The Western Romance MEGAPACK ®: 20 Classic Tales

by Zane Grey

  He rode away from the Tanners’, promising to return later with a gift he had brought for Bud that he wanted to present himself, and Mrs. Tanner bustled back to her work again.

  “Well, I’m glad he’s got home, anyway,” she remarked, aloud, to herself as she hung her dish-cloth tidily over the upturned dish-pan and took up her broom. “I ain’t felt noways easy ’bout her sence she left, though I do suppose there ain’t any sense to it. But I’m glad he’s back!”

  Meantime Gardley was riding toward Rogers’s ranch, meditating whether he should venture to follow the expedition and enjoy at least the return trip with Margaret, or whether he ought to remain patiently until she came back and go to work at once. There was nothing really important demanding his attention immediately, for Rogers had arranged to keep the present overseer of affairs until he was ready to undertake the work. He was on his way now to report on a small business matter which he had been attending to in New York for Rogers. When that was over he would be free to do as he pleased for a few days more if he liked, and the temptation was great to go at once to Margaret.

  As he stood waiting beside his horse in front of the house while the servant went to call Rogers, he looked about with delight on the beauty of the day. How glad he was to be back in Arizona again! Was it the charm of the place or because Margaret was there, he wondered, that he felt so happy? By all means he must follow her. Why should he not?

  He looked at the clambering rose-vine that covered one end of the house, and noticed how it crept close to the window casement and caressed the white curtain as it blew. Margaret must have such a vine at her window in the house he would build for her. It might be but a modest house that he could give her now, but it should have a rose-vine just like that; and he would train it round her window where she could smell the fragrance from it every morning when she awoke, and where it would breathe upon her as she slept.

  Margaret! How impatient he was to see her again! To look upon her dear face and know that she was his! That her father and mother had been satisfied about him and sent their blessing, and he might tell her so. It was wonderful! His heart thrilled with the thought of it. Of course he would go to her at once. He would start as soon as Rogers was through with him. He would go to Ganado. No, Keams. Which was it? He drew the letter out of his pocket and read it again, then replaced it.

  The fluttering curtain up at the window blew out and in, and when it blew out again it brought with it a flurry of papers like white leaves. The curtain had knocked over a paper-weight or vase or something that held them and set the papers free. The breeze caught them and flung them about erratically, tossing one almost at his feet. He stooped to pick it up, thinking it might be of value to some one, and caught the name “Margaret” and “Dear Margaret” written several times on the sheet, with “Walpi, Walpi, Walpi,” filling the lower half of the page, as if some one had been practising it.

  And because these two words were just now keenly in his mind he reached for the second paper just a foot or two away and found more sentences and words. A third paper contained an exact reproduction of the letter which Mrs. Tanner had given him purporting to come from Mrs. Brownleigh to Margaret. What could it possibly mean?

  In great astonishment he pulled out the other letter and compared them. They were almost identical save for a word here and there crossed out and rewritten. He stood looking mutely at the papers and then up at the window, as though an explanation might somehow be wafted down to him, not knowing what to think, his mind filled with vague alarm.

  Just at that moment the servant appeared.

  “Mr. Rogers says would you mind coming down to the corral. Miss Rosa has a headache, and we’re keeping the house still for her to sleep. That’s her window up there—” And he indicated the rose-bowered window with the fluttering curtain.

  Dazed and half suspicious of something, Gardley folded the two letters together and crushed them into his pocket, wondering what he ought to do about it. The thought of it troubled him so that he only half gave attention to the business in hand; but he gave his report and handed over certain documents. He was thinking that perhaps he ought to see Miss Rosa and find out what she knew of Margaret’s going and ask how she came in possession of this other letter.

  “Now,” said Rogers, as the matter was concluded, “I owe you some money. If you’ll just step up to the house with me I’ll give it to you. I’d like to settle matters up at once.”

  “Oh, let it go till I come again,” said Gardley, impatient to be off. He wanted to get by himself and think out a solution of the two letters. He was more than uneasy about Margaret without being able to give any suitable explanation of why he should be. His main desire now was to ride to Ganado and find out if the missionaries had left home, which way they had gone, and whether they had met Margaret as planned.

  “No, step right up to the house with me,” insisted Rogers. “It won’t take long, and I have the money in my safe.”

  Gardley saw that the quickest way was to please Rogers, and he did not wish to arouse any questions, because he supposed, of course, his alarm was mere foolishness. So they went together into Rogers’s private office, where his desk and safe were the principal furniture, and where no servants ventured to come without orders.

  Rogers shoved a chair for Gardley and went over to his safe, turning the little nickel knob this way and that with the skill of one long accustomed, and in a moment the thick door swung open and Rogers drew out a japanned cash-box and unlocked it. But when he threw the cover back he uttered an exclamation of angry surprise. The box was empty!

  CHAPTER XXXII

  Mr. Rogers strode to the door, forgetful of his sleeping daughter overhead, and thundered out his call for James. The servant appeared at once, but he knew nothing about the safe, and had not been in the office that morning. Other servants were summoned and put through a rigid examination. Then Rogers turned to the woman who had answered the door for Gardley and sent her up to call Rosa.

  But the woman returned presently with word that Miss Rosa was not in her room, and there was no sign that her bed had been slept in during the night. The woman’s face was sullen. She did not like Rosa, but was afraid of her. This to her was only another of Miss Rosa’s pranks, and very likely her doting father would manage to blame the servants with the affair.

  Mr. Rogers’s face grew stern. His eyes flashed angrily as he turned and strode up the stairs to his daughter’s room, but when he came down again he was holding a note in his trembling hand and his face was ashen white.

  “Read that, Gardley,” he said, thrusting the note into Gardley’s hands and motioning at the same time for the servants to go away.

  Gardley took the note, yet even as he read he noticed that the paper was the same as those he carried in his pocket. There was a peculiar watermark that made it noticeable.

  The note was a flippant little affair from Rosa, telling her father she had gone away to be married and that she would let him know where she was as soon as they were located. She added that he had forced her to this step by being so severe with her and not allowing her lover to come to see her. If he had been reasonable she would have stayed at home and let him give her a grand wedding; but as it was she had only this way of seeking her happiness. She added that she knew he would forgive her, and she hoped he would come to see that her way had been best, and Forsythe was all that he could desire as a son-in-law.

  Gardley uttered an exclamation of dismay as he read, and, looking up, found the miserable eyes of the stricken father upon him. For the moment his own alarm concerning Margaret and his perplexity about the letters was forgotten in the grief of the man who had been his friend.

  “When did she go?” asked Gardley, quickly looking up.

  “She took supper with me and then went to her room, complaining of a headache,” said the father, his voice showing his utter hopelessnes
s. “She may have gone early in the evening, perhaps, for we all turned in about nine o’clock to keep the house quiet on her account.”

  “Have you any idea which way they went, east or west?” Gardley was the keen adviser in a crisis now, his every sense on the alert.

  The old man shook his head. “It is too late now,” he said, still in that colorless voice. “They will have reached the railroad somewhere. They will have been married by this time. See, it is after ten o’clock!”

  “Yes, if he marries her,” said Gardley, fiercely. He had no faith in Forsythe.

  “You think—you don’t think he would dare!” The old man straightened up and fairly blazed in his righteous wrath.

  “I think he would dare anything if he thought he would not be caught. He is a coward, of course.”

  “What can we do?”

  “Telegraph to detectives at all points where they would be likely to arrive and have them shadowed. Come, we will ride to the station at once; but, first, could I go up in her room and look around? There might be some clue.”

  “Certainly,” said Rogers, pointing hopelessly up the stairs; “the first door to the left. But you’ll find nothing. I looked everywhere. She wouldn’t have left a clue. While you’re up there I’ll interview the servants. Then we’ll go.”

  As he went up-stairs Gardley was wondering whether he ought to tell Rogers of the circumstance of the two letters. What possible connection could there be between Margaret Earle’s trip to Walpi with the Brownleighs and Rosa Rogers’s elopement? When you come to think of it, what possible explanation was there for a copy of Mrs. Brownleigh’s letter to blow out of Rosa Rogers’s bedroom window? How could it have got there?

  Rosa’s room was in beautiful order, the roses nodding in at the window, the curtain blowing back and forth in the breeze and rippling open the leaves of a tiny Testament lying on her desk, as if it had been recently read. There was nothing to show that the owner of the room had taken a hasty flight. On the desk lay several sheets of note-paper with the peculiar watermark. These caught his attention, and he took them up and compared them with the papers in his pocket. It was a strange thing that that letter which had sent Margaret off into the wilderness with an unknown Indian should be written on the same kind of paper as this; and yet, perhaps, it was not so strange, after all. It probably was the only note-paper to be had in that region, and must all have been purchased at the same place.

  The rippling leaves of the Testament fluttered open at the fly-leaf and revealed Rosa’s name and a date with Mrs. Brownleigh’s name written below, and Gardley took it up, startled again to find Hazel Brownleigh mixed up with the Rogers. He had not known that they had anything to do with each other. And yet, of course, they would, being the missionaries of the region.

  The almost empty waste-basket next caught his eye, and here again were several sheets of paper written over with words and phrases, words which at once he recognized as part of the letter Mrs. Tanner had given him. He emptied the waste-basket out on the desk, thinking perhaps there might be something there that would give a clue to where the elopers had gone; but there was not much else in it except a little yellowed note with the signature “Hazel Brownleigh” at the bottom. He glanced through the brief note, gathered its purport, and then spread it out deliberately on the desk and compared the writing with the others, a wild fear clutching at his heart. Yet he could not in any way explain why he was so uneasy. What possible reason could Rosa Rogers have for forging a letter to Margaret from Hazel Brownleigh?

  Suddenly Rogers stood behind him looking over his shoulder. “What is it, Gardley? What have you found? Any clue?”

  “No clue,” said Gardley, uneasily, “but something strange I cannot understand. I don’t suppose it can possibly have anything to do with your daughter, and yet it seems almost uncanny. This morning I stopped at the Tanners’ to let Miss Earle know I had returned, and was told she had gone yesterday with a couple of Indians as guide to meet the Brownleighs at Keams or somewhere near there, and take a trip with them to Walpi to see the Hopi Indians. Mrs. Tanner gave me this letter from Mrs. Brownleigh, which Miss Earle had left behind. But when I reached here and was waiting for you some papers blew out of your daughter’s window. When I picked them up I was startled to find that one of them was an exact copy of the letter I had in my pocket. See! Here they are! I don’t suppose there is anything to it, but in spite of me I am a trifle uneasy about Miss Earle. I just can’t understand how that copy of the letter came to be here.”

  Rogers was leaning over, looking at the papers. “What’s this?” he asked, picking up the note that came with the Testament. He read each paper carefully, took in the little Testament with its fluttering fly-leaf and inscription, studied the pages of words and alphabet, then suddenly turned away and groaned, hiding his face in his hands.

  “What is it?” asked Gardley, awed with the awful sorrow in the strong man’s attitude.

  “My poor baby!” groaned the father. “My poor little baby girl! I’ve always been afraid of that fatal gift of hers. Gardley, she could copy any handwriting in the world perfectly. She could write my name so it could not be told from my own signature. She’s evidently written that letter. Why, I don’t know, unless she wanted to get Miss Earle out of the way so it would be easier for her to carry out her plans.”

  “It can’t be!” said Gardley, shaking his head. “I can’t see what her object would be. Besides, where would she find the Indians? Mrs. Tanner saw the Indians. They came to the school after her with the letter, and waited for her. Mrs. Tanner saw them ride off together.”

  “There were a couple of strange Indians here yesterday, begging something to eat,” said Rogers, settling down on a chair and resting his head against the desk as if he had suddenly lost the strength to stand.

  “This won’t do!” said Gardley. “We’ve got to get down to the telegraph-office, you and I. Now try to brace up. Are the horses ready? Then we’ll go right away.”

  “You better question the servants about those Indians first,” said Rogers; and Gardley, as he hurried down the stairs, heard groan after groan from Rosa’s room, where her father lingered in agony.

  Gardley got all the information he could about the Indians, and then the two men started away on a gallop to the station. As they passed the Tanner house Gardley drew rein to call to Bud, who hurried out joyfully to greet his friend, his face lighting with pleasure.

  “Bill, get on your horse in double-quick time and beat it out to camp for me, will you?” said Gardley, as he reached down and gripped Bud’s rough young paw. “Tell Jasper Kemp to come back with you and meet me at the station as quick as he can. Tell him to have the men where he can signal them. We may have to hustle out on a long hunt; and, Bill, keep your head steady and get back yourself right away. Perhaps I’ll want you to help me. I’m a little anxious about Miss Earle, but you needn’t tell anybody that but old Jasper. Tell him to hurry for all he’s worth.”

  Bud, with his eyes large with loyalty and trouble, nodded understandingly, returned the grip of the young man’s hand with a clumsy squeeze, and sprang away to get his horse and do Gardley’s bidding. Gardley knew he would ride as for his life, now that he knew Margaret’s safety was at stake.

  Then Gardley rode on to the station and was indefatigable for two hours hunting out addresses, writing telegrams, and calling up long-distance telephones.

  When all had been done that was possible Rogers turned a haggard face to the young man. “I’ve been thinking, Gardley, that rash little girl of mine may have got Miss Earle into some kind of a dangerous position. You ought to look after her. What can we do?”

  “I’m going to, sir,” said Gardley, “just as soon as I’ve done everything I can for you. I’ve already sent for Jasper Kemp, and we’ll make a plan between us and find out if Miss Earle is all right. Can you spare Jasper or will you need h
im?”

  “By all means! Take all the men you need. I sha’n’t rest easy till I know Miss Earle is safe.”

  He sank down on a truck that stood on the station platform, his shoulders slumping, his whole attitude as of one who was fatally stricken. It came over Gardley how suddenly old he looked, and haggard and gray! What a thing for the selfish child to have done to her father! Poor, silly child, whose fate with Forsythe would in all probability be anything but enviable!

  But there was no time for sorrowful reflections. Jasper Kemp, stern, alert, anxious, came riding furiously down the street, Bud keeping even pace with him.

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  While Gardley briefly told his tale to Jasper Kemp, and the Scotchman was hastily scanning the papers with his keen, bright eyes, Bud stood frowning and listening intently.

  “Gee!” he burst forth. “That girl’s a mess! ’Course she did it! You oughta seen what all she didn’t do the last six weeks of school. Miss Mar’get got so she shivered every time that girl came near her or looked at her. She sure had her goat! Some nights after school, when she thought she’s all alone, she just cried, she did. Why, Rosa had every one of those guys in the back seat acting like the devil, and nobody knew what was the matter. She wrote things on the blackboard right in the questions, so’s it looked like Miss Mar’get’s writing; fierce things, sometimes; and Miss Mar’get didn’t know who did it. And she was as jealous as a cat of Miss Mar’get. You all know what a case she had on that guy from over by the fort; and she didn’t like to have him even look at Miss Mar’get. Well, she didn’t forget how he went away that night of the play. I caught her looking at her like she would like to murder her. Good night! Some look! The guy had a case on Miss Mar’get, all right, too, only she was onto him and wouldn’t look at him nor let him spoon nor nothing. But Rosa saw it all, and she just hated Miss Mar’get. Then once Miss Mar’get stopped her from going out to meet that guy, too. Oh, she hated her, all right! And you can bet she wrote the letter! Sure she did! She wanted to get her away when that guy came back. He was back yesterday. I saw him over by the run on that trail that crosses the trail to the old cabin. He didn’t see me. I got my eye on him first, and I chucked behind some sage-brush, but he was here, all right, and he didn’t mean any good. I follahed him awhile till he stopped and fixed up a place to camp. I guess he must ’a’ stayed out last night—”