by Zane Grey
Passing through the high archway at the rear of the house, Gene entered the patio. It appeared a dusky jungle of dark verdure, running water, drowsy twittering of sleepy birds, and odorous fragrance. A savory smell wafted from the kitchen where he heard the servants talking in their low voices. When Gene crossed the wide porch to enter Madeline’s sitting room, the newspapers to which Nels had objected did not show among the large quantity of mail. Madeline had heard his step on the porch and had come to meet him. Love for this patrician woman who as a girl had forsaken the East to make his country and his life hers, and pride in her well-preserved beauty and charm, seemed to be strong and moving emotions at the moment when these disclosures about their only child had to be made. Would Madge be another Madeline? There was gray visible in Madeline’s hair and lines had begun to show in the handsome face. But the light in her lustrous eyes appeared as soft and glad as in her youth.
“Gene!” she exclaimed, kissing him. “A whole day late!... You look tired — worried.”
“Howdy, Madeline,” replied Gene, laying the bundles and packets of mail on the table. “Yes, I’m tired — and worried. Bad news, Wife. It never rains but it pours. Lawson failed, Madeline. Gone into bankruptcy. No hope of money. I’ll have to sell some stock. Nels advises selling all my herd.... That’s nothing though. I’ve got a big surprise for you. Madge is coming home.”
“Madge! Coming home? Why? What has she done now, Gene?” rejoined Madeline, quietly.
“Got herself expelled from college,” Gene blurted out, knowing that he should have broken the news more gently, but incapable of the guile necessary to spare his wife’s feelings.
“Oh, no! Not on the eve of her graduation? June eleventh.”
“Yes. It’s tough, but maybe not so bad as it seems. Here’s her letter and telegrams to me. Read them before you open yours.”
Gene went into his office, which adjoined the sitting room, turned on the lights, and laid all his unopened mail, and some business papers upon his table. Then he repaired to his room to wash and change for the evening meal. He took plenty of time about this, his thoughts under the dominance of gloom. Presently Madeline called him to supper, and he found her in the dining room. If he had expected her to be cast down he was agreeably surprised.
“I ought to be hungry,” he said. “Most forgot to eat in town.” And he asked Madeline questions pertaining to the ranch during his absence. Nothing had happened. The drowsy languorous summer had come and the tranquil tenor of the lonely range land had not been broken. When Gene had finished a hearty meal he suggested that they go into the sitting room and get it over.
“Dear, it will never be over until you change your habit of mind,” she replied, sweetly. “You always look upon the dark side.”
“Madeline, this time of trouble has brought back the Gene Stewart of other and darker days.”
“It should not. You have made me perfectly happy for more than twenty years. Loss of money, for you and me, is nothing.”
“Madeline, I could take my losses without.... But it’s yours that distress me. All your life you have had luxury. You were born to it. This last year and more you’ve been using your money to pad Madge’s bank account. She keeps overdrawing her income and you keep from telling her that her income isn’t one with what it was. Now through me and that spendthrift girl of ours you must suffer. When the depression hit us you should have told Madge the truth. How much her income had fallen off. Instead of that you never told her — made up the difference yourself. And she spends hundreds like a drunken cowboy does dollars. That is what hurts me.”
“Gene, I expected the shrinking of capital and income would be only temporary. I still believe, as my lawyer in New York assures me, that we will recover. Madge’s capital is intact and eventually her income will grow normal. That was a wise provision of Aunt Helen’s. Madge can’t spend the capital. And it doesn’t make so great a difference that her income has dwindled. But now we should tell her — if we have the courage!”
“We!” expostulated Gene, startled. “Not much. Why, I don’t know Madge since she grew up. When she was seventeen — before she left for college I was scared to death of her. You’ll have to tell her.”
“That’ll be hard. I’m afraid myself of these years she has lived away from us. If I had it to do over I’d not have sent her away to college.”
“Well, let’s forget the financial side of it for the present. You read her letters and telegrams?”
“Yes. Madge asked me to reserve judgment until I had heard her side. Evidently she became involved in some kind of a college row, for which she was not responsible, but which resulted in her expulsion. She regretted greatly that she could not graduate.”
“Was that all? No regret for the — the disgrace?”
“She never mentioned disgrace. I don’t believe that has occurred to her.”
“Same old Majesty, eh? She couldn’t do any wrong,” returned Gene, and there was a tinge of bitterness in his tone. “What else?”
“She said she had invited her college friends to come out here for the summer — for the summer, mind you. That will be after graduation. It worries me more than the fact of her being expelled.”
“That’s easy. Tell Madge she can’t have her friends this summer.”
“Could you tell her that?”
“Sure I could,” replied Gene, grimly.
“Very well. That will be a relief. For the rest she wired from L. A. she was leaving. And last evening from Yuma. Gene, don’t excite yourself over probabilities. The fact seems that at that rate she may get here tomorrow.”
“Madeline, it — it’ll be so wonderful to see her again that I almost don’t care what she’s done,” replied Gene with emotion.
“Gene, she’s our problem. She’s a composite of you and me.”
“Madeline, not much of me?” implored Gene.
“A very good deal of you, her father.”
“Suppose she inherited some of that wild blood of mine?” ejaculated Gene, aghast.
“If it hadn’t been for that, there might have never been any Madge, darling.”
“Lord! — I always said Madge had your beauty, your sweetness, your intelligence. But if she’s got my old devil in her, too — come out in these modern days of freedom for women — what, Maddie, what on earth can we do?”
“I don’t know, Gene. Love her, trust her. Make her love her home. Let us agree on that right here, Gene.”
“I promise, Madeline. But I’m scared.”
“So am I. But not the way you are. I’m scared of a crowd of young college people, just freed from cramping restrictions, let loose upon us here.”
“Madeline, do you remember your young crowd — that you had come out here from New York just after you bought this place?”
“Indeed, I do,” replied his wife, musingly, her eyes shadowed. “My brother Alfred — his romance with Flo — my sister Helen — my best friend Edith Wynne. Oh, they seem so far away — so long ago. But Alfred has been coming back to us for ten years.... Gene, did you ever guess that Helen was in love with you — then, when you were El Capitan?”
“Helen! — Why, Maddie, you’re crazy,” protested Gene.
“No. It’s the truth. I never told you. Helen never married, you know. And she left her fortune to Madge — which after all has been such a problem — is so yet.... Gene, if Madge’s friends are like her, we would have a more exciting summer than that one twenty-three years ago.”
“I haven’t the slightest doubt of that,” growled Gene.
“If we only had an El Capitan to tame Madge!”
“Maddie, we don’t want a wild hombre like he was.”
“Perhaps no other kind could ever win Madge.... My husband, why do you always disparage yourself so bitterly?”
“I’ve failed as a rancher. After raising a herd of eighty thousand head.”
“But that was not your fault. Who could foresee what would happen to the cattle business? Anyway I was refe
rring to your status as the cowboy who came — and conquered.... Gene, my memories are beautiful, always, eternally all-satisfying. Even to this day I can dream of that awful ride down into Mexico to save you from being shot — and revel in the sight of you striding out, as you supposed, to your execution. To meet instead — me — your wife, who you had no idea knew your secret!”
“Well, I find it sweet too, Madeline. The past would be enough for me. But there is you — our home — and now Madge to think of.”
“Gene, it will all come out right.”
“Sure it will, dear. I’m an old croaker. Wish I could be like Nels.... You’ll want to read your mail. And I’ve a lot of papers to look over.”
Gene left his wife, conscious of a sense of guilt and remorse. He had not told her all. The deal with Lawson had been made to raise money to pay a mortgage he had secretly placed upon the ranch. Gene had meant to confess this, but could not bring himself to it. Nels had sensed that something was wrong, though the keen old friend had not dreamed that it was so bad. It was insupportable for Gene to think of Madeline and Madge losing this beautiful ranch.
Outside he walked the old familiar path under the cotton woods that had been planted there before Don Carlos built the house. The sultry heat of day was wafting away; a fragrant incense of flowers and pine needles filled the air; the irrigation ditch in its stone-walled vine-covered confines murmured on musically like a brook.
There was strength and help in this environment, and in the solitude that hung over it. But there was no comfort in Gene’s confession that he had not been equipped to cope with these modern days of bewildering changes and upsets in business. Nels was a far better cattleman than he. For fifteen years there had been too much money to spend, and he had spent instead of saving it. Then out of a clear sky, like a thunderbolt, had come the collapse of eastern securities, and the bank that had held the rest of Madeline’s fortune. She did not know how poor they really were. Sober reasoning assured Gene that Madge could and probably would save the ranch. Nevertheless telling her of the straits he had brought about seemed absurdly beyond him. Gene made up his mind to sell two thirds of his stock, pay his pressing debts and the interest on the mortgage, then plan and plot somehow to save the situation.
With a mighty effort he threw off the depression, and went back into the house, to deceive Madeline with an apparent return of his old cool unconquerable spirit, and presently to bed.
In the morning there had come a change. Whether or not the anticipated home-coming of Madge had wrought the magic or a vivid realization of the sweetness of life on this glorious June morning, so rich in song of birds and blaze of purple range and golden sun, Gene did not know. A good sleep and then the light of day always worked wonders.
Gene found Danny Mains with Nels, having a cup of coffee in the old cowboy’s bachelor quarters which had been his home for twenty-five years. Danny had been one of Gene’s wild outfit in those long-past prosperous days. His bow legs, his sturdy build had not altered. But Danny’s homely visage betrayed the havoc of the years.
“Howdy, Boss,” he greeted Gene, gladly. Danny had not worked for Gene for a whole decade and more, but he always addressed him in the cowboy vernacular of rider to his employer. “I was comin’ up. Nels an’ me hev been talkin’ over my throwin’ in with you. I like the idee, Boss. Are you goin’ to sell some stock?”
“Good morning, you two old hombres,” replied Gene, cheerfully. “Yes, I’m selling two thirds of my cattle. What’s your angle on that, Danny?”
“Like it, Boss. If the price is goin’ up, as Nels figgers, why by the time we can round up an’ drive to the railroad it ought to reach thirty-five dollars a haid.”
“Shore it will,” drawled Nels, as he sipped his coffee. “Danny figgers he has aboot seven hundred haid, probably more. An’ he aims to sell half of them.”
“Boss, with a lot fewer cattle we can keep count better an’ mebbe stop this queer rustlin’.”
“Who’s doing it?” demanded Gene, angrily.
“I’m damned if I know. I’m shore afeared, though, thet some of my wife’s lazy kin are mixed up in it some way.”
“Ahuh. So Nels said. That ought to be easy to correct.”
“Yes? How’n hell can I hang her relatives?”
“Danny, we don’t need to hang them. Just stop them.”
“An’ you knowin’ greasers for thirty years!... Gene, we’re growin’ dotty in our old age.”
“Let’s pull out of it, Danny.”
“I’ll drink on thet.”
“Nels, I can see you’ve got it all figured out for us. Spring it pronto.”
“Mighty simple to me,” rejoined Nels, thoughtfully. “Hire a couple of rattlin’ good cowboys. An’ with you an’ Danny an’ the vaqueros heah you can do the job in a week.”
“Hire two good cowboys, eh? Where? How? What with?” queried Gene, spreading wide his hands.
“Sech ain’t to be had, Boss,” declared Danny, hopelessly.
“Wal, I’ve an idee,” went on Nels. “Gene, you an’ Danny open the store while I clean up heah.”
Gene took the key with its buckskin string attached, and accompanied by Danny went out by the long-deserted bunkhouse, across the green toward the store. He could hear the whistling of Madge’s horses beyond the corrals.
“Danny, I’d closed up this store long ago but for Nels,” said Gene.
“Aw, Boss, you can’t do thet. Why, it’d kill the old feller. An’ the store ain’t runnin’ at a loss, is it? All the Mexicans deal with Nels.”
“Yes, and they owe him plenty. He must restock. And I just can’t go deeper in debt.”
“Hell no! We’ll do somethin’, Boss. I’m afraid we’re down in the mouth. As if I didn’t hev enough to pester me without thet girl of mine!”
“Bonita?” queried Gene, quickly, with a chord of sympathy.
“Yes, Bonita. Boss, I’m damn ashamed to confess it, but I’m afeared she’s a no-good little hussy. After all your wife has done for Bonita — educatin’ her — makin’ a lady out of her — why, she’s jest cussed.”
“Danny, what do you mean?”
“Bonita has the vaqueros nutty. But she doesn’t give a damn for one of them. She’s white an’ she runs with the white. Ren Starr, you know, was tumble stuck on Bonita. But her flirtin’, mebbe wuss, I don’t know, queered her with him. She goes to town every chanct thet comes along. She drinks an’ Lord knows what. I ought to beat the hell out of her. But I jest can’t. I love thet kid like I loved her mother, Bonita, long ago. You remember, Gene, ‘cause you saved Bonita for me.”
“Yes, I remember, Danny, old pard. It’s tough sledding now for us old boys, who can’t figure the present and this younger generation. ... I’ve a daughter of my own, Danny. An’ she’s due home today or tomorrow.”
“Majesty comin’? Aw, thet’s grand! Why, Boss, she’ll put the life in us. I’m sure glad, Boss. This time you gotta make her stay home.”
“Make her? — Danny, didn’t you just admit you couldn’t do anything with Bonita?”
“Sure. But what the hell has thet got to do with Madge?”
“I suspect these girls are precisely the same.”
“Lord help us, Boss!”
Gene unlocked the rickety door of the old supply store and threw it open. The shelves were almost bare. Some print goods, gaudy in color, and glass jars of pink and yellow candy, and gewgaws for children, and a spare supply of tobacco and cigarettes were about all the stock left for Nels. In the wintertime he sat beside the old stove, to smoke his pipe, and feed billets of wood to the fire; and to talk about the past when, at rare intervals, somebody dropped in.
“Always makes me think we’re living in the past,” said Gene, coming out to join Danny.
“Aw, Boss, don’t talk as if it was all over,” returned Danny. “We got a future.”
At that juncture Nels appeared behind them, his free clinking stride belying his white locks. As he was about to step up on t
he porch he halted, his keen blue gaze fixed beyond the village, far down on the range.
“Look!”
Gene sighted a streak of yellow dust tailing out behind a motorcar. His heart swelled up in his throat to check his utterance.
“Car. Comin’ hell-bent fer election! — Boss, doesn’t thet remind you of Link Stevens when he used to drive Madeline’s white car across thet sage flat?”
“Yes. I’ve never forgotten Link. A great cowboy who could no longer ride! He loved to drive and scare us all stiff. But, Danny, it’s a cinch Link would turn over in his grave if he could see that car coming.”
“I should smile. Makin’ seventy miles an hour. On thet road. My Gawd, some fellers have nerve! He’s young an’ don’t give a damn fer his life!”
“Wonder who it can be?” queried Gene, under his breath. “Important telegrams, I’ll bet. Hope it’s not bad news. Nels, have you a field glass handy?”
“Don’t need none, Gene. Thet’s Majesty!” rang out Nels.
“Madge!... Say, can you see? Or is it one of your hunches?”
“Both.... Look at thet car streak along! Gene, it shore ought to make you feel as young as it does me.”
“Young! Man alive, it makes me a doddering old man,” replied Gene, thickly, and he sat down to relieve shaky legs.
Somehow he knew that reckless driver was Madge and he wondered why he had not grasped the fact at once. At the same instant he had a resurgence of pride in the girl’s spirit and ability. She could drive — she could ride a horse like an Indian — she could do anything.
“Nels, what color is the car?” asked Gene, whose eyes had grown dim.
“Color of a coyote, I reckon. Gene, she had two cars heah last time, both of them black, if I recollect.... Dog-gone, but it does my pore heart good to see Madge eatin’ up the miles like thet.”
“Nels, you always were an inhuman monster, a bloody gunman,” declared Gene. “How do you suppose it makes me feel to see my only child risking her life that way?”