by Zane Grey
“Oh!” She gave a sharp, quick gasp of intelligence, and was silent. After a full minute she rode quite close to his horse, and laid her small brown hand on the animal’s mane.
“I am sorry,” she said simply.
“Thank you,” he answered. “I’m sure I don’t know why I told you. I never told any one before.”
There was a long silence between them. The man seemed to have forgotten her as he rode with his eyes upon his horse’s neck, and his thoughts apparently far away.
At last the girl said softly, as if she were rendering return for the confidence given her, “I ran away from a man.”
The man lifted his eyes courteously, questioningly, and waited.
“He is big and dark and handsome. He shoots to kill. He killed my brother. I hate him. He wants me, and I ran away from him. But he is a coward. I frightened him away. He is afraid of dead men that he has killed.”
The young man gave his attention now to the extraordinary story which the girl told as if it were a common occurrence.
“But where are your people, your family and friends? Why do they not send the man away?”
“They’re all back there in the sand,” she said with a sad little flicker of a smile and a gesture that told of tragedy. “I said the prayer over them. Mother always wanted it when we died. There wasn’t anybody left but me. I said it, and then I came away. It was cold moonlight, and there were noises. The horse was afraid. But I said it. Do you suppose it will do any good?”
She fastened her eyes upon the young man with her last words as if demanding an answer. The color came up to his cheeks. He felt embarrassed at such a question before her trouble.
“Why, I should think it ought to,” he stammered. “Of course it will,” he added with more confident comfort.
“Did you ever say the prayer?”
“Why,—I—yes, I believe I have,” he answered somewhat uncertainly.
“Did it do any good?” She hung upon his words.
“Why, I—believe—yes, I suppose it did. That is, praying is always a good thing. The fact is, it’s a long time since I’ve tried it. But of course it’s all right.”
A curious topic for conversation between a young man and woman on a ride through the wilderness. The man had never thought about prayer for so many minutes consecutively in the whole of his life; at least, not since the days when his nurse tried to teach him “Now I lay me.”
“Why don’t you try it about the lady?” asked the girl suddenly.
“Well, the fact is, I never thought of it.”
“Don’t you believe it will do any good?”
“Well, I suppose it might.”
“Then let’s try it. Let’s get off now, quick, and both say it. Maybe it will help us both. Do you know it all through? Can’t you say it?” This last anxiously, as he hesitated and looked doubtful.
The color came into the man’s face. Somehow this girl put him in a very bad light. He couldn’t shoot; and, if he couldn’t pray, what would she think of him?
“Why, I think I could manage to say it with help,” he answered uneasily. “But what if that man should suddenly appear on the scene?”
“You don’t think the prayer is any good, or you wouldn’t say that.” She said it sadly, hopelessly.
“O, why, certainly,” he said, “only I thought there might be some better time to try it; but, if you say so, we’ll stop right here.” He sprang to the ground, and offered to assist her; but she was beside him before he could get around his horse’s head.
Down she dropped, and clasped her hands as a little child might have done, and closed her eyes.
“Our Father,” she repeated slowly, precisely, as if every word belonged to a charm and must be repeated just right or it would not work. The man’s mumbling words halted after hers. He was reflecting upon the curious tableau they would make to the chance passer-by on the desert if there were any passers-by. It was strange, this aloneness. There was a wideness here that made praying seem more natural than it would have been at home in the open country.
The prayer, by reason of the unaccustomed lips, went slowly; but, when it was finished, the girl sprang to her saddle again with a businesslike expression.
“I feel better,” she said with a winning smile. “Don’t you? Don’t you think He heard?”
“Who heard?”
“Why, ‘our Father.’”
“O, certainly! That is, I’ve always been taught to suppose He did. I haven’t much experimental knowledge in this line, but I dare say it’ll do some good some where. Now do you suppose we could get some of that very sparkling water? I feel exceedingly thirsty.”
They spurred their horses, and were soon beside the stream, refreshing themselves.
“Did you ride all night?” asked the girl.
“Pretty much,” answered the man. “I stopped once to rest a few minutes; but a sound in the distance stirred me up again, and I was afraid to lose my chance of catching you, lest I should be hopelessly lost. You see, I went out with a party hunting, and I sulked behind. They went off up a steep climb, and I said I’d wander around below till they got back, or perhaps ride back to camp; but, when I tried to find the camp, it wasn’t where I had left it.”
“Well, you’ve got to lie down and sleep awhile,” said the girl decidedly. “You can’t keep going like that. It’ll kill you. You lie down, and I’ll watch, and get dinner. I’m going to cook that bird.”
He demurred, but in the end she had her way; for he was exceedingly weary, and she saw it. So he let her spread the old coat down for him while he gathered some wood for a fire, and then he lay down and watched her simple preparations for the meal. Before he knew it he was asleep.
When he came to himself, there was a curious blending of dream and reality. He thought his lady was coming to him across the rough plains in an automobile, with gray wings like those of the bird the girl had shot, and his prayer as he knelt in the sand was drawing her, while overhead the air was full of a wild, sweet music from strange birds that mocked and called and trilled. But, when the automobile reached him and stopped, the lady withered into a little, old, dried-up creature of ashes; and the girl of the plains was sitting in her place radiant and beautiful.
He opened his eyes, and saw the rude little dinner set, and smelt the delicious odor of the roasted bird. The girl was standing on the other side of the fire, gravely whistling a most extraordinary song, like unto all the birds of the air at once.
She had made a little cake out of the corn-meal, and they feasted royally.
“I caught two fishes in the brook. We’ll take them along for supper,” she said as they packed the things again for starting. He tried to get her to take a rest also, and let him watch; but she insisted that they must go on, and promised to rest just before dark. “For we must travel hard at night, you know,” she added fearfully.
He questioned her more about the man who might be pursuing, and came to understand her fears.
“The scoundrel!” he muttered, looking at the delicate features and clear, lovely profile of the girl. He felt a strong desire to throttle the evil man.
He asked a good many questions about her life, and was filled with wonder over the flower-like girl who seemed to have blossomed in the wilderness with no hand to cultivate her save a lazy, clever, drunken father, and a kind but ignorant mother. How could she have escaped being coarsened amid such surroundings. How was it, with such brothers as she had, that she had come forth as lovely and unhurt as she seemed? He somehow began to feel a great anxiety for her lonely future and a desire to put her in the way of protection. But at present they were still in the wilderness; and he began to be glad that he was here too, and might have the privilege of protecting her now, if there should be need.
As it grew toward evening, they came
upon a little grassy spot in a coulee where the horses might rest and eat. Here they stopped, and the girl threw herself under a shelter of trees, with the old coat for a pillow, and rested, while the man paced up and down at a distance, gathering wood for a fire, and watching the horizon. As night came on, the city-bred man longed for shelter. He was by no means a coward where known quantities were concerned, but to face wild animals and drunken brigands in a strange, wild plain with no help near was anything but an enlivening prospect. He could not understand why they had not come upon some human habitation by this time. He had never realized how vast this country was before. When he came westward on the train he did not remember to have traversed such long stretches of country without a sign of civilization, though of course a train went so much faster than a horse that he had no adequate means of judging. Then, besides, they were on no trail now, and had probably gone in a most roundabout way to anywhere. In reality they had twice come within five miles of little homesteads, tucked away beside a stream in a fertile spot; but they had not known it. A mile further to the right at one spot would have put them on the trail and made their way easier and shorter, but that they could not know.
The girl did not rest long. She seemed to feel her pursuit more as the darkness crept on, and kept anxiously looking for the moon.
“We must go toward the moon,” she said as she watched the bright spot coming in the east.
They ate their supper of fish and corn-bread with the appetite that grows on horseback, and by the time they had started on their way again the moon spread a path of silver before them, and they went forward feeling as if they had known each other a long time. For a while their fears and hopes were blended in one.
Meantime, as the sun sank and the moon rose, a traveller rode up the steep ascent to the little lonely cabin which the girl had left. He was handsome and dark and strong, with a scarlet kerchief knotted at his throat; and he rode slowly, cautiously, looking furtively about and ahead of him. He was doubly armed, and his pistols gleamed in the moonlight, while an ugly knife nestled keenly in a secret sheath.
He was wicked, for the look upon his face was not good to see; and he was a coward, for he started at the flutter of a night-bird hurrying late to its home in a rock by the wayside. The mist rising from the valley in wreaths of silver gauze startled him again as he rounded the trail to the cabin, and for an instant he stopped and drew his dagger, thinking the ghost he feared was walking thus early. A draught from the bottle he carried in his pocket steadied his nerves, and he went on, but stopped again in front of the cabin; for there stood another horse, and there in the doorway stood a figure in the darkness! His curses rang through the still air and smote the moonlight. His pistol flashed forth a volley of fire to second him.
In answer to his demand who was there came another torrent of profanity. It was one of his comrades of the day before. He explained that he and two others had come up to pay a visit to the pretty girl. They had had a wager as to who could win her, and they had come to try; but she was not here. The door was fastened. They had forced it. There was no sign of her about. The other two had gone down to the place where her brother was buried to see whether she was there. Women were known to be sentimental. She might be that kind. He had agreed to wait here, but he was getting uneasy. Perhaps, if the other two found her, they might not be fair.
The last comer with a mighty oath explained that the girl belonged to him, and that no one had a right to her. He demanded that the other come with him to the grave, and see what had become of the girl; and then they would all go and drink together—but the girl belonged to him.
They rode to the place of the graves, and met the two others returning; but there was no sign of the girl, and the three taunted the one, saying that the girl had given him the slip. Amid much argument as to whose she was and where she was, they rode on cursing through God’s beauty. They passed the bottle continually, that their nerves might be the steadier; and, when they came to the deserted cabin once more, they paused and discussed what to do.
At last it was agreed that they should start on a quest after her, and with oaths, and coarse jests, and drinking, they started down the trail of which the girl had gone in search by her roundabout way.
CHAPTER V
A NIGHT RIDE
It was a wonderful night that the two spent wading the sea of moonlight together on the plain. The almost unearthly beauty of the scene grew upon them. They had none of the loneliness that had possessed each the night before, and might now discover all the wonders of the way.
Early in the way they came upon a prairie-dogs’ village, and the man would have lingered watching with curiosity, had not the girl urged him on. It was the time of night when she had started to run away, and the same apprehension that filled her then came upon her with the evening. She longed to be out of the land which held the man she feared. She would rather bury herself in the earth and smother to death than be caught by him. But, as they rode on, she told her companion much of the habits of the curious little creatures they had seen; and then, as the night settled down upon them, she pointed out the dark, stealing creatures that slipped from their way now and then, or gleamed with a fearsome green eye from some temporary refuge.
At first the cold shivers kept running up and down the young man as he realized that here before him in the sage-brush was a real live animal about which he had read so much, and which he had come out bravely to hunt. He kept his hand upon his revolver, and was constantly on the alert, nervously looking behind lest a troop of coyotes or wolves should be quietly stealing upon him. But, as the girl talked fearlessly of them in much the same way as we talk of a neighbor’s fierce dog, he grew gradually calmer, and was able to watch a dark, velvet-footed moving object ahead without starting.
By and by he pointed to the heavens, and talked of the stars. Did she know that constellation? No? Then he explained. Such and such stars were so many miles from the earth. He told their names, and a bit of mythology connected with the name, and then went on to speak of the moon, and the possibility of its once having been inhabited.
The girl listened amazed. She knew certain stars as landmarks, telling east from west and north from south; and she had often watched them one by one coming out, and counted them her friends; but that they were worlds, and that the inhabitants of this earth knew anything whatever about the heavenly bodies, she had never heard. Question after question she plied him with, some of them showing extraordinary intelligence and thought, and others showing deeper ignorance than a little child in our kindergartens would show.
He wondered more and more as their talk went on. He grew deeply interested in unfolding the wonders of the heavens to her; and, as he studied her pure profile in the moonlight with eager, searching, wistful gaze, her beauty impressed him more and more. In the East the man had a friend, an artist. He thought how wonderful a theme for a painting this scene would make. The girl in picturesque hat of soft felt, riding with careless ease and grace; horse, maiden, plain, bathed in a sea of silver.
More and more as she talked the man wondered how this girl reared in the wilds had acquired a speech so free from grammatical errors. She was apparently deeply ignorant, and yet with a very few exceptions she made no serious errors in English. How was it to be accounted for?
He began to ply her with questions about herself, but could not find that she had ever come into contact with people who were educated. She had not even lived in any of the miserable little towns that flourish in the wildest of the West, and not within several hundred miles of a city. Their nearest neighbors in one direction had been forty miles away, she said, and said it as if that were an everyday distance for a neighbor to live.
Mail? They had had a letter once that she could remember, when she was a little girl. It was just a few lines in pencil to say that her mother’s father had died. He had been killed in an accident of some sort, working in the ci
ty where he lived. Her mother had kept the letter and cried over it till almost all the pencil marks were gone.
No, they had no mail on the mountain where their homestead was.
Yes, her father went there first because he thought he had discovered gold, but it turned out to be a mistake; so, as they had no other place to go to, and no money to go with, they had just stayed there; and her father and brothers had been cow-punchers, but she and her mother had scarcely ever gone away from home. There were the little children to care for; and, when they died, her mother did not care to go, and would not let her go far alone.
O, yes, she had ridden a great deal, sometimes with her brothers, but not often. They went with rough men, and her mother felt afraid to have her go. The men all drank. Her brothers drank. Her father drank too. She stated it as if it were a sad fact common to all mankind, and ended with the statement which was almost, not quite, a question, “I guess you drink too.”
“Well,” said the young man hesitatingly, “not that way. I take a glass of wine now and then in company, you know—”
“Yes, I know,” sighed the girl. “Men are all alike. Mother used to say so. She said men were different from women. They had to drink. She said they all did it. Only she said her father never did; but he was very good, though he had to work hard.”
“Indeed,” said the young man, his color rising in the moonlight, “indeed, you make a mistake. I don’t drink at all, not that way. I’m not like them. I—why, I only—well, the fact is, I don’t care a red cent about the stuff anyway; and I don’t want you to think I’m like them. If it will do you any good, I’ll never touch it again, not a drop.”
He said it earnestly. He was trying to vindicate himself. Just why he should care to do so he did not know, only that all at once it was very necessary that he should appear different in the eyes of this girl from, the other men she had known.