” demanded Stone.
“You’re no desperado! You’re a dog,” she cried. “If you lay hand on Molly again I — I’ll kill you.”
Here indeed was a quick answer to the primitive instincts Stone and Molly had wished to rouse in the Eastern girl. Indeed, Stone thought she might develop too fast and spoil the game. Most assuredly she had to be intimidated. “You’d murder me — you white-faced panther?” he shouted, ferociously. “Drop thet knife!” And whipping out his gun he fired, apparently pointblank at her; but he knew the bullet would hit the bucket of water. The crash in the encompassing cabin walls was loud. Gloriana not only dropped the knife — she dropped herself. However, she did not quite faint. Stone lifted her up, with feelings vastly different from what he pretended, and then he made a show of collecting everything around which she might have used as a weapon.
“Get back to work,” he ordered.
She weakly brushed back her amber hair, leaving a white blot of flour on it and her forehead, and then went at the biscuit dough again.
“Say, darlin’, did you wash them slim little paws of yourn?” asked Stone, suddenly.
“No. I — I never thought to,” she faltered.
“Wal, you wash them. There’s the washpan...What’re you tryin’ to do — poison me with dirty hands? I’ll have you know, Gloriana Traft, thet I’m a clean desperado, an’ any woman who cooks fer me has gotta be spick an’ span.”
Then Stone searched among the packs to find a short-handled shovel, with which he proposed to dig Croak Malloy’s grave. The thing was monstrously impelling. Jed Stone digging Croak Malloy’s grave! Arizona would learn that some day, and the range-riders would marvel as they talked about the campfires, adding bit by bit to the story of the doom of the Hash-Knife.
The job done, he placed a huge rock at the foot of the grave, with the prophetic remark: “Shore some wag of a cowpuncher will plant a haidpiece.”
Whereupon Jed’s active mind reverted to the issue in the cabin, and on the way back he picked up a good-size stone which he concealed under his coat. The light of blazing pine cones revealed the two girls working frantically to get supper for him. He caught the tail end of Molly’s conversation: “an’ no use lyin’, Glory — I’m as scared as you.”
“O Heaven! how false men are!” sighed Glory. “When this desperado came in I had a wild thought he was a hero.”
“Hey, don’t talk aboot me,” put in Stone. “I’m a sensitive man.”
Silence ensued then. The girls did not look up. And Stone, profiting by this, threw some sacks over the blood pools on the hard-packed clay floor. Also he surreptitiously laid the stone on the box seat where he intended to sit at the rickety old rough-hewn table. This he cleared by piling Malloy’s trappings on the ground, and covering these with the cleanest piece of canvas he could find. Then he sat down to watch and wait. He realised he had fallen upon the most delicious situation of his life — if he had ever had one before — and he wanted to live every second of it to the full. Finally the girls put the supper on the table.
“Thet’s right, wait on me, Gloriana,” he said. “An’ you, Molly, set down an’ eat...Gimme one of them turrible-lookin’ biscuits...Ou! Hot!”
He contrived to drop the biscuit and at the same instant push the heavy rock off the box seat. It fell with a solid thump. Gloriana actually jumped. Her eyes opened wide.
“Golly! Did you heah thet biscuit hit?” ejaculated Stone, as if dumbfounded.
“I heahed somethin’ heavy,” corroborated Molly, serious-faced, but her sweet red lips slightly twitched.
“Say, gurl, air you aimin’ to poison me?” demanded Stone, suspiciously. “What’n hell did you put in thet biscuit?”
Gloriana stammered something, and then walking round the table she espied the rock, which, unfortunately, had fallen upon the biscuit.
“It was a rock,” she said, slowly.
“Wal, dog-gone! So it was. Must have been on the box. I shore didn’t see it...I offer my humble apologies, Miss Traft.”
No doubt Gloriana’s mind was so steeped in fright that it could not function normally, yet she gazed with dubious tragic eyes at the desperado.
“Wal,” he drawled, when he could eat no more, as he transfixed Gloriana with eyes he tried to make devouring, “if you can love as well as cook, I’m shore a luck
y desperado...Get out now and I’ll wash up. No sweethearts of mine ever had to do the dirty work round my camp.”
While he was noisily banging pans, cups, and other utensils around his trained ear caught Gloriana’s whisper, “Now — let’s run!”
“An’ get lost in the woods — for bears to eat!” whispered Molly.
Stone dried the camp utensils and placed them on the shelf, after which he washed his hands, in hot water.
“Put some wood on the fire,” he said, filling his black pipe. “Pass me a red coal on a chip...Thet’s it, darlin’; you’re shore learnin’ fast.”
“Spread some blankets on the bed there,” he said, pointing to the pack he had opened. While this order was being complied with he puffed his pipe, and opened his big hands to the fire with an air of content. Molly’s reproachful glance might have been lost upon him. Jed reasoned it out that the little Cibeque girl had lived too long among Western men to trust him wholly. That gave Stone more thrills. He would fool Molly, too. At length he got up to view the bed.
“Kinds narrow fer three to sleep comfortable,” he said, laconically. “I always wear my boots an’ spurs to bed — in case I have to hurry to a hoss — an’ I kick when I have nightmare. But I reckon there’s room fer two. Now, Molly, you an’ Gloriana draw lots to see who’ll sleep fust night with me.”
“Jed Stone, I’ll see you in hell before I’d do it,” cried Molly, passionately. “You’ll have to tie me, hand an’ foot.”
“Wal, you needn’t take my head off. I kinda lean to Glory, anyhow.”
Gloriana gazed at him with eyes full of a sickening horror and desperate defiance.
“You’ll have to kill me — you monster!” she said, hoarsely.
“Wal, both buckin’ on me, huh,” replied Stone, as if resigned to the nature of women. “All right, I don’t want no tied gurl sleepin’ with me, an’ shore no daid one. So I’ll pass. You can sleep together, an’ I’ll be a gentleman an’ go outdoors.”
Stone picked up one of the bed rolls, and carrying it out back through the open side of the cabin he unrolled it in the gloom of the cliff and stretched himself as if he never meant to move again. He could see the flicker of the firelight on one wall of the cabin, but the girls were out of his sight. He heard their low voices for what seemed a long time.