Collected Works of Zane Grey

by Zane Grey

  “An’ why cain’t yu?”

  “It’s not humanly possible for me to leave this girl. If only June would run off with me! We could come back after these hombres peter oot.”

  “June? Say, cowboy, we reckoned it was Janis.”

  “We? Who’n hell air we?” jerked out Brazos with a start.

  “Cowboy, ain’t yu kinda mixed up yoreself aboot which one of the twins yu’re daid set on?”

  “Mixed up? I’m standin’ on my haid. I love June, honest an’ true — but — aw! It’s orful — I cain’t tell her from Jan!”

  The rustic pine cone lanterns up and down the lane leading from the barn to the ranch-house were lit, as were the oil lanterns in the colourful barn and the big locomotive lamp that had been fastened high on a post. And the moon soared above the black range, full and white and radiant. Then the girls, some in white and most in bright hues, flocked down the lane with gay voices and merry laughter, to meet the eager young men waiting at the barn.

  Brazos was surrounded by the glad throng, although none appeared to notice him, and he drew to one side. He was beginning to lose something of the thrill that possessed him, when a soft little hand slipped inside his. Brazos turned to find a vision in white beside him, with lovely face uplifted to his.

  “It’s June,” she said. “How do you like my New York gown?”

  “Girl — I never knew yu were so beautiful,” replied Brazos rapturously.

  “Come. This first dance is yours. I chose a long waltz, because you told me you liked waltzing.”

  At midnight supper was served Soon the dancers flocked back to the barn, lured by the strains of music. Brazos watched them from the porch, a little wistfully, wondering when June would hunt him up. Then a white hand slipped under his arm.

  “Come, cowboy.”

  “Aw, hear yu air!” cried Brazos.

  “Quick. They’re after me. Run!” she said, with a giggle, and led him into the pines instead of down the lane. In a moment they were out of sight of the ranch-house.

  Then they walked hand in hand. There was no need of talk. The girl stopped to confront Brazos, though she did not let go of his hand.

  “Where have you been all these hours?” she asked.

  “I’ve been helpin’ make yore party a success. Didn’t think it was in me! Dancin’ with old maids, doin’ the elegant with the wives and mothers, makin’ a waiter oot of myself. But it was fun an’ did me good.”

  “Brazos, that was sweet of you.”

  “Wal, don’t yu want to reward me?” he drawled softly.

  “Yes.” As she spoke that forceful word Brazos caught a hint of something as strange as lovely about her. In the magic of the moonlight all her charm and mystery appeared magnified.

  “Tell me yu’ll marry me?” he demanded, suddenly strong and vibrant with released emotion.

  “Oh, what will Dad and sister say?”

  “Aw! Why, I hate to rush yu, darlin’. But there’s a reason. I’m a marked man in Las Animas. I oughta go away ‘till those hombres forget they wanted to kill me.”

  “Brazos!” She roused to passionate life in his arms.

  “I told yu, darlin’,” he expostulated.

  “Oh, Brazos! I — I will marry you.”

  “When? The sooner the better.”

  “We’ll elope!” she cried thrillingly. Suddenly she appeared transformed into a little whirlwind, throwing her arms around his neck, and drawing his head down to kiss him with lips of sweet fire. “Oh, Brazos! I’ve been dying for you,” she burst out. “You won me — even though I thought you a devil with girls — a trifler! All the time — all the time I thought it was June you loved!”

  CHAPTER 11

  BRAZOS, IN HIS realisation of catastrophe, stiffened so violently that he almost crushed the girl in his arms.

  “Don’t kill — me,” Janis managed to utter faintly.

  “Aw — I’m sorry. I — I just went off my haid,” replied Brazos in a smothered voice, as he released his clasp.

  He bent his head over her and again enfolded her slender form, while he gazed unseeingly out into the shadows of the woods.

  “Darling, this is perfect,” said Janis, stirring, and trying to look up at him. “It pays me for my anguish. It sustains me — until the next time. But we mustn’t stay longer!”

  “No,” agreed Brazos, and stood like a stone.

  She pressed back from his breast to look up. “Oh, Brazos! You’re so white! Was it hard to choose between June and me? My poor darling, you could have had me for the asking!”

  Brazos wrenched his gaze from the shadows to look down upon her, fully conscious now that he was as weak as guilty, that he loved her the same as June, that she had a devastating power he had never felt in the shy sister.

  Then it seemed somehow that this ecstasy waved away and she was soothing his hair.

  “I was always crazy to muss your hair like that,” she was murmuring.

  “Jan — I’ve kinda — mussed yu too,” he replied hoarsely.

  “If you haven’t! Oh, dear, this dress wasn’t made for grizzly bears. Come. I’m as bold as a lioness. But I’d just as lief not meet Henry. This was his dance. I saw you on the porch. I sent him after something. But it was our dance, Brazos. Now we will pay the piper, come what may!”

  A voice pierced dimly into Brazos’s sleep: “Wake up, Brazos. It’s four o’clock an’ you’re wanted.”

  Brazos opened his eyes to see Jack Sain standing beside his bunk.

  “Who wants me?”

  “June an’ Jan. They’re waitin’ for you where the trail turns off the lane into the woods.”

  “Ahuh. An’ yu have a hunch my life is gonna be harder ‘n hell pronto,” drawled Brazos, sliding his long legs out of bed.

  “I’ll bet you get the spurrakin’ of your ridin’ days.”

  “Boy, yu shore look like life was kinda hard for yu this mawnin’.”

  “I’d just as lief be dead,” returned Sain hopelessly. Then Brazos took a second look at him, and felt remorse gnaw at his own heart.

  “What’s’ yore trouble, cowboy?” asked Brazos kindly.

  “You know. It’s the same as yours.”

  “Ump-um. Mine is double yores. All the same I can help yu.”

  “Thanks, Brazos — I just can’t help likin’ you — though you’ve ruined my life.”

  “Jack, yu mean June hasn’t been so — so nice to yu since I rode along?”

  “Brazos, she al — almost loved me before you came,” replied Sam miserably. “Since then she’s been — Oh, hell! nice an’ kind, yes, but different. It just hurts, Brazos. I’m not sore at you. It’s only—”

  “Only what, Jack?”

  “I’m afraid to tell you Brazos, but they say you’re playin’ hell with the twins,” replied Sain huskily. “That you’re payin’ them up for their fun — their lettin’ us all take one for the other.”

  “Wal, who says thet?”

  “All the outfit. Even Neece. He told me it served the girls good and damn right. But, Brazos, I know that’s Jan’s fault. June worships her. She’d give her very soul for Jan.”

  “Jack, I kinda had that hunch myself,” replied Brazos, pulling on his boots. His mind seemed to scintillate with the sparks of an inspiration. He stood up, reached for his gun belt and buckled it on.

  He turned piercing eyes upon his friend. “Jack, yu’re a good boy. An’ I’m damn sorry I upset yore courtin’. But let me give yu a hunch, boy. Don’t be sick an’ jealous an’ black. Be yore real self to June. Thet girl is gonna rebound into yore arms like a rubber ball off a ‘dobe wall.”

  “Oh, Brazos. Don’t lie — don’t rave just to cheer me up.”

  “Keep this under yore sombrero, cowboy. I did give the girls a dose of their own medicine. Why, Jack, it was apple pie for me to tell them — one from the other. An’ I let on I couldn’t. Wal, heah’s what no one else but yu will ever know — except Neece, an’ I give yu leave to tell him. I got burned turribl
e bad in thet little game of makin’ love.”

  “June an’ Jan — both!” gasped Jack, suddenly enlightened.

  “Boy, yu hit it plumb on the haid.”

  “Oh, Lord! But, Brazos, damn it, I’m not glad. I couldn’t stand your — that you didn’t really care!”

  “Gosh, Jack, yu’re a heartless hombre,” drawled Brazos. “Wal, I’ll trot along to my little rendezvous.”

  He caught sight of them before they saw him. They were waiting in a grove of pines off the lane.

  “Mawnin’, girls — aw, I mean good evenin’,” he drawled. “I shore am glad to see yu so — so fresh an’ pretty after thet all-night dance.”

  But his conscience smote him as with a terrific mace. Incredible as it seemed, he recognised instantly which girl was June and which was Janis.

  “Brazos, Jan — we have some thing serious to ask you,” said June. She was pale, composed surprisingly strong. Brazos divined he was to learn the depth of her. Janis was white as snow and her eyes were great black baleful orbs of fire. She had no reserve. She was ready to burst into flame.

  “Brazos,” she whispered hoarsely. “I — I told June about last — night — that you begged me — to elope with you — and I promised.”

  “Wal, June, what’d yu say to thet?”

  “Brazos! Oh, it’s true — then. I told Jan that I was in love with you — and engaged to marry you.”

  “What happened then?”

  “We had a terrible quarrel.”

  “Brazos Keene, is she telling the truth?” flashed Janis furiously.

  “Wal, I figured thet yu an’ June needed a lesson,” said Brazos slowly. But he felt June’s eyes upon him and inwardly he began to weaken in this preposterous deceit. “This game of yores — bein’ one girl when yu air really two girls — thet’s shore not fair to us boys. We never could tell yu apart. An’ yu built yore house of mirth on thet. Yu were havin’ fun at our expense. Yu played tricks on us I reckon thet would have been all right when yu were kids — but yu’re grown girls now — women in face an’ form an’ feelin’, an’ most distractin’ lovely. An’ thet makes yore trick pretty damn low-down. Every cowboy on this range, an’ I’ll gamble a lot of older men, air lovesick over yu two. So little Brazos rode along an’ thought he’d break up yore game.”

  “If you hadn’t saved Dad — I’d kill you!” burst out Janis

  “Jan, you see,” interposed June gravely. “I always told you it would get us into trouble.”

  “It has — ruined me,” sobbed Janis, covering her face. “June — I’m sorry. But it was such fun — until this devil came. He never played any game — for fun. He was deadly earnest — and he m-made me l-love him so — horribly. Maybe he served me right. But that doesn’t help — this — this—”

  She suddenly uncovered her convulsed face, to fasten a gaze on Brazos that appeared to blaze through tears.

  “You carried your poor joke too far. You’re a heartless villain — a shameless trickster. You disgrace the very name of cowboy.”

  Brazos winced under that last jibe, the justice of which he recognised, and he was fighting to keep up his shallow pretence when June confronted him with soul-searching eyes.

  “Brazos Keene, you lie! You’re trying to save us — to make us despise you. But you can’t do it.”’

  Brazos sat down on a log as if his legs had weakened as had his will. “Shore, I’m — a liar an’ a miserable hombre.”

  “Brazos!” Janis darted to him and knelt, one hand on his shoulder. “What did she mean? What do you mean?”

  “Aw, Jan, it’s no use. June saw through me. I fell in love with yu both. I cain’t tell you apart. I’ve been honest with June — an’ with yu, too. I did ask her to marry me. An’ when — those times I’ve been alone with yu — I thought yu was June! But now I know yu, it doesn’t make no difference. I love yu just the same — just as turrible. An’ after last night — when yu let yoreself go — Aw! I’m a gone goslin’.”

  Janis slipped her other arm around Brazos and embraced him passionately, as if she could never let him go. Then she looked up at her sister in anguish. “June, I forgive him. We — I am most to blame. But I can’t hate him now. I can’t bear to let him go — oh, merciful heaven, what can I do?”

  “Jan, you need not give Brazos up,” said June. “You shall marry him.”

  Brazos sprang up, almost lifting Janis with him. “What’s thet?” he demanded.

  “Jan shall have you, Brazos.”

  He stared at her, only conscious that for the first time he was realising the true June Neece.

  “I cain’t consent to thet.”

  “Nor I,” added Janis. “It wouldn’t be fair. To cheat you of everything? No, no! All my life I have let you put me first. I won’t do it here. But I’m not big enough to give him to you. We must be broken-hearted together.”

  “Janis, neither of us needs to be broken-hearted. He shall marry you and we’ll all be happy.”

  “But — but—” faltered Janis.

  “Brazos, I’d give my very life to make Jan happy. Jan shall be your wife, Brazos — and you can have me, too.”

  Brazos seized her shoulders in rough grasp. “What air — yu sayin’,” he demanded huskily.

  “I said Jan shall be, your wife — and you can have me, too. We’re twins, almost the same as one girl. I’d never marry. I’d always be true to you, Brazos. No one would ever know.”

  CHAPTER 12

  HURRIEDLY SADDLING HIS horse, Brazos rode into Las Animas. He felt a need to be away from Twin Sombreros in order to think this thing through.

  Brazos started toward Mexican Joe’s, but had gone hardly half a block when he met Inskip. There was something in the Texan’s eyes that gripped Brazos.

  “Knight shot Hank Bilyen this mawnin’.”

  “Aw!” A rending pang in Brazos yielded to leaping fire. “Hank! Daid?”

  “No. Pretty close call, though. Doc says Hank ain’t in danger.”

  “Wal, thet’s a relief. This hombre Knight? He shot Surface, yu recollect — What was it all aboot?”

  “Hank ain’t tellin’. But Knight has been roarin’ aboot town. He was drunk when he did the shootin’, so. I heahed.”

  “Drunk! What’n hell was Hank doin’ all the time?”

  “He wasn’t packin’ no gun.”

  “Ahuh. An’ what’s this gunslinger Knight roarin’ aboot?”

  “Wal, he’s mad, or pretendin’ to be. Tellin’ everywhere he thought Bilyen had a gun an’ was drawin’ it — thet he told Bilyen he was goin’ to hold Neece for cattle Surface owed him — that Bilyen began to curse an’ threaten.”

  “Bodkin is the nigger in the woodpile. Inskip, how yu reckon thet crook has lasted so long with Texans?”

  “Meanin’ me an’ yu an’ Kiskadden? Wal, Gawd only knows how he’s lasted with yu. But Kis an’ I have responsibilities — business, family. Then Bodkin had a strong followin’, for a while. Sooner or later everybody heah in Las Animas will know he’s crookeder than a rail fence, same as we know now.”

  Brazos found his friend Bilyen lying on an improvised bed of blankets on the floor of a room back of Gage’s store. The Texan’s rugged visage lacked colour and was clammy. Brazos knelt by the prostrate man.

  “Wal, old-timer, how yu makin’ oot?” he drawled, with deep feeling.

  “Me? What’s a gunshot to a Texan? I’m all right. I ducked when he shot, or he’d killed me shore. If ever I seen red murder in a man’s eyes it was Knight’s.”

  “Ahuh. Let me see — Right side — Hank, don’t tell me it’s low down?”

  “Right under my collarbone an’ clear through. Sorer than a stubbed toe! But it’s nothin’ atall, Brazos.”

  “Spit any blood?”

  “Nary a drop. Cowboy, I shore won’t rest or sleep till yu shoot the gizzards oot of thet black buzzard.”

  “Good. If yu talk short an’ sweet I reckon yu can have a sleep in less ‘n two wags of a lamb’s tail — Wh
at was it aboot?”

  “Knight braced me. Said he was demandin’ two thousand haid of yearlin’s — from Neece, through me. I gave him the laugh till I seen thet red light come to his eye. Then if I’d only had a gun!”

  “Did yu say anythin’?”

  “I cussed him right pert. An’ before I seen he meant murder I told him to lay off Neece or he’d have yu to deal with. At thet he gave me the haws laugh. Said he an’ Bodkin (he’s not smart atall Brazos, he gave Bodkin away) knowed yore hands was tied. Thet yore gunnin’ for sheriffs was over!”

  “An’ what, did yu say to thet?”

  “I told him we knowed he an’ Bodkin was in cahoots — thet yu knowed he was the rustler Brad yu heahed with Bodkin thet night at Hailey’s. Brazos, it was a random shot, but it shore went home.”

  “So — I’ll shore know if he’s thet Brad the instant I heah his voice. Not thet it matters. But it sort of dovetails in. An’ he’s what I got on Bodkin.”

  “Brazos, this man Brad must have ruled Surface an’ Bodkin both. He struck me strong, cunnin’, vicious. But he’s no gunman. I could have shot him three times runnin’ — But Bodkin. I told yu before to lay off him.”

  Inskip interposed here: “Right, Bilyen. Unless Brazos has proof he’d better let Bodkin alone. For he’s an officer of law in this territory.”

  “It cain’t be done,” drawled Brazos.

  “Have you anythin’ on Bodkin thet’d clear yu in court?”

  “I know him.”

  “But your word only is not enough, Brazos,” declared Inskip impressively.

  “Pard, Inskip is talkin’ sense,” added Bilyen earnestly. “Listen. If — if things oot at Twin Sombreros air the way they seemed to Neece an’ me — an’ the way we hoped — for Gawd’s sake, leave Bodkin alone. He’ll hang himself pronto.”

  “It just cain’t be done. I see thet now,” replied Brazos strangely.

  “Boy, think of June — if it is June.”

  “I am thinkin’ of June — an’ Jan, too,” responded Brazos as he pressed a strong hand upon Bilyen’s. And Brazos knew, if Hank did not, that gesture was one of affection and farewell. “So long, yu Texans.”