by Zane Grey
Helen turned presently, with no trace of emotion except a singular brilliance of the eyes. She was so slow to speak again that Colonel Zane and Will returned from the corral before she found her voice.
“Colonel Zane, please tell me about last night. When papa came home to supper he was pale and very nervous. I knew something had happened. But he would not explain, which made me all the more anxious. Won’t you please tell me?”
Colonel Zane glanced again at her, and knew what had happened. Despite her self-possession those tell-tale eyes told her secret. Ever-changing and shadowing with a bounding, rapturous light, they were indeed the windows of her soul. All the emotion of a woman’s heart shone there, fear, beauty, wondering appeal, trembling joy, and timid hope.
“Tell you? Indeed I will,” replied Colonel Zane, softened and a little remorseful under those wonderful eyes.
No one liked to tell a story better than Colonel Zane. Briefly and graphically he related the circumstances of the affair leading to the attack on Helen’s father, and, as the tale progressed, he became quite excited, speaking with animated face and forceful gestures.
“Just as the knife-point touched your father, a swiftly-flying object knocked the weapon to the floor. It was Jonathan’s tomahawk. What followed was so sudden I hardly saw it. Like lightning, and flexible as steel, Jonathan jumped over the table, smashed Case against the wall, pulled him up and threw him over the bank. I tell you, Helen, it was a beautiful piece of action; but not, of course, for a woman’s eyes. Now that’s all. Your father was not even hurt.”
“He saved papa’s life,” murmured Helen, standing like a statue.
She wheeled suddenly with that swift bird-like motion habitual to her, and went quickly down the path leading to the spring.
* * * *
Jonathan Zane, solitary dreamer of dreams as he was, had never been in as strange and beautiful a reverie as that which possessed him on this Sabbath morning.
Deep into his heart had sunk Betty’s words. The wonder of it, the sweetness, that alone was all he felt. The glory of this girl had begun, days past, to spread its glamour round him. Swept irresistibly away now, he soared aloft in a dream-castle of fancy with its painted windows and golden walls.
For the first time in his life on the border he had entered the little glade and had no eye for the crystal water flowing over the pebbles and mossy stones, or the plot of grassy ground inclosed by tall, dark trees and shaded by a canopy of fresh green and azure blue. Nor did he hear the music of the soft rushing water, the warbling birds, or the gentle sighing breeze moving the leaves.
Gone, vanished, lost today was that sweet companionship of nature. That indefinable and unutterable spirit which flowed so peacefully to him from his beloved woods; that something more than merely affecting his senses, which existed for him in the stony cliffs, and breathed with life through the lonely aisles of the forest, had fled before the fateful power of a woman’s love and beauty.
A long time that seemed only a moment passed while he leaned against a stone. A light step sounded on the path.
A vision in pure white entered the glade; two little hands pressed his, and two dark-blue eyes of misty beauty shed their light on him.
“Jonathan, I am come to thank you.”
Sweet and tremulous, the voice sounded far away.
“Thank me? For what?”
“You saved papa’s life. Oh! how can I thank you?”
No voice answered for him.
“I have nothing to give but this.”
A flower-like face was held up to him; hands light as thistledown touched his shoulders; dark-blue eyes glowed upon him with all tenderness.
“May I thank you—so?”
Soft lips met his full and lingeringly.
Then came a rush as of wind, a flash of white, and the patter of flying feet. He was alone in the glade.
CHAPTER X
June passed; July opened with unusually warm weather, and Fort Henry had no visits from Indians or horse-thieves, nor any inconvenience except the hot sun. It was the warmest weather for many years, and seriously dwarfed the settlers’ growing corn. Nearly all the springs were dry, and a drouth menaced the farmers.
The weather gave Helen an excuse which she was not slow to adopt. Her pale face and languid air perplexed and worried her father and her friends. She explained to them that the heat affected her disagreeably.
Long days had passed since that Sunday morning when she kissed the borderman. What transports of sweet hope and fear were hers then! How shame had scorched her happiness! Yet still she gloried in the act. By that kiss had she awakened to a full consciousness of her love. With insidious stealth and ever-increasing power this flood had increased to full tide, and, bursting its bonds, surged over her with irresistible strength.
During the first days after the dawning of her passion, she lived in its sweetness, hearing only melodious sounds chiming in her soul. The hours following that Sunday were like long dreams. But as all things reach fruition, so this girlish period passed, leaving her a thoughtful woman. She began to gather up the threads of her life where love had broken them, to plan nobly, and to hope and wait.
Weeks passed, however, and her lover did not come. Betty told her that Jonathan made flying trips at break of day to hold council with Colonel Zane; that he and Wetzel were on the trail of Shawnees with stolen horses, and both bordermen were in their dark, vengeful, terrible moods. In these later days Helen passed through many stages of feeling. After the exalting mood of hot, young love, came reaction. She fell into the depths of despair. Sorrow paled her face, thinned her cheeks and lent another shadow, a mournful one, to her great eyes. The constant repression of emotion, the strain of trying to seem cheerful when she was miserable, threatened even her magnificent health. She answered the solicitude of her friends by evasion, and then by that innocent falsehood in which a sensitive soul hides its secrets. Shame was only natural, because since the borderman came not, nor sent her a word, pride whispered that she had wooed him, forgetting modesty.
Pride, anger, shame, despair, however, finally fled before affection. She loved this wild borderman, and knew he loved her in return although he might not understand it himself. His simplicity, his lack of experience with women, his hazardous life and stern duty regarding it, pleaded for him and for her love. For the lack of a little understanding she would never live unhappy and alone while she was loved. Better give a thousand times more than she had sacrificed. He would return to the village some day, when the Indians and the thieves were run down, and would be his own calm, gentle self. Then she would win him, break down his allegiance to this fearful border life, and make him happy in her love.
While Helen was going through one of the fires of life to come out sweeter and purer, if a little pensive and sad, time, which waits not for love, nor life, nor death, was hastening onward, and soon the golden fields of grain were stored. September came with its fruitful promise fulfilled.
Helen entered once more into the quiet, social life of the little settlement, taught her class on Sundays, did all her own work, and even found time to bring a ray of sunshine to more than one sick child’s bed. Yet she did not forget her compact with Jonathan, and bent all her intelligence to find some clew that might aid in the capture of the horse-thief. She was still groping in the darkness. She could not, however, banish the belief that the traitor was Brandt. She blamed herself for this, because of having no good reasons for suspicion; but the conviction was there, fixed by intuition. Because a man’s eyes were steely gray, sharp like those of a cat’s, and capable of the same contraction and enlargement, there was no reason to believe their owner was a criminal. But that, Helen acknowledged with a smile, was the only argument she had. To be sure Brandt had looked capable of anything, the night Jonathan knocked him down; she knew he had incited Case to begin the trouble at Metzar’s, and had seemed worried since that time. He had not left the settlement on short journeys, as had been his custom before the affair in
the bar-room. And not a horse had disappeared from Fort Henry since that time.
Brandt had not discontinued his attentions to her; if they were less ardent it was because she had given him absolutely to understand that she could be his friend only. And she would not have allowed even so much except for Jonathan’s plan. She fancied it was possible to see behind Brandt’s courtesy, the real subtle, threatening man. Stripped of his kindliness, an assumed virtue, the iron man stood revealed, cold, calculating, cruel.
Mordaunt she never saw but once and then, shocking and pitiful, he lay dead drunk in the grass by the side of the road, his pale, weary, handsome face exposed to the pitiless rays of the sun. She ran home weeping over this wreck of what had once been so fine a gentleman. Ah! the curse of rum! He had learned his soft speech and courtly bearing in the refinement of a home where a proud mother adored, and gentle sisters loved him. And now, far from the kindred he had disgraced, he lay in the road like a log. How it hurt her! She almost wished she could have loved him, if love might have redeemed. She was more kind to her other admirers, more tolerant of Brandt, and could forgive the Englishman, because the pangs she had suffered through love had softened her spirit.
During this long period the growing friendship of her cousin for Betty had been a source of infinite pleasure to Helen. She hoped and believed a romance would develop between the young widow and Will, and did all in her power, slyly abetted by the matchmaking colonel, to bring the two together.
One afternoon when the sky was clear with that intense blue peculiar to bright days in early autumn, Helen started out toward Betty’s, intending to remind that young lady she had promised to hunt for clematis and other fall flowers.
About half-way to Betty’s home she met Brandt. He came swinging round a corner with his quick, firm step. She had not seen him for several days, and somehow he seemed different. A brightness, a flash, as of daring expectation, was in his face. The poise, too, of the man had changed.
“Well, I am fortunate. I was just going to your home,” he said cheerily. “Won’t you come for a walk with me?”
“You may walk with me to Betty’s,” Helen answered.
“No, not that. Come up the hillside. We’ll get some goldenrod. I’d like to have a chat with you. I may go away—I mean I’m thinking of making a short trip,” he added hurriedly.
“Please come.”
“I promised to go to Betty’s.”
“You won’t come?” His voice trembled with mingled disappointment and resentment.
“No,” Helen replied in slight surprise.
“You have gone with the other fellows. Why not with me?” He was white now, and evidently laboring under powerful feelings that must have had their origin in some thought or plan which hinged on the acceptance of his invitation.
“Because I choose not to,” Helen replied coldly, meeting his glance fully.
A dark red flush swelled Brandt’s face and neck; his gray eyes gleamed balefully with wolfish glare; his teeth were clenched. He breathed hard and trembled with anger. Then, by a powerful effort, he conquered himself; the villainous expression left his face; the storm of rage subsided. Great incentive there must have been for him thus to repress his emotions so quickly. He looked long at her with sinister, intent regard; then, with the laugh of a desperado, a laugh which might have indicated contempt for the failure of his suit, and which was fraught with a world of meaning, of menace, he left her without so much as a salute.
Helen pondered over this sudden change, and felt relieved because she need make no further pretense of friendship. He had shown himself to be what she had instinctively believed. She hurried on toward Betty’s, hoping to find Colonel Zane at home, and with Jonathan, for Brandt’s hint of leaving Fort Henry, and his evident chagrin at such a slip of speech, had made her suspicious. She was informed by Mrs. Zane that the colonel had gone to a log-raising; Jonathan had not been in for several days, and Betty went away with Will.
“Where did they go?” asked Helen.
“I’m not sure; I think down to the spring.”
Helen followed the familiar path through the grove of oaks into the glade. It was quite deserted. Sitting on the stone against which Jonathan had leaned the day she kissed him, she gave way to tender reflection. Suddenly she was disturbed by the sound of rapid footsteps, and looking up, saw the hulking form of Metzar, the innkeeper, coming down the path. He carried a bucket, and meant evidently to get water. Helen did not desire to be seen, and, thinking he would stay only a moment, slipped into a thicket of willows behind the stone. She could see plainly through the foliage. Metzar came into the glade, peered around in the manner of a man expecting to see someone, and then, filling his bucket at the spring, sat down on the stone.
Not a minute elapsed before soft, rapid footsteps sounded in the distance. The bushes parted, disclosing the white, set face and gray eyes of Roger Brandt. With a light spring he cleared the brook and approached Metzar.
Before speaking he glanced around the glade with the fugitive, distrustful glance of a man who suspects even the trees. Then, satisfied by the scrutiny he opened his hunting frock, taking forth a long object which he thrust toward Metzar.
It was an Indian arrow.
Metzar’s dull gaze traveled from this to the ominous face of Brandt.
“See there, you! Look at this arrow! Shot by the best Indian on the border into the window of my room. I hadn’t been there a minute when it came from the island. God! but it was a great shot!”
“Hell!” gasped Metzar, his dull face quickening with some awful thought.
“I guess it is hell,” replied Brandt, his face growing whiter and wilder.
“Our game’s up?” questioned Metzar with haggard cheek.
“Up? Man! We haven’t a day, maybe less, to shake Fort Henry.”
“What does it mean?” asked Metzar. He was the calmer of the two.
“It’s a signal. The Shawnees, who were in hiding with the horses over by Blueberry swamp, have been flushed by those bordermen. Some of them have escaped; at least one, for no one but Ashbow could shoot that arrow across the river.”
“Suppose he hadn’t come?” whispered Metzar hoarsely.
Brandt answered him with a dark, shuddering gaze.
A twig snapped in the thicket. Like foxes at the click of a trap, these men whirled with fearsome glances.
“Ugh!” came a low, guttural voice from the bushes, and an Indian of magnificent proportions and somber, swarthy features, entered the glade.
CHAPTER XI
The savage had just emerged from the river, for his graceful, copper-colored body and scanty clothing were dripping with water. He carried a long bow and a quiver of arrows.
Brandt uttered an exclamation of surprise, and Metzar a curse, as the lithe Indian leaped the brook. He was not young. His swarthy face was lined, seamed, and terrible with a dark impassiveness.
“Paleface-brother-get-arrow,” he said in halting English, as his eyes flashed upon Brandt. “Chief-want-make-sure.”
The white man leaned forward, grasped the Indian’s arm, and addressed him in an Indian language. This questioning was evidently in regard to his signal, the whereabouts of others of the party, and why he took such fearful risks almost in the village. The Indian answered with one English word.
“Deathwind!”
Brandt drew back with drawn, white face, while a whistling breath escaped him.
“I knew it, Metz. Wetzel!” he exclaimed in a husky voice.
The blood slowly receded from Metzar’s evil, murky face, leaving it haggard.
“Deathwind-on-Chief’s-trail-up-Eagle Rock,” continued the Indian. “Deathwind-fooled-not-for-long. Chief-wait-paleface-brothers at Two Islands.”
The Indian stepped into the brook, parted the willows, and was gone as he had come, silently.
“We know what to expect,” said Brandt in calmer tone as the daring cast of countenance returned to him. “There’s an Indian for you! He got away, doubled
like an old fox on his trail, and ran in here to give us a chance at escape. Now you know why Bing Legget can’t be caught.”
“Let’s dig at once,” replied Metzar, with no show of returning courage such as characterized his companion.
Brandt walked to and fro with bent brows, like one in deep thought. Suddenly he turned upon Metzar eyes which were brightly hard, and reckless with resolve.
“By Heaven! I’ll do it! Listen. Wetzel has gone to the top of Eagle Mountain, where he and Zane have a rendezvous. Even he won’t suspect the cunning of this Indian; anyway it’ll be after daylight tomorrow before he strikes the trail. I’ve got twenty-four hours, and more, to get this girl, and I’ll do it!”
“Bad move to have weight like her on a march,” said Metzar.
“Bah! The thing’s easy. As for you, go on, push ahead after we’re started. All I ask is that you stay by me until the time to cut loose.”
“I ain’t agoin’ to crawfish now,” growled Metzar. “Strikes me, too, I’m losin’ more’n you.”
“You won’t be a loser if you can get back to Detroit with your scalp. I’ll pay you in horses and gold. Once we reach Legget’s place we’re safe.”
“What’s yer plan about gittin’ the gal?” asked Metzar.
Brandt leaned forward and spoke eagerly, but in a low tone.
“Git away on hoss-back?” questioned Metzar, visibly brightening. “Wal, that’s some sense. Kin ye trust ther other party?”
“I’m sure I can,” rejoined Brandt.
“It’ll be a good job, a good job an’ all done in daylight, too. Bing Legget couldn’t plan better,” Metzar said, rubbing his hands,
“We’ve fooled these Zanes and their fruit-raising farmers for a year, and our time is about up,” Brandt muttered. “One more job and we’ve done. Once with Legget we’re safe, and then we’ll work slowly back towards Detroit. Let’s get out of here now, for someone may come at any moment.”
The plotters separated, Brandt going through the grove, and Metzar down the path by which he had come.