The Western Romance MEGAPACK ®: 20 Classic Tales

by Zane Grey

  All of this required days. Between breakfast and supper every man with the outfit changed his horse several times; Howard, the hardest rider of them all, changed horses five times the first day. He and his men showed signs of the strain they put upon their bodies; they were a gaunt, lean-jawed, wild-eyed lot. There was little frolic left in them when night came; they were short-spoken, prone to grow fierce over trifles. But there was not a sullen or discontented man among them. They took what came; they had known times of stress before; they could look forward to a day to come of boisterous relaxation and money to be spent in town. Though the subject had never been mentioned, they fully understood that there would be a bonus coming and a glorious holiday. They would see the old man through now: later he would square the account.

  Eat, sleep and work; there was nothing else in their schedule. The times when Howard had a few moments over a cigarette to think quietly of Helen were times when he could not go to her: in the dimness of the coming day when he was going out to saddle and she would still be asleep; in the dark of the day ended when she would be going to bed. But he held grimly to his task here, saying to himself that in a few days he would ride to her and with something to say; wondering how she would listen; sometimes aglow with his hope, sometimes fearing. And, as he thought of her, so did he think often of John Carr. He did not know if Carr had gone East or if still he were a daily guest at the Longstreet home. Not a man of his riders had been beyond the confines of the grazing lands; no one had come in from the outside. There was no news.

  So a full week sped by. Then for the first time came both opportunity and excuse for Howard to leave the ranch. Chuck Evans had ridden into San Ramon to see if there were a market for a string of mules; he brought back word that a teamster named Roberts in the new mining-camp had been making inquiries. It seemed that he wanted high-grade stock and had the money to pay for it. Everything was running smoothly on the ranch, and Howard rode this time on his own errand. But, before starting for Sanchia’s Town, he slipped into the ranchhouse and shaved and changed to a new shirt and chaps and recently blackened boots. Thereafter he brushed his best black hat. Then from a bottom drawer of his old bureau, where it was hidden under a pile of clothing, he brought out a parcel which had come with him from a store in San Juan.

  As good a way as any to see Roberts in Sanchia’s Town led by way of the Longstreet camp on Last Ridge. Howard took the winding trail up which his horse could climb to the plateau, and once on the level land came swooping down on the well-remembered spot joyously. The spot itself was hidden from him by the grove of stunted pines until he came within a couple of hundred yards of it. Then he jerked his horse down to a standstill and sat staring before him incredulously. The cabin was gone quite as though there had never been a cabin there in all time.

  At first he wouldn’t believe his eyes. Then swiftly his wonderment altered to consternation. They had gone! Helen and her father had gone. Carr had prevailed upon them; Howard had not come to see; by now they were flying eastward upon the speeding overland train, or perhaps were already in New York.

  The splendour of the day died; the joyousness went out of his heart; he sat staring at the emptiness before him, then at the parcel in brown paper clutched so foolishly in his hand. He looked all about him; through the trees as though he expected to see Helen’s laughing face watching him; across the broken ridges beyond the flat; down into his own valley. Down there, too, the glory had passed. When he had stood here with Helen and they two had looked across the valley lands together, it had been to him like the promised land. Now it was so much dirt and rock and grass with cows and horses browsing stupidly across all of it.

  For a long time he sat very still. Then his face hardened.

  ‘If she has gone, then I am going, too,’ he told himself. ‘And I am going to bring her back.’

  He turned his horse and rode swiftly to Sanchia’s Town. They would have gone that way, on to Big Run, San Ramon and down to the railroad. In such a case he would have word of them in the mining-camp. In his present mood he required only a few minutes to come to the new settlement. Had he been less absorbed in his own thoughts he must have been amazed at what he saw about him. He had known men before now to make towns upon dry bare ground and in a mere handful of days; not even he, with his first-hand knowledge of such venturings, had ever seen the like of Sanchia’s Town. The spirit which had initiated it into the world was still its driving spirit. It sprawled, it overflowed its boundaries incessantly, it hooted and yelled and sang. It grew like a formless mass lumped about fermenting yeast. Already there were shacks and tents up and down both sides of Dry Gulch and strung along in the gravelly bed. There were gambling-houses, monstrosities which named themselves hotels and rooming-houses, stores, lunch counters. The streets were crooked alleys; everywhere dust puffed up and thickened and never settled; teams and jolting wagons and pack burros disputed the congested way; there were seasoned miners, old-time prospectors, going their quiet ways; there were tenderfeet of all descriptions. Not less than five thousand human souls had already found their way to Sanchia’s Town and more were coming.

  In all of this to-day, Howard took scant interest. His major emotion was one of annoyance. Among such a seething crowd where should he ask of the Longstreets? He sat his horse in a narrow space between a lunch counter and a canvas bar-room and stared about him. Then he saw that the solitary figure perched upon a box before the lunch counter was Yellow Barbee. He called to him quickly.

  Barbee’s young eyes, which he turned promptly, were still eloquent of an amorous joyousness within Barbee’s young soul. He bestowed his glance only fleetingly upon Howard, said a brief ‘Hello, Al,’ and turned immediately to the cause of the obvious flutter in Barbee’s bosom. Howard expected to see Sanchia Murray behind the counter. Instead he saw a young girl of a little less than Barbee’s age, roguish-eyed, black-haired, red-mouthed, plump and saucy. Her sleeves were up; her arms were brown and round; there was flour on them.

  ‘Where are the Longstreets, Barbee?’ asked Howard.

  ‘Gone,’ announced Barbee cheerfully. And as though that closed the matter to his entire satisfaction, he demanded: ‘Come on, Pet; be a good kid. Going with me, ain’t you?’

  Pet laughed and thereafter turned up her pretty nose with obviously mock disdain.

  ‘Dancing old square dances and polkas, I’d bet a stack of wheats,’ she scoffed. ‘Why, there ain’t any more real jazz in your crowd of cow-hands than there is in an old man’s home. What do you take me for, anyway?’

  ‘Aw, come on,’ grinned Barbee. ‘You’re joshing. If it’s jazz you want——’

  ‘Look here,’ said Howard impatiently. ‘I’m just asking a question, and I’ll get out of your way. Where did they go?’

  ‘Who?’ asked Barbee.

  ‘The Longstreets.’

  ‘Dunno,’ Barbee shrugged. Then, as an afterthought, ‘Sanchia Murray could tell you; she’s been sticking tight to them. She’s got a tent up yonder, back of the Courtot House on the edge of town.’

  Howard hurried on. The lunch counter girl, following him with critical eyes, demanded for him or anyone else to hear:

  ‘Who’s your bean-pole friend, Kid?’

  But the answer Howard did not hear. He swung out to the side to be free of the town and galloped on to Sanchia’s tent, which he found readily. Sanchia herself was in front of it, just preparing to saddle her white mare.

  ‘Hello, Al,’ she greeted him carelessly, though her eyes narrowed at him speculatively.

  ‘Where have the Longstreets gone?’ he asked without preliminary.

  ‘Back in the hills, Bear Valley way,’ she replied, still scrutinizing him. She marked the look of relief in his eyes and laughed cynically and withal a trifle bitterly. ‘On the Red Hill trail. Going to see them?’

  ‘Yes.’ He reined away, and then added stiffly, ‘Thank yo
u.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ she called to him. ‘I’m just going up there myself. You might saddle for me, and I’ll ride with you.’

  He paused and looked her sternly and steadily in the eyes. His voice was cold and his words were outspoken.

  ‘I had rather ride alone, and you know it. Further, after the way you have tricked that man, I’d think you’d draw off and leave them alone. You can’t do a thing like that twice.’

  For an instant the look in her eyes was baffling. Then there shot through the inscrutability of it a sudden gleam of malice that was like a spurt of flame. It was the fire which before now Howard’s attitude had kindled there.

  ‘What you men see in that little fool, I don’t know!’ she cried hotly. ‘What has she that I haven’t? I could have made you the biggest man in the country; I would have given everything and held nothing back. I am even honest enough to say so, and I am not afraid to say so. And you are stupid like every other man. Oh, I am done with the crowd of you!’ she broke out violently, half hysterically. ‘Laugh at me, will you? Turn your back on me, will you?’ She paused and panted out the words. ‘Why, if you came crawling to me now I’d spit on you. And, so help me God, I’ll ruin the last one of you and your precious flock of lambs before I have done with you. If Jim Courtot can’t do the trick, I’ll do for you first and Jim next.’

  He wheeled his horse and left her, groping wonderingly for an explanation of her fury. He had not spoken with her above a score of times in his life. He had merely been decent to her when, in the beginning, it struck him that after all she was only a defenceless woman and that men were hard on her. That his former simple kindness would have awakened any serious affection had failed to suggest itself to him.

  But swiftly he forgot Sanchia and her vindictiveness. She had mentioned Courtot; for a little as he rode into the hills he puzzled over Courtot’s recurrent disappearances. He recalled how, always when he came to a place where he might expect to find the gambler, he had passed on. Here of late he was like some sinister will-o’-the-wisp. What was it that urged him? A lure that beckoned? A menace that drove? He thought of Kish Taka. There was a nemesis to dog any man. Jim Courtot had dwelt with the desert Indians; he had come to know in what savage manner they meted out their retributive justice. Was Kish Taka still unsleeping, patient, relentless on Courtot’s trail? Kish Taka and his dog?

  But his horse’s hoofs were beating out a merry music on the winding trail that led toward the Red Hill country, and at the end of the trail was Helen. Helen had not gone East. The frown in his eyes gave place to his smile; the sunlight was again golden and glorious; the emptiness of the world was replaced by a large content.

  ‘They just couldn’t stand being so close to what they had lost,’ he argued. ‘It was a right move to come up here.’

  He found the new camp without trouble. As he entered the lower end of the tiny valley he saw the canvas-walled cabin at the farther end, under the cliffs. He saw Helen herself. She was just stepping out through the door. He came racing on to her, waving his hat by way of greeting. He slipped down from the saddle, let his bundle fall and caught both of her hands in his.

  After this long, unexplained absence Helen had meant to be very stiff when, on some fine day, Alan Howard remembered to come again. But now, under his ardent eyes, the colour ran up into her cheeks in rebellious defiance of her often strengthened determination and, though she wrenched herself free from him, something of the fire in his eyes was reflected in hers.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr. Cyclone,’ she said quite as carelessly as his sudden appearance permitted her vaguely disturbed senses. ‘What are you going to do? Run over me?’

  He laughed joyously.

  ‘I could eat you,’ he told her enthusiastically. ‘You look just that good to me. Lord, but I’m hungry for the sight of you!’

  ‘That’s nice of you to say so,’ Helen answered. And now she was quite all that she had planned to be; as coolly indifferent as only a girl can be when something has begun to sing in her heart and she has made up her mind that no one must hear the singing. ‘But I fail to see why this very excellent imitation of a man who hasn’t seen his best friend for a couple of centuries.’

  ‘It has been that long, every bit of it—longer.’

  Helen’s smile was that stock smile to be employed in answer to an inconsequential compliment paid by a chance acquaintance.

  ‘Three or four days is hardly an eternity,’ she retorted.

  ‘Three or four days? Why, it’s been over nine! Nearly ten.’

  She appeared both amazed and incredulous. Then she waved the matter aside as of no moment.

  ‘I was going out to the spring for a drink,’ she said. ‘Will you wait here? Father will be in soon.’

  ‘I’ll come along, if there’s room for two.’ He picked up his parcel, which Helen noted without seeming to note anything. ‘Look here, Helen,’ as she started on before him to the thicket of willows, ‘aren’t you the least little bit glad to see me?’

  ‘Why, of course I am,’ she assured him politely. ‘And papa was wondering about you only this morning. Isn’t it pretty here?’

  He admitted without enthusiasm that it was. He had not seen anything but her. She had on a blue dress; she wore a wide hat; her eyes were nothing less than maddening. He recalled the prettiness of Barbee’s new girl at the lunch counter; he remembered Sanchia’s regular features; these two were simply not of the same order of beings as Helen. No woman was. He strode behind her as she flitted on up the trail and felt thrilling through him an odd commingling of reverence, of adoration, of infinite yearning.

  She came to the spring and stopped, watching him eagerly though she pretended to be looking anywhere but at him. And for a moment Howard, marvelling at the spot, let his eyes wander from her. The spring had been cleaned out and rimmed with big flat rocks. About it, as though recently transplanted here, were red and blue flowers. Just at hand close to the clear pool was a delightful shade cast by a freshly constructed shelter. And the shelter itself made him open his eyes. Willow poles, with the leaves still green on them, had been set in the soft earth. Across them other poles had been placed cunningly woven in and out. Still other branches, criss-crossed above, and piled high with foliage, offered a thick mat of verdure to shield one from the hot rays of the sun. Within the elfin chamber was a rustic seat; everywhere, their roots enwrapped in wet earth, were flowers.

  ‘It’s wonderful!’ he told her, and now his enthusiasm had been awakened. ‘And, of course it’s your own idea and your own work.’

  ‘Oh my, no! It was John’s idea and John made it!’

  ‘John?’

  ‘John Carr. He has been a perfect dear. Isn’t he wonderful?’

  Yes, Carr was wonderful. But already Howard’s enthusiasm had fled.

  ‘The leaves will wilt pretty soon,’ he found fault in spite of himself. He was a little ashamed even while he was speaking. ‘The flowers will die, and then——’

  Helen was already seated within, smiling, looking placid and unconcerned.

  ‘By then,’ she announced lightly, ‘I’ll be gone; so it won’t matter.’

  ‘Gone?’ he demanded sharply. ‘Where?’

  ‘East. Mr. Carr has gone on ahead. We are to meet him in New York.’

  He sat down upon a rock just outside her door and made no attempt to hide what was in his heart. He had thought to have lost her when he came to the spot whence the cabin had vanished; he had found her here; he was going to lose her again.… Helen’s heart quickened at his look, and she lowered her head, pretending to be occupied exclusively with a thistle that had caught on her skirt, afraid that he would know.

  ‘Why are you going like this?’ he asked suddenly.

  She appeared to hesitate.

  ‘I ought not to say anything against one of your f
riends,’ she said with a great show of ingenuousness. ‘But, Mrs. Murray——’

  Explosively he cut her short. ‘You know that she is not a friend of mine and that she has never been and never will be a friend of mine. Why do you say that?’

  She shrugged her shoulders and went on smiling at him. That smile began to madden him; it appeared to speak of such an unruffled spirit when his own was in tumult.

  ‘I beg your pardon, I’m sure. I was merely going to say that Mrs. Murray shows too great an interest in papa. Of course I understand her, and he doesn’t. Dear old pops is a perfect child. She has tricked him once; she seems to think him worth watching; she is unbearable. So I am going to do the very natural thing and take him away from her. Back where he belongs by the way; where we both belong.’

  ‘That is not true; you don’t belong anywhere but here.’ He began speaking slowly, very earnestly and with little show of emotion. But little by little his speech quickened, his voice was raised, his words became vehement. ‘You belong here. There is no land in the world like this, just as there is no girl like you. Listen to me, Helen! For your sake, for my sake—yes, and for your father’s sake—you must stay. You were speaking of him; let’s think of him first. He is like a child in that he has kept a pure, simple heart. But he is not without his own sort of wisdom. He knows rocks and strata and geological formation; he found gold once, and that was not just accident. He lost, but he lost without a whimper. He is a good sport. He will find gold again because it is here and he knows how to find it and where to find it.’

  He paused, and Helen, though with no great show of interest and no slightest indication of being impressed, waited for him to go on.