by Zane Grey
“Wal’ this mawnin’ I went over to Nels’s bunk. Some of the fellers was there, all speculatin’ about Gene. Then big as life Gene struts round the corner. He wasn’t the same Gene. His face was pale an’ his eyes burned like fire. He had thet old mockin’, cool smile, an’ somethin’ besides thet I couldn’t understand. Frankie Slade up an’ made a remark—no wuss than he’d been makin’ fer days—an’ Gene tumbled him out of his chair, punched him good, walked all over him. Frankie wasn’t hurt so much as he was bewildered. ‘Gene,’ he says, ‘what the hell struck you?’ An’ Gene says, kind of sweet like, ‘Frankie, you may be a nice feller when you’re alone, but your talk’s offensive to a gentleman.’
“After thet what was said to Gene was with a nice smile. Now, Miss Majesty, it’s beyond me what to allow for Gene’s sudden change. First off, I thought Padre Marcos had converted him. I actooly thought thet. But I reckon it’s only Gene Stewart come back—the old Gene Stewart an’ some. Thet’s all I care about. I’m rememberin’ how I once told you thet Gene was the last of the cowboys. Perhaps I should hev said he’s the last of my kind of cowboys. Wal, Miss Majesty, you’ll be apprecatin’ of what I meant from now on.”
It was also beyond Madeline to account for Gene Stewart’s antics, and, making allowance for the old cattleman’s fancy, she did not weigh his remarks very heavily. She guessed why Stewart might have been angry at the presence of Padre Marcos. Madeline supposed that it was rather an unusual circumstance for a cowboy to be converted to religious belief. But it was possible. And she knew that religious fervor often manifested itself in extremes of feeling and action. Most likely, in Stewart’s case, his real manner had been both misunderstood and exaggerated. However, Madeline had a curious desire, which she did not wholly admit to herself, to see the cowboy and make her own deductions.
The opportunity did not present itself for nearly two weeks. Stewart had taken up his duties as foreman, and his activities were ceaseless. He was absent most of the time, ranging down toward the Mexican line. When he returned Stillwell sent for him.
This was late in the afternoon of a day in the middle of April. Alfred and Florence were with Madeline on the porch. They saw the cowboy turn his horse over to one of the Mexican boys at the corral and then come with weary step up to the house, beating the dust out of his gauntlets. Little streams of gray sand trickled from his sombrero as he removed it and bowed to the women.
Madeline saw the man she remembered, but with a singularly different aspect. His skin was brown; his eyes were piercing and dark and steady; he carried himself erect; he seemed preoccupied, and there was not a trace of embarrassment in his manner.
“Wal, Gene, I’m sure glad to see you,” Stillwell was saying. “Where do you hail from?”
“Guadaloupe Canyon,” replied the cowboy.
Stillwell whistled.
“Way down there! You don’t mean you follered them hoss tracks thet far?”
“All the way from Don Carlos’s rancho across the Mexican line. I took Nick Steele with me. Nick is the best tracker in the outfit. This trail we were on led along the foothill valleys. First we thought whoever made it was hunting for water. But they passed two ranches without watering. At Seaton’s Wash they dug for water. Here they met a pack-train of burros that came down the mountain trail. The burros were heavily loaded. Horse and burro tracks struck south from Seaton’s to the old California emigrant road. We followed the trail through Guadelope Canyon and across the border. On the way back we stopped at Slaughter’s ranch, where the United States cavalry are camping. There we met foresters from the Peloncillo forest reserve. If these fellows knew anything they kept it to themselves. So we hit the trail home.”
“Wal, I reckon you know enough?” inquired Stillwell, slowly.
“I reckon,” replied Stewart.
“Wal, out with it, then,” said Stillwell, gruffly. “Miss Hammond can’t be kept in the dark much longer. Make your report to her.”
The cowboy shifted his dark gaze to Madeline. He was cool and slow.
“We’re losing a few cattle on the open range. Night-drives by the vaqueros. Some of these cattle are driven across the valley, others up to the foothills. So far as I can find out no cattle are being driven south. So this raiding is a blind to fool the cowboys. Don Carlos is a Mexican rebel. He located his rancho here a few years ago and pretended to raise cattle. All that time he has been smuggling arms and ammunition across the border. He was for Madero against Diaz. Now he is against Madero because he and all the rebels think Madero failed to keep his promises. There will be another revolution. And all the arms go from the States across the border. Those burros I told about were packed with contraband goods.”
“That’s a matter for the United States cavalry. They are patrolling the border,” said Alfred.
“They can’t stop the smuggling of arms, not down in that wild corner,” replied Stewart.
“What is my—my duty? What has it to do with me?” inquired Madeline, somewhat perturbed.
“Wal, Miss Majesty, I reckon it hasn’t nothing to do with you,” put in Stillwell. “Thet’s my bizness an’ Stewart’s. But I jest wanted you to know. There might be some trouble follerin’ my orders.”
“Your orders?”
“I want to send Stewart over to fire Don Carlos an’ his vaqueros off the range. They’ve got to go. Don Carlos is breakin’ the law of the United States, an’ doin’ it on our property an’ with our hosses. Hev I your permission, Miss Hammond?”
“Why, assuredly you have! Stillwell, you know what to do. Alfred, what do you think best?”
“It’ll make trouble, Majesty, but it’s got to be done,” replied Alfred. “Here you have a crowd of Eastern friends due next month. We want the range to ourselves then. But, Stillwell, if you drive those vaqueros off, won’t they hang around in the foothills? I declare they are a bad lot.”
Stillwell’s mind was not at ease. He paced the porch with a frown clouding his brow.
“Gene, I reckon you got this Greaser deal figgered better’n me,” said Stillwell. “Now what do you say?”
“He’ll have to be forced off,” replied Stewart, quietly. “The Don’s pretty slick, but his vaqueros are bad actors. It’s just this way. Nels said the other day to me, ‘Gene, I haven’t packed a gun for years until lately, and it feels good whenever I meet any of those strange Greasers.’ You see, Stillwell, Don Carlos has vaqueros coming and going all the time. They’re guerrilla bands, that’s all. And they’re getting uglier. There have been several shooting-scrapes lately. A rancher named White, who lives up the valley, was badly hurt. It’s only a matter of time till something stirs up the boys here. Stillwell, you know Nels and Monty and Nick.”
“Sure I know ’em. An’ you’re not mentionin’ one more particular cowboy in my outfit,” said Stillwell, with a dry chuckle and a glance at Stewart.
Madeline divined the covert meaning, and a slight chill passed over her, as if a cold wind had blown in from the hills.
“Stewart, I see you carry a gun,” she said, pointing to a black handle protruding from a sheath swinging low along his leather chaps.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Why do you carry it?” she asked.
“Well,” he said, “it’s not a pretty gun—and it’s heavy.” She caught the inference. The gun was not an ornament. His keen, steady, dark gaze caused her vague alarm. What had once seemed cool and audacious about this cowboy was now cold and powerful and mystical. Both her instinct and her intelligence realized the steel fiber of the man’s nature. As she was his employer, she had the right to demand that he should not do what was so chillingly manifest that he might do. But Madeline could not demand. She felt curiously young and weak, and the five months of Western life were as if they had never been. She now had to do with a question involving human life. And the value she placed upon human life and its spiritual significance was a matter far from her cowboy’s thoughts. A strange idea flashed up. Did she place too much value upon all hu
man life? She checked that, wondering, almost horrified at herself. And then her intuition told her that she possessed a far stronger power to move these primitive men than any woman’s stern rule or order.
“Stewart, I do not fully understand what you hint that Nels and his comrades might do. Please be frank with me. Do you mean Nels would shoot upon little provocation?”
“Miss Hammond, as far as Nels is concerned, shooting is now just a matter of his meeting Don Carlos’s vaqueros. It’s wonderful what Nels has stood from them, considering the Mexicans he’s already killed.”
“Already killed! Stewart, you are not in earnest?” cried Madeline, shocked.
“I am. Nels has seen hard life along the Arizona border. He likes peace as well as any man. But a few years of that doesn’t change what the early days made of him. As for Nick Steele and Monty, they’re just bad men, and looking for trouble.”
“How about yourself, Stewart? Stillwell’s remark was not lost upon me,” said Madeline, prompted by curiosity.
Stewart did not reply. He looked at her in respectful silence. In her keen earnestness Madeline saw beneath his cool exterior and was all the more baffled. Was there a slight, inscrutable, mocking light in his eyes, or was it only her imagination? However, the cowboy’s face was as hard as flint.
“Stewart, I have come to love my ranch,” said Madeline, slowly, “and I care a great deal for my—my cowboys. It would be dreadful if they were to kill anybody, or especially if one of them should be killed.”
“Miss Hammond, you’ve changed things considerable out here, but you can’t change these men. All that’s needed to start them is a little trouble. And this Mexican revolution is bound to make rough times along some of the wilder passes across the border. We’re in line, that’s all. And the boys are getting stirred up.”
“Very well, then, I must accept the inevitable. I am facing a rough time. And some of my cowboys cannot be checked much longer. But, Stewart, whatever you have been in the past, you have changed.” She smiled at him, and her voice was singularly sweet and rich. “Stillwell has so often referred to you as the last of his kind of cowboy. I have just a faint idea of what a wild life you have led. Perhaps that fits you to be a leader of such rough men. I am no judge of what a leader should do in this crisis. My cowboys are entailing risk in my employ; my property is not safe; perhaps my life even might be endangered. I want to rely upon you, since Stillwell believes, and I, too, that you are the man for this place. I shall give you no orders. But is it too much to ask that you be my kind of a cowboy?”
Madeline remembered Stewart’s former brutality and shame and abject worship, and she measured the great change in him by the contrast afforded now in his dark, changeless, intent face.
“Miss Hammond, what kind of a cowboy is that?” he asked.
“I—I don’t exactly know. It is that kind which I feel you might be. But I do know that in the problem at hand I want your actions to be governed by reason, not passion. Human life is not for any man to sacrifice unless in self-defense or in protecting those dependent upon him. What Stillwell and you hinted makes me afraid of Nels and Nick Steele and Monty. Cannot they be controlled? I want to feel that they will not go gunning for Don Carlos’s men. I want to avoid all violence. And yet when my guests come I want to feel that they will be safe from danger or fright or even annoyance. May I not rely wholly upon you, Stewart? Just trust you to manage these obstreperous cowboys and protect my property and Alfred’s, and take care of us—of me, until this revolution is ended? I have never had a day’s worry since I bought the ranch. It is not that I want to shirk my responsibilities; it is that I like being happy. May I put so much faith in you?”
“I hope so, Miss Hammond,” replied Stewart. It was an instant response, but none the less fraught with consciousness of responsibility. He waited a moment, and then, as neither Stillwell nor Madeline offered further speech, he bowed and turned down the path, his long spurs clinking in the gravel.
“Wal, wal,” exclaimed Stillwell, “thet’s no little job you give him, Miss Majesty.”
“It was a woman’s cunning, Stillwell,” said Alfred. “My sister used to be a wonder at getting her own way when we were kids. Just a smile or two, a few sweet words or turns of thought, and she had what she wanted.”
“Al, what a character to give me!” protested Madeline. “Indeed, I was deeply in earnest with Stewart. I do not understand just why, but I trust him. He seems like iron and steel. Then I was a little frightened at the prospect of trouble with the vaqueros. Both you and Stillwell have influenced me to look upon Stewart as invaluable. I thought it best to confess my utter helplessness and to look to him for support.”
“Majesty, whatever actuated you, it was a stroke of diplomacy,” replied her brother. “Stewart has got good stuff in him. He was down and out. Well, he’s made a game fight, and it looks as if he’d win. Trusting him, giving him responsibility, relying upon him, was the surest way to strengthen his hold upon himself. Then that little touch of sentiment about being your kind of cowboy and protecting you—well, if Gene Stewart doesn’t develop into an Argus-eyed knight I’ll say I don’t know cowboys. But, Majesty, remember, he’s a composite of tiger breed and forked lightning, and don’t imagine he has failed you if he gets into a fight.
“I’ll sure tell you what Gene Stewart will do,” said Florence. “Don’t I know cowboys? Why, they used to take me up on their horses when I was a baby. Gene Stewart will be the kind of cowboy your sister said he might be, whatever that is. She may not know and we may not guess, but he knows.”
“Wal, Flo, there you hit plumb center,” replied the old cattleman. “An’ I couldn’t be gladder if he was my own son.”
THE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS [Part 2]
CHAPTER X
Don Carlos’s Vaqueros
Early the following morning Stewart, with a company of cowboys, departed for Don Carlos’s rancho. As the day wore on without any report from him, Stillwell appeared to grow more at ease; and at nightfall he told Madeline that he guessed there was now no reason for concern.
“Wal, though it’s sure amazin’ strange,” he continued, “I’ve been worryin’ some about how we was goin’ to fire Don Carlos. But Gene has a way of doin’ things.”
Next day Stillwell and Alfred decided to ride over Don Carlos’s place, taking Madeline and Florence with them, and upon the return trip to stop at Alfred’s ranch. They started in the cool, gray dawn, and after three hours’ riding, as the sun began to get bright, they entered a mesquite grove, surrounding corrals and barns, and a number of low, squat buildings and a huge, rambling structure, all built of adobe and mostly crumbling to ruin. Only one green spot relieved the bald red of grounds and walls; and this evidently was made by the spring which had given both value and fame to Don Carlos’s range. The approach to the house was through a wide courtyard, bare, stony, hard packed, with hitching-rails and watering-troughs in front of a long porch. Several dusty, tired horses stood with drooping heads and bridles down, their wet flanks attesting to travel just ended.
“Wal, dog-gone it, Al, if there ain’t Pat Hawe’s hoss I’ll eat it,” exclaimed Stillwell.
“What’s Pat want here, anyhow?” growled Alfred.
No one was in sight; but Madeline heard loud voices coming from the house. Stillwell dismounted at the porch and stalked in at the door. Alfred leaped off his horse, helped Florence and Madeline down, and, bidding them rest and wait on the porch, he followed Stillwell.
“I hate these Greaser places,” said Florence, with a grimace. “They’re so mysterious and creepy. Just watch now! They’ll be dark-skinned, beady-eyed, soft-footed Greasers slip right up out of the ground! There’ll be an ugly face in every door and window and crack.”
“It’s like a huge barn with its characteristic odor permeated by tobacco smoke,” replied Madeline, sitting down beside Florence. “I don’t think very much of this end of my purchase. Florence, isn’t that Don Carlos’s black horse over there in
the corral?”
“It sure is. Then the Don’s heah yet. I wish we hadn’t been in such a hurry to come over. There! that doesn’t sound encouraging.”
From the corridor came the rattling of spurs, tramping of boots, and loud voices. Madeline detected Alfred’s quick notes when he was annoyed: “We’ll rustle back home, then,” he said. The answer came, “No!” Madeline recognized Stewart’s voice, and she quickly straightened up. “I won’t have them in here,” went on Alfred.
“Outdoors or in, they’ve got to be with us!” replied Stewart, sharply. “Listen, Al,” came the boom of Stillwell’s big voice, “now that we’ve butted in over hyar with the girls, you let Stewart run things.”
Then a crowd of men tramped pell-mell out upon the porch. Stewart, dark-browed and somber, was in the lead. Nels hung close to him, and Madeline’s quick glance saw that Nels had undergone some indescribable change. The grinning, brilliant-eyed Don Carlos came jostling out beside a gaunt, sharp-featured man wearing a silver shield. This, no doubt, was Pat Hawe. In the background behind Stillwell and Alfred stood Nick Steele, head and shoulders over a number of vaqueros and cowboys.
“Miss Hammond, I’m sorry you came,” said Stewart, bluntly. “We’re in a muddle here. I’ve insisted that you and Flo be kept close to us. I’ll explain later. If you can’t stop your ears I beg you to overlook rough talk.”