Wild Western Tales 2: 101 Classic Western Stories Vol. 2 (Civitas Library Classics)

by Various

  "Yes, I had a hunch you were just playin' with me," he said darkly, riding his white mount right up against her horse.

  He reached out a long gloved hand and grasped her arm.

  "What do you mean, sir?" demanded Jane, trying to wrench her arm free.

  "Shore I mean a lot," he said grimly. "You stood for the lovemakin' of that Springer outfit. Now you're goin' to get a taste of somethin' not quite so easy."

  "Let go of me--you--you utter fool!" cried Jane, struggling fiercely. She was both furious and terrified. But she seemed to be a child in the grasp of a giant.

  "Hell! Your fightin' will only make it more interestin'. Come here, you sassy little cat."

  And he lifted her out of her saddle over onto his horse in front of him. Jane's mount, that had been frightened and plunging, ran away into the cedars. Then Jones proceeded to embrace Jane. She managed to keep her mouth from contact with his, but he kissed her face and neck, kisses that seemed to fill her with shame and disgust.

  "Jane, I'm ridin' out of this country for good," he said. "An' I've just been waitin' for this chance. You bet you'll remember Beady Jones."

  Jane realized that Jones would stop at nothing. Frantically she fought to get away from him, and to pitch herself to the ground. She screamed. She beat and tore at him. She scratched his face till the blood flowed. And as her struggles increased with her fright, she gradually slipped down between him and the pommel of his saddle, with head hanging down on one side and her feet on the other. This position was awkward and painful, but infinitely preferable to being crushed in his arms. He was riding off with her as if she had been a half-empty sack.

  Suddenly Jane's hands, while trying to hold on to something to lessen the severe jolting her position was giving her, came in contact with Jones's gun. Dare she draw it and try to shoot him? Then all at once her ears filled with the approaching gallop of another horse. Inverted as she was, she was able to see and recognize Springer riding directly at Jones and yelling hoarsely.

  Next she felt Jones's hard jerk at his gun. But Jane had hold of it, and suddenly her little hands had the strength of steel. The fierce energy with which Jones was wrestling to draw his gun threw Jane from the saddle. And when she dropped clear of the horse the gun came with her.

  "Hands up, Beady!" she heard Springer call out, as she lay momentarily face down in the dust. Then she struggled to her knees, and crawled to get away from the danger of the horses' hoofs. She still clung to the heavy gun. And when breathless and almost collapsing she fell back on the ground, she saw Jones with his hands above his head and Springer on foot with leveled gun.

  "Sit tight, cowboy," ordered the rancher, in a hard tone. "It'll take damn little more to make me bore you."

  Then while still covering Jones, evidently ready for any sudden move, Springer spoke again.

  "Jane, did you come out here to meet this cowboy?" he asked.

  "Oh, no! How can you ask that?" cried Jane, almost sobbing.

  "She's a liar, boss," spoke up Jones coolly. "She let me make love to her. An' she agreed to ride out an' meet me. Well it shore took her a spell, an' when she did come she was shy on the love- makin'. I was packin' her off to scare some sense into her when you rode in."

  "Beady, I know your way with women. You can save your breath, for I've a hunch you're going to need it."

  "Mr. Springer," faltered Jane, getting to her knees. "I--I was foolishly attracted to this cowboy--at first. Then--that Sunday after the dance when he called on me at the ranch--I saw through him then. I heartily despised him. To get rid of him I did say I'd meet him. But I never meant to. Then I forgot all about it. Today I rode alone for the first time. I saw someone following me and thought it must be Tex or one of the boys. Finally I waited, and presently Jones rode up to me . . . And, Mr. Springer, he--he grabbed me off my horse--and handled me shamefully. I fought him with all my might, but what could I do?"

  Springer's face changed markedly during Jane's long explanation. Then he threw his gun on the ground in front of Jane.

  "Jones, I'm going to beat you within an inch of your life," he said grimly; and leaping at the cowboy, he jerked him out of the saddle and sent him sprawling on the ground. Next Springer threw aside his sombrero, his vest, his spurs. But he kept on his gloves. The cowboy rose to one knee, and he measured the distance between him and Springer, and then the gun that lay on the ground. Suddenly he sprang toward it. Springer intercepted him with a powerful kick that tripped Jones and laid him flat.

  "Jones, you're sure about as low-down as they come," he said, in a tone of disgust. "I've got to be satisfied with beating you when I ought to kill you!"

  "Ahuh! Well, boss, it ain't any safe bet that you can do either," cried Beady Jones sullenly, as he got up.

  As they rushed together Jane had wit enough to pick up the gun, and then with it and Jones's, to get back a safe distance. She wanted to run away out of sight. But she could not keep her fascinated gaze from the combatants. Even in her distraught condition she could see that the cowboy, young and active and strong as he was, could not hold his own with Springer. They fought all over the open space, and crashed into the cedars and out again. The time came when Jones was on the ground about as much as he was erect. Bloody, dishevelled, beaten, he kept on trying to stem the onslaught of blows.

  Suddenly he broke off a dead branch of cedar, and brandishing it rushed at the rancher. Jane uttered a cry, closed her eyes, and sank to the ground. She heard fierce muttered imprecations and savage blows. When at length she opened her eyes again, fearing something dreadful, she saw Springer erect, wiping his face with the back of one hand and Jones lying on the ground.

  Then Jane saw him go to his horse, untie a canteen from the saddle, remove his bloody gloves, and wash his face with a wet scarf. Next he poured some water on Jones's face.

  "Come on, Jane," he called. "I reckon it's all over."

  He tied the bridle of Jones's horse to a cedar, and leading his own animal turned to meet Jane.

  "I want to compliment you on getting that cowboy's gun," he said warmly. "But for that there'd sure have been something bad. I'd have had to kill him, Jane. . . . Here, give me the guns. . . . You poor little tenderfoot from Missouri. No, not tenderfoot any longer. You became a Westerner today."

  His face was bruised and cut, his clothes dirty and bloody, but he did not appear the worse for such a desperate fight. Jane found her legs scarcely able to support her, and she had apparently lost her voice.

  "Let me put you on my saddle till we find your horse," he said, and lifted her lightly as a feather to a seat crosswise in the saddle. Then he walked with a hand on the bridle.

  Jane saw him examining the ground, evidently searching for horse tracks. "Here we are." And he led off in another direction through the cedars. Soon Jane saw her horse, calmly nibbling at the bleached grass.

  Springer stood beside her with a hand on her horse. He looked frankly into her face. The keen eyes were softer than usual. He looked so fine and strong and splendid that she found herself breathing with difficulty. She was afraid of her betraying eyes and looked away.

  "When the boys found out that you were gone, they all saddled up to find you," he said. "But I asked them if they didn't think the boss ought to have one chance. So they let me come."

  Right about then something completely unforeseen happened to Jane's heart. She was overwhelmed by a strange happiness that she knew she ought to hide, but could not. She could not speak. The silence grew. She felt Springer there, but she could not look at him.

  "Do you like it out here in the West?" he asked presently.

  "Oh, I love it! I'll never want to leave it," she replied impulsively.

  "I reckon I'm glad to hear you say that."

  Then there fell another silence. He pressed closer to her and seemed now to be leaning against the horse. She wondered if he heard the thunderous knocking of her heart against her side.

  "Will you be my wife an' stay here always?" he asked simply.
"I'm in love with you. I've been lonely since my mother died. . . . You'll sure have to marry some of us. Because, as Tex says, if you don't, ranchin' can't go on much longer. These boys don't seem to get anywhere with you. Have I any chance--Jane?"

  He possessed himself of her gloved hand and gave her a gentle tug. Jane knew it was gentle because she scarcely felt it. Yet it had irresistible power. She was swayed by the gentle pull. She moved into his arms.

  A little later he smiled at her and said, "Jane, they call me Bill for short. Same as they call me Boss. But my two front names are Frank Owens."

  "Oh!" cried Jane. "Then you--"

  "Yes, I'm the guilty one," he said happily. "It happened this way. My bedroom, you know is next to my office. I often heard the boys pounding the typewriter. I had a hunch they were up to some trick. So I spied upon them--heard about Frank Owens and the letters to the little schoolmarm. At Beacon I got the postmistress to give me your address. And, of course, I intercepted some of your letters. It sure has turned out great."

  "I--I don't know about you or those terrible cowboys," said Jane dubiously. "How did THEY happen on the name Frank Owens?"

  "That's sure a stumper. I reckon they put a job up on me."

  "Frank--tell me--did YOU write the--the love letters?" she asked appealingly. "There were two kinds of letters. That's what I never could understand."

  "Jane, I reckon I did," he confessed. "Something about your little notes made me fall in love with you clear back there in Missouri. Does that make it all right?"

  "Yes, Frank, I reckon it does--now," she said.

  "Let's ride back home and tell the boys," said Springer gayly. "The joke's sure on them. I've corralled the little 'under-forty schoolmarm from Missouri.'"

  Contents

  NONNEZOSHE, THE RAINBOW BRIDGE

  By Zane Grey

  John Wetherill, one of the famous Wetherill brothers and trader at Kayenta, Arizona, is the man who discovered Nonnezoshe, which is probably the most beautiful and wonderful natural phenomenon in the world. Wetherill owes the credit to his wife, who, through her influence with the Indians, finally, after years, succeeded in getting the secret of the great bridge.

  After three trips to Marsh Pass and Kayenta with my old guide, Al Doyle of Flagstaff, I finally succeeded in getting Wetherill to take me in to Nonnezoshe. This was in the spring of 1913, and my party was the second one, not scientific, to make the trip. Later this same year Wetherill took in the Roosevelt party and after that the Kolb brothers. It is a safe thing to say that this trip is one of the most beautiful in the West. It is a hard one and not for everybody. There is no guide except Wetherill, who knows how to get there. And after Doyle and I came out, we admitted that we would not care to try to return over our back trail. We doubted if we could find the way. This is the only place I have ever visited which I am not sure I could find again alone.

  My trip to Nonnezoshe gave me the opportunity to see also Monument Valley, and the mysterious and labyrinthine Cañon Segi with its great prehistoric cliff-dwellings.

  The desert beyond Kayenta spread out impressively, bare red flats and plains of sage leading to the rugged, vividly colored, and wind- sculptured sandstone heights typical of the Painted Desert of Arizona. Laguna Creek, at that season, became flooded after every thunderstorm, and it was a treacherous, red-mired quicksand where I convinced myself we would have stuck forever had it not been for Wetherill's Navajos.

  We rode all day, for the most part closed in by ridges and bluffs, so that no extended view was possible. It was hot, too, and the sand blew and the dust rose. Travel in northern Arizona is never easy, and this grew harder and steeper. There was one long slope of heavy sand that I felt sure would prove too much for Wetherill's pack mules. But they surmounted it, apparently less breathless than I was. Toward sunset a storm gathered ahead of us to the north with a promise of cooling and sultry air.

  At length we turned into a long cañon with straight rugged red walls, and a sandy floor with quite a perceptible ascent. It appeared endless. Far ahead I could see the black storm clouds, and by and by began to hear the rumble of thunder. Darkness had overtaken us by the time we had reached the head of this cañon, and my first sight of Monument Valley came with a dazzling flash of lightning. It revealed a vast valley, a strange world of colossal shafts and buttes of rock, magnificently sculptured, standing isolated and aloof, dark, weird, lonely. When the sheet lightning flared across the sky showing the monuments silhouetted black against that strange horizon, the effect was marvelously beautiful. I watched until the storm died away.

  Dawn, with the desert sunrise, changed Monument Valley, bereft it of its night gloom and weird shadow, and showed it in another aspect of beauty. It was hard for me to realize that those monuments were not the works of man. The great valley must once have been a plateau of red rock from which the softer strata had eroded, leaving the gentle league-long slopes marked here and there by upstanding pillars and columns of singular shape and beauty. I rode down the sweet-scented sage slopes under the shadow of the lofty Mittens, and around and across the valley, and back again to the height of land. And when I had completed the ride, a story had woven itself into my mind; the spot where I stood was to be the place where Lin Slone taught Lucy Bostil to ride the great stallion Wildfire.

  Two days' ride took us across country to the Segi. With this wonderful cañon I was familiar, that is, as familiar as several visits could make a man with such a bewildering place. In fact, I had named it Deception Pass. The Segi had innumerable branches, all more or less the same size, and sometimes it was difficult to tell the main cañon from one of its tributaries. The walls were rugged and crumbling, of a red or yellow hue, upward of a thousand feet in height, and indented by spruce-sided notches.

  There were a number of ruined cliff-dwellings, the most accessible of which was Keet Seel. I could imagine no more picturesque spot. A huge, wind-worn cavern with a vast, slanted, stained wall held upon a projecting ledge or shelf the long line of cliff-dwellings. These silent little stone houses with their vacant, black, eye-like windows had strange power to make me ponder, and then dream.

  Next day, upon resuming our journey, it pleased me to try to find the trail to Betatakin, the most noted, and surely the most wonderful and beautiful ruin in all the West. In many places there was no trail at all, and I encountered difficulties, but in the end without much loss of time I entered the narrow, ragged entrance of the cañon I had named Surprise Valley. Sight of the great dark cave thrilled me as I thought it might have thrilled Bess and Venters, who had lived for me their imagined lives of loneliness here in this wild spot. With the sight of those lofty walls and the scent of the dry sweet sage there rushed over me a strange feeling that RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE was true. My dream people of romance had really lived there once upon a time. I climbed high upon the huge stones, and along the smooth red walls where Fay Larkin once had glided with swift sure steps, and I entered the musty cliff-dwellings, and called out to hear the weird and sonorous echoes, and I wandered through the thickets and upon the grassy spruce-shaded benches, never for a moment free of the story I had conceived there. Something of awe and sadness abided with me. I could not enter into the merry pranks and investigations of my party. Surprise Valley seemed a part of my past, my dreams, my very self. I left it, haunted by its loneliness and silence and beauty, by the story it had given me.

  That night we camped at Bubbling Spring, which once had been a geyser of considerable power. Wetherill told a story of an old Navajo who had lived there. For a long time, according to the Indian tribe, the old chief resided there without complaining of this geyser that was wont to inundate his fields. But one season the unreliable waterspout made great and persistent endeavor to drown him and his people and horses. Whereupon the old Navajo took his gun, and shot repeatedly at the geyser, and thundered aloud his anger to the Great Spirit. The geyser ebbed away, and from that day never burst forth again.

  Somewhere under the great bulge of Navajo
Mountain I calculated that we were coming to the edge of the plateau. The white, bobbing pack horses disappeared and then our extra mustangs. It is no unusual thing for a man to use three mounts on this trip. Then two of our Indians disappeared. But Wetherill waited for us and so did Nas Ta Bega, the Paiute who first took Wetherill down into Nonnezoshe Boco. As I came up, I thought we had, indeed, reached the end of the world.

  "It's down in there," said Wetherill with a laugh.

  Nas Ta Bega made a slow, sweeping gesture. There is always something so significant and impressive about an Indian when he points anywhere. It is as if he says: "There, way beyond, over the ranges, is a place I know, and it is far." The fact was that I looked at the Paiute's dark, inscrutable face before I looked out into the void.

  My gaze then seemed impelled and held by things afar, a vast yellow and purple corrugated world of distance, apparently now on a level with my eyes. I was drawn by the beauty and grandeur of that scene, and then I was transfixed, almost by fear, by the realization that I dared to venture down into this wild and upflung fastness. I kept looking afar, sweeping the three-quarter circle of horizon till my judgment of distance was confounded and my sense of proportion dwarfed one moment and magnified the next.

  Wetherill was pointing and explaining, but I had not grasped all he said.

  "You can see two hundred miles into Utah," he went on. "That bright rough surface, like a washboard, is wind-worn rock. Those little lines of cleavage are cañons. There are a thousand cañons down there, and only a few have we been in. That long, purple, ragged line is the Grand Cañon of the Colorado. And there, that blue fork in the end, that's where the San Juan comes in. And there's Escalante Cañon."

  I had to adopt the Indian's method of studying unlimited spaces in the desert--to look with slow, contracted eyes from near to far.

  The pack train and the drivers had begun to zigzag down a long slope, bare of rock, with scant strips of green, and here and there a cedar. Half a mile down, the slope merged in what seemed a green level. But I knew it was not level. This level was a rolling plain, growing darker green, with lines of ravines and thin, undefined spaces that might be mirage. Miles and miles it swept and rolled and heaved, to lose its waves in apparent darker level. Round red rocks stood isolated. They resembled huge, grazing cattle. But as I gazed these rocks were strangely magnified. They grew and grew into mounds, castles, domes, crags, great, red, wind- carved buttes. One by one they drew my gaze to the wall of upflung rock. I seemed to see a thousand domes of a thousand shapes and colors, and among them a thousand blue clefts, each of which was a cañon.