by Zane Grey
My employer looked worried. Sally was in a regular cowgirl riding costume, in which her trim, shapely figure showed at its best, and her face was saucy, sparkling, daring.
“Good morning, Russ,” said Miss Sampson and she gazed searchingly at me. I had dropped off the fence, sombrero in hand. I knew I was in for a lecture, and I put on a brazen, innocent air.
“Did you break your promise to me?” she asked reproachfully.
“Which one?” I asked. It was Sally’s bright eyes upon me, rather than Miss Sampson’s reproach, that bothered me.
“About getting drunk again,” she said.
“I didn’t break that one.”
“My cousin George saw you in the Hope So gambling place last night, drunk, staggering, mixing with that riffraff, on the verge of a brawl.”
“Miss Sampson, with all due respect to Mr. Wright, I want to say that he has a strange wish to lower me in the eyes of you ladies,” I protested with a fine show of spirit.
“Russ, were you drunk?” she demanded.
“No. I should think you needn’t ask me that. Didn’t you ever see a man the morning after a carouse?”
Evidently she had. And there I knew I stood, fresh, clean-shaven, clear-eyed as the morning.
Sally’s saucy face grew thoughtful, too. The only thing she had ever asked of me was not to drink. The habit had gone hard with the Sampson family.
“Russ, you look just as—as nice as I’d want you to,” Miss Sampson replied. “I don’t know what to think. They tell me things. You deny. Whom shall I believe? George swore he saw you.”
“Miss Sampson, did I ever lie to you?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
Then I looked at her, and she understood what I meant.
“George has lied to me. That day at Sanderson. And since, too, I fear. Do you say he lies?”
“Miss Sampson, I would not call your cousin a liar.”
Here Sally edged closer, with the bridle rein of her horse over her arm.
“Russ, cousin George isn’t the only one who saw you. Burt Waters told me the same,” said Sally nervously. I believed she hoped I was telling the truth.
“Waters! So he runs me down behind my back. All right, I won’t say a word about him. But do you believe I was drunk when I say no?”
“I’m afraid I do, Russ,” she replied in reluctance. Was she testing me?
“See here, Miss Sampson,” I burst out. “Why don’t you discharge me? Please let me go. I’m not claiming much for myself, but you don’t believe even that. I’m pretty bad. I never denied the scraps, the gambling—all that. But I did do as Miss Sally asked me—I did keep my promise to you. Now, discharge me. Then I’ll be free to call on Mr. Burt Waters.”
Miss Sampson looked alarmed and Sally turned pale, to my extreme joy.
Those girls believed I was a desperate devil of a cowboy, who had been held back from spilling blood solely through their kind relation to me.
“Oh, no!” exclaimed Sally. “Diane, don’t let him go!”
“Russ, pray don’t get angry,” replied Miss Sampson and she put a soft hand on me that thrilled me, while it made me feel like a villain. “I won’t discharge you. I need you. Sally needs you. After all, it’s none of my business what you do away from here. But I hoped I would be so happy to—to reclaim you from—Didn’t you ever have a sister, Russ?”
I kept silent for fear that I would perjure myself anew. Yet the situation was delicious, and suddenly I conceived a wild idea.
“Miss Sampson,” I began haltingly, but with brave front, “I’ve been wild in the past. But I’ve been tolerably straight here, trying to please you. Lately I have been going to the bad again. Not drunk, but leaning that way. Lord knows what I’ll do soon if—if my trouble isn’t cured.”
“Russ! What trouble?”
“You know what’s the matter with me,” I went on hurriedly. “Anybody could see that.”
Sally turned a flaming scarlet. Miss Sampson made it easier for me by reason of her quick glance of divination.
“I’ve fallen in love with Miss Sally. I’m crazy about her. Here I’ve got to see these fellows flirting with her. And it’s killing me. I’ve—”
“If you are crazy about me, you don’t have to tell!” cried Sally, red and white by turns.
“I want to stop your flirting one way or another. I’ve been in earnest. I wasn’t flirting. I begged you to—to…”
“You never did,” interrupted Sally furiously. That hint had been a spark.
“I couldn’t have dreamed it,” I protested, in a passion to be earnest, yet tingling with the fun of it. “That day when I—didn’t I ask…”
“If my memory serves me correctly, you didn’t ask anything,” she replied, with anger and scorn now struggling with mirth.
“But, Sally, I meant to. You understood me? Say you didn’t believe I could take that liberty without honorable intentions.”
That was too much for Sally. She jumped at her horse, made the quickest kind of a mount, and was off like a flash.
“Stop me if you can,” she called back over her shoulder, her face alight and saucy.
“Russ, go after her,” said Miss Sampson. “In that mood she’ll ride to Sanderson. My dear fellow, don’t stare so. I understand many things now. Sally is a flirt. She would drive any man mad. Russ, I’ve grown in a short time to like you. If you’ll be a man—give up drinking and gambling—maybe you’ll have a chance with her. Hurry now—go after her.”
I mounted and spurred my horse after Sally’s. She was down on the level now, out in the open, and giving her mount his head. Even had I wanted to overhaul her at once the matter would have been difficult, well nigh impossible under five miles.
Sally had as fast a horse as there was on the range; she made no weight in the saddle, and she could ride. From time to time she looked back over her shoulder.
I gained enough to make her think I was trying to catch her. Sally loved a horse; she loved a race; she loved to win.
My good fortune had given me more than one ride alone with Sally. Miss Sampson enjoyed riding, too; but she was not a madcap, and when she accompanied us there was never any race.
When Sally got out alone with me she made me ride to keep her from disappearing somewhere on the horizon. This morning I wanted her to enjoy to the fullest her utter freedom and to feel that for once I could not catch her.
Perhaps my declaration to Miss Sampson had liberated my strongest emotions.
However that might be, the fact was that no ride before had ever been like this one—no sky so blue, no scene so open, free, and enchanting as that beautiful gray-green range, no wind so sweet. The breeze that rushed at me might have been laden with the perfume of Sally Langdon’s hair.
I sailed along on what seemed a strange ride. Grazing horses pranced and whistled as I went by; jack-rabbits bounded away to hide in the longer clumps of grass; a prowling wolf trotted from his covert near a herd of cattle.
Far to the west rose the low, dark lines of bleak mountains. They were always mysterious to me, as if holding a secret I needed to know.
It was a strange ride because in the back of my head worked a haunting consciousness of the deadly nature of my business there on the frontier, a business in such contrast with this dreaming and dallying, this longing for what surely was futile.
Any moment I might be stripped of my disguise. Any moment I might have to be the Ranger.
Sally kept the lead across the wide plain, and mounted to the top of a ridge, where tired out, and satisfied with her victory, she awaited me. I was in no hurry to reach the summit of the long, slow-sloping ridge, and I let my horse walk.
Just how would Sally Langdon meet me now, after my regretted exhibition before her cousin? There was no use to conjecture, but I was not hopeful.
When I got there to find her in her sweetest mood, with some little difference never before noted—a touch of shyness—I concealed my surprise.
“Russ, I gave
you a run that time,” she said. “Ten miles and you never caught me!”
“But look at the start you had. I’ve had my troubles beating you with an even break.”
Sally was susceptible to flattery in regard to her riding, a fact that I made subtle use of.
“But in a long race I was afraid you’d beat me. Russ, I’ve learned to ride out here. Back home I never had room to ride a horse. Just look. Miles and miles of level, of green. Little hills with black bunches of trees. Not a soul in sight. Even the town hidden in the green. All wild and lonely. Isn’t it glorious, Russ?”
“Lately it’s been getting to me,” I replied soberly.
We both gazed out over the sea of gray-green, at the undulating waves of ground in the distance. On these rides with her I had learned to appreciate the beauty of the lonely reaches of plain.
But when I could look at her I seldom wasted time on scenery. Looking at her now I tried to get again that impression of a difference in her. It eluded me.
Just now with the rose in her brown cheeks, her hair flying, her eyes with grave instead of mocking light, she seemed only prettier than usual. I got down ostensibly to tighten the saddle girths on her horse. But I lingered over the task.
Presently, when she looked down at me, I received that subtle impression of change, and read it as her soft mood of dangerous sweetness that came so seldom, mingled with something deeper, more of character and womanliness than I had ever sensed in her.
“Russ, it wasn’t nice to tell Diane that,” she said.
“Nice! It was—oh, I’d like to swear!” I ejaculated. “But now I understand my miserable feeling. I was jealous, Sally, I’m sorry. I apologize.”
She had drawn off her gloves, and one little hand, brown, shapely, rested upon her knee very near to me. I took it in mine. She let it stay, though she looked away from me, the color rich in her cheeks.
“I can forgive that,” she murmured. “But the lie. Jealousy doesn’t excuse a lie.”
“You mean—what I intimated to your cousin,” I said, trying to make her look at me. “That was the devil in me. Only it’s true.”
“How can it be true when you never asked—said a word—you hinted of?” she queried. “Diane believed what you said. I know she thinks me horrid.”
“No she doesn’t. As for what I said, or meant to say, which is the same thing, how’d you take my actions? I hope not the same as you take Wright’s or the other fellow’s.”
Sally was silent, a little pale now, and I saw that I did not need to say any more about the other fellows. The change, the difference was now marked. It drove me to give in wholly to this earnest and passionate side of myself.
“Sally, I do love you. I don’t know how you took my actions. Anyway, now I’ll make them plain. I was beside myself with love and jealousy. Will you marry me?”
She did not answer. But the old willful Sally was not in evidence. Watching her face I gave her a slow and gentle pull, one she could easily resist if she cared to, and she slipped from her saddle into my arms.
Then there was one wildly sweet moment in which I had the blissful certainty that she kissed me of her own accord. She was abashed, yet yielding; she let herself go, yet seemed not utterly unstrung. Perhaps I was rough, held her too hard, for she cried out a little.
“Russ! Let me go. Help me—back.”
I righted her in the saddle, although not entirely releasing her.
“But, Sally, you haven’t told me anything,” I remonstrated tenderly. “Do you love me?”
“I think so,” she whispered.
“Sally, will you marry me?”
She disengaged herself then, sat erect and faced away from me, with her breast heaving.
“No, Russ,” she presently said, once more calm.
“But Sally—if you love me—” I burst out, and then stopped, stilled by something in her face.
“I can’t help—loving you, Russ,” she said. “But to promise to marry you, that’s different. Why, Russ, I know nothing about you, not even your last name. You’re not a—a steady fellow. You drink, gamble, fight. You’ll kill somebody yet. Then I’ll not love you. Besides, I’ve always felt you’re not just what you seemed. I can’t trust you. There’s something wrong about you.”
I knew my face darkened, and perhaps hope and happiness died in it. Swiftly she placed a kind hand on my shoulder.
“Now, I’ve hurt you. Oh, I’m sorry. Your asking me makes such a difference. They are not in earnest. But, Russ, I had to tell you why I couldn’t be engaged to you.”
“I’m not good enough for you. I’d no right to ask you to marry me,” I replied abjectly.
“Russ, don’t think me proud,” she faltered. “I wouldn’t care who you were if I could only—only respect you. Some things about you are splendid, you’re such a man, that’s why I cared. But you gamble. You drink—and I hate that. You’re dangerous they say, and I’d be, I am in constant dread you’ll kill somebody. Remember, Russ, I’m no Texan.”
This regret of Sally’s, this faltering distress at giving me pain, was such sweet assurance that she did love me, better than she knew, that I was divided between extremes of emotion.
“Will you wait? Will you trust me a little? Will you give me a chance? After all, maybe I’m not so bad as I seem.”
“Oh, if you weren’t! Russ, are you asking me to trust you?”
“I beg you to—dearest. Trust me and wait.”
“Wait? What for? Are you really on the square, Russ? Or are you what George calls you—a drunken cowboy, a gambler, sharp with the cards, a gun-fighter?”
My face grew cold as I felt the blood leave it. At that moment mention of George Wright fixed once for all my hate of him.
Bitter indeed was it that I dared not give him the lie. But what could I do? The character Wright gave me was scarcely worse than what I had chosen to represent. I had to acknowledge the justice of his claim, but nevertheless I hated him.
“Sally, I ask you to trust me in spite of my reputation.”
“You ask me a great deal,” she replied.
“Yes, it’s too much. Let it be then only this—you’ll wait. And while you wait, promise not to flirt with Wright and Waters.”
“Russ, I’ll not let George or any of them so much as dare touch me,” she declared in girlish earnestness, her voice rising. “I’ll promise if you’ll promise me not to go into those saloons any more.”
One word would have brought her into my arms for good and all. The better side of Sally Langdon showed then in her appeal. That appeal was as strong as the drawing power of her little face, all eloquent with its light, and eyes dark with tears, and lips wanting to smile.
My response should have been instant. How I yearned to give it and win the reward I imagined I saw on her tremulous lips! But I was bound. The grim, dark nature of my enterprise there in Linrock returned to stultify my eagerness, dispel my illusion, shatter my dream.
For one instant it flashed through my mind to tell Sally who I was, what my errand was, after the truth. But the secret was not mine to tell. And I kept my pledges.
The hopeful glow left Sally’s face. Her disappointment seemed keen. Then a little scorn of certainty was the bitterest of all for me to bear.
“That’s too much to promise all at once,” I protested lamely, and I knew I would have done better to keep silence.
“Russ, a promise like that is nothing—if a man loves a girl,” she retorted. “Don’t make any more love to me, please, unless you want me to laugh at you. And don’t feel such terrible trouble if you happen to see me flirting occasionally.”
She ended with a little mocking laugh. That was the perverse side of her, the cat using her claws. I tried not to be angry, but failed.
“All right. I’ll take my medicine,” I replied bitterly. “I’ll certainly never make love to you again. And I’ll stand it if I happen to see Waters kiss you, or any other decent fellow. But look out how you let that damned backbiter Wright fool arou
nd you!”
I spoke to her as I had never spoken before, in quick, fierce meaning, with eyes holding hers.
She paled. But even my scarce-veiled hint did not chill her anger. Tossing her head she wheeled and rode away.
I followed at a little distance, and thus we traveled the ten miles back to the ranch. When we reached the corrals she dismounted and, turning her horse over to Dick, she went off toward the house without so much as a nod or good-by to me.
I went down to town for once in a mood to live up to what had been heretofore only a sham character.
But turning a corner into the main street I instantly forgot myself at the sight of a crowd congregated before the town hall. There was a babel of voices and an air of excitement that I immediately associated with Sampson, who as mayor of Linrock, once in a month of moons held court in this hall.
It took slipping and elbowing to get through the crowd. Once inside the door I saw that the crowd was mostly outside, and evidently not so desirous as I was to enter.
The first man I saw was Steele looming up; the next was Sampson chewing his mustache—the third, Wright, whose dark and sinister face told much. Something was up in Linrock. Steele had opened the hall.
There were other men in the hall, a dozen or more, and all seemed shouting excitedly in unison with the crowd outside. I did not try to hear what was said. I edged closer in, among the men to the front.
Sampson sat at a table up on a platform. Near him sat a thick-set grizzled man, with deep eyes; and this was Hanford Owens, county judge.
To the right stood a tall, angular, yellow-faced fellow with a drooping, sandy mustache. Conspicuous on his vest was a huge silver shield. This was Gorsech, one of Sampson’s sheriffs.
There were four other men whom I knew, several whose faces were familiar, and half a dozen strangers, all dusty horsemen.
Steele stood apart from them, a little to one side, so that he faced them all. His hair was disheveled, and his shirt open at the neck. He looked cool and hard.
When I caught his eye I realized in an instant that the long deferred action, the beginning of our real fight was at hand.