War Comes to the Big Bend

by Zane Grey

  It was nearly supper time when she heard the men returning. They came in a body, noisy and loitering, as if reluctant to break away from one another. She heard the horses tramp into the barns and the loud voices of drivers.

  When she went downstairs, she encountered her father. He looked impressive, triumphant. His effort at evasion did not deceive Lenore. But she realized at once that in this instance she could not get any news from him. He said everything was all right and that the IWW men were to be deported from Washington. But he did not want any supper, and he had a low-voiced, significant interview with Dorn. Lenore longed to know what was pending. Dorn’s voice, when he said at his door—“Anderson, I’ll go.”—was ringing, hard, and deadly. It frightened Lenore. Go where? What were they going to do? Lenore thought of the vigilantes her father had organized. Then she looked around for Jake, but could not see him.

  Suppertime was an ordeal. Dorn ate a little, then, excusing himself, he went back to his room. Lenore got through the meal somehow, and, going outside, she encountered Jake. The moment she questioned him, she knew something extraordinary had taken place or was about to take place. She coaxed and entreated. For once Jake was hard to manage. But the more excuses he made, the more he evaded her, the greater became Lenore’s need to know. And at last she wore the cowboy out. He could not resist her tears, which began to flow in spite of her.

  “See hyar, Miss Lenore, I reckon you care a heap fer young Dorn . . . beggin’ your pardon?” queried Jake.

  “Care for him! Jake, I love him.”

  “Then take a hunch from me an’ keep him home . . . with you . . . tonight.”

  “Does Father want Kurt Dorn to go . . . wherever he’s going?”

  “Wal, I should smile. Your dad likes the way Dorn handles IWWs,” replied Jake significantly.

  “Vigilantes,” whispered Lenore,

  Chapter Twenty

  When Lenore got to her room she was trembling all over as with cold. This was a game of life and death she had to play. She did not want the man she loved to stain his hands with blood, coldly and deliberately to mete out a lawless justice.

  The moment had come for her decision. It was made for her. Suddenly she felt intensely strong, glowing, buoyant. She would not let Dorn join her father’s vigilantes. No need to waste time on Anderson, in an hour like this. And as for Dorn, there was something implacable and ruthless in him. It would be better to overestimate his mood and his strength and stake her wit, charm, love, beauty, passion—herself in all that had become incalculable—against that morbid, hate-sprung twist in his mind.

  She listened. Low, deep voices sounded from her father’s study. Otherwise the home was quiet. Outside, dusk was settling. Lenore left her door open so she could hear Dorn if he went downstairs. Then with swift hands and tumultuous heart she changed her attire—donning her most beautiful gown. For the first time in her life she looked at her reflection in the mirror with calculating eyes. If she really possessed beauty, she would have need of it all.

  As she went out into the hall, she heard Dorn in his room. Running down the stairs, she entered the parlor and pulled the door curtains close. Then she waited. One of the hall lights was on, but the parlor was dark. Strong, hard voices in her father’s study attested to what was going on in there. Lenore waited, sure of herself, glorying in the moment soon to change her whole life. But calm as she appeared, steady as were her hands, all her internal being was in strife, at once delicious and terrible.

  A rapid step in the hall above set her thrilling. Dorn came swiftly down the stairs. He had on dark, rough clothes. His face was the color of ashes and his eyes were fire. As he was about to pass, Lenore stretched forth a bare white arm from between the curtains. It startled Dorn. And as he halted in amaze, she grasped his coat.

  “Kurt,” she said, and it was not acting that made her voice low, sweet, tremulous.

  “Say, you scared me!” he exclaimed with a half-bewildered laugh.

  “Come in here.” She drew him closer, opened the curtains, and pulled him inside. And there she stood before him in the half dark of the shadowy room with both hands fastened on the lapels of his coat. The light from the hall did not quite reach her.

  “Could anything keep you from going with Father tonight?” she whispered.

  She felt him shake. “No,” he said violently.

  “Could I?”

  “You father asked me . . . wanted me. I think . . . that . . . is coming to me.” He breathed hard. He was staring at her as if his eyes were playing him false.

  “I beg of you . . . don’t go,” she implored.

  “You’re a woman . . . you can’t understand . . .” he began.

  “It’s because I’m a woman that I understand what you can’t . . . I’ll not let you go.”

  “Miss Anderson . . . Lenore . . . I . . . I don’t want to be discourteous . . . This is a serious matter . . . for men. I must go.”

  “I will not let you,” she replied low and steadily. Then she released her hold of him and changed her position so that she stood between him and the door. This placed him in the light so she could see his face, and the expression upon it was that of a man in a strange dream.

  “Pardon me . . . you can’t keep me. Why I . . . I can’t understand . . . What is it to you? My duty’s with these men to strike for the safety of the Northwest. Have you some fear I’ll be shot?”

  “No.”

  “Then . . . how strange of you . . . But no matter. I must go. I owe your father everything in my power.”

  “I’ll speak to him. I’ll get an exemption for you.” She laughed with a soft ring in her voice. Dorn drew himself up stiffly. Was that the word to strike fire from him?

  “Miss Anderson, it seems you and your father take . . .”

  Lenore threw her arms around his neck, and, raising her face slowly with all the glory the moment gave her and all the intent she was driven to, kissed him. Then she released him.

  “Would you rather go . . . or stay here with me . . . now?” she asked.

  He seemed turned to stone, absolutely unable to speak.

  “I’ll tell Father you’re not going.” Wheeling, Lenore ran to the door of her father’s study and knocked.

  “Come in!” called Anderson gruffly.

  She opened the door a little. “Dad!” she called thrillingly, and waited. He came hurriedly. Then she whispered: “I’m going to keep Kurt at home.”

  “Ah-huh! Wal, that’s so . . . We’ve got some business . . . All right.”

  Lenore closed the door and ran back to peep between the curtains. The young man she had turned to stone had not changed in the slightest. She parted the curtains and entered the room.

  “I want to go!” he ejaculated, staring at her.

  “Oh, I know. And I’m . . . well, not flattered to see you’d rather go hang IWWs than stay here with me.” Lenore did not feel the assurance and composure with which she spoke. She was struggling with her own feelings. She believed that just as soon as she and Kurt understood each other—faced each other without any dissimulation—then she would feel free and strong. If only she could put the situation on a sincere footing. She must work for that. Her difficulty was with a sense of falsity. There was no time to plan. She must change his mind.

  Her words had made him start. “Then you know?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “I’m sorry for that,” he replied soberly, as he brushed a hand up through his wet hair.

  “But you will stay home?”

  “No,” he returned shortly, and he looked hard.

  “Kurt, I don’t want you mixed up with any lynching bees,” she said earnestly.

  “I’m a citizen of Washington. I’ll join the vigilantes. I’m American. I’ve been ruined by these IWWs. No man in the West has lost so much. Father . . . home . . . land . . . my great harvest of wheat. Why shouldn’t I go?”

  “There’s no reason except . . . me,” she replied rather unsteadily.

  He
drew himself up, with a deep breath, as if fortifying himself. “That’s a mighty good reason . . . But you will be kinder if you withdraw your objections.”

  “Can’t you conceive of any reason why I . . . I beg you not to go?”

  “I can’t,” he replied, staring at her. It seemed that every moment he spent in her presence increased her effect upon him. Lenore felt this, and that buoyed up her failing courage.

  “Kurt, you’ve made a very distressing . . . a terrible and horrible blunder,” she said with a desperation that must have seemed something else to him.

  “My heavens! What have I done?” he gasped, his face growing paler. How ready he was to see more catastrophe. It warmed her heart and strengthened her nerve.

  The moment had come. Even if she did lose her power of speech, she still could show him what his blunder was. Nothing in all her life had ever been a hundredth part as hard as this. Yet, as the words formed, her whole heart seemed to be behind them, forcing them out. If only he did not misunderstand.

  Then she looked directly at him and tried to speak. Her first attempt was inarticulate; her second was a whisper: “Didn’t you ever . . . think I . . . I might care for you?”

  It was as if a shock went over him, leaving him trembling. But he did not look as amazed as incredulous.

  “No, I certainly never did,” he said.

  “Well . . . that’s your blunder . . . for I . . . I do. You . . . you never . . . never . . . asked me.”

  “You do what . . . care for me? What on earth do you mean by that?”

  Lenore was fighting many emotions now, the one most poignant being a wild desire to escape, which battled with an equally maddening one to hide her face on his breast. Yet she could see how white he had grown—how different. His hands worked convulsively and his eyes pierced her very soul.

  “What should a girl mean . . . telling she cared?”

  “I don’t know. Girls are beyond me,” he replied stubbornly.

  “Indeed that’s true. I’ve felt so far beyond you . . . I had to come to this.”

  “Lenore,” he burst out hoarsely, “you talk in riddles! You’ve been so strange, yet so fine, so sweet. And now you say you care for me. Care? What does that mean? A word can drive me mad. But I never dared to hope. I love you . . . love you . . . love you . . . my God . . . you’re all I’ve left to love. I . . .”

  “Do you think you’ve a monopoly on all the love in the world?” interrupted Lenore, coming to her real self. His impassioned declaration was all she needed. Her ordeal was over.

  It seemed as if he could not believe his ears or eyes. “Monopoly! World!” he echoed. “Of course I don’t. But . . .”

  “Kurt, I love you just as much as . . . as you love me . . . So there.”

  Lenore had time for one look at his face before he enveloped her. What a relief to hide her own. It was pressed to his breast very closely. Her eyes shut, and she felt hot tears under the lids. All before her darkened sight seemed confusion, whirling chaos. It seemed that she could not breathe and, strangely, did not need to. How unutterably happy she felt. That was an age-long moment—wonderful for her own relief and gladness—full of changing emotions. Presently Kurt appeared to be coming to some semblance of rationality. He released her from that crushing embrace, but still kept an arm around her while he held her off and looked at her.

  “Lenore, will you kiss me again?” he whispered.

  She could have cried out in sheer delight at the wonder of that whisper in her ear. It had been she who had changed the world for Kurt Dorn.

  “Yes . . . presently,” she replied with a tremulous little laugh. “Wait till . . . I get my breath . . .”

  “I was beside myself . . . am so yet,” he replied, low-voiced as if in awe. “I’ve been lifted to heaven . . . It cannot be true. I believe, yet I’ll not be sure till you kiss me again . . . You . . . Lenore Anderson, the girl of my dreams. Do you love me . . . is it true?”

  “Yes, Kurt, indeed I do . . . very dearly,” she replied, and turned to look up into his face. It was transfigured. Lenore’s heart swelled as a deep and profound emotion waved over her.

  “Please kiss me . . . now.”

  She lifted her face, flushing scarlet. Their lips met. Then with her head upon his shoulder and her hands closely held, she answered the thousand and one questions of a bewildered and exalted lover who could not realize the truth. Lenore laughed at him and eloquently furnished proof of her own obsession, and told him how and why and when it all came about.

  Not for hours did Kurt come back to actualities. “I forgot about the vigilantes!” he exclaimed suddenly. “It’s too late now . . . How the time has flown. Oh, Lenore, thought of other things breaks in, alas.”

  He kissed her hand and got up. Another change was coming over him. Lenore had long expected the moment when realization would claim his attention. She was prepared.

  “Yes, you forgot your appointment with Dad and the vigilantes. You’ve missed some excitement and violence.”

  His face had grown white again—grave now and troubled. “May I speak to your father?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “If I come back from the war . . . well . . . not crippled . . . will you promise to marry me?”

  “Kurt, I promise now.”

  That seemed to shake him. “But, Lenore, it is not fair to you. I don’t believe a soldier should bind a girl by marriage or engagement before he goes to war. She should be free . . . I want you to be free.”

  “That’s for you to say,” she replied softly. “But for my part, I don’t want to be free . . . if you go away to war.”

  “If? I’m going,” he said with a start. “You don’t want to be free? Lenore, would you be engaged to me?”

  “My dear boy, of course I would. It seems I am, doesn’t it?” she replied with one of her deep, low laughs.

  He gazed at her, fascinated, worked upon by overwhelming emotions. “Would you marry me . . . before I go?”

  “Yes,” she flashed.

  He bent and bowed then under the storm. Stumbling to her, almost on his knees, he brokenly expressed his gratitude, his wonder, his passion, and the terrible temptation that he must resist, which she must help him to resist.

  “Kurt, I love you. I will see things through your eyes, if I must. I want to be a comfort to you, not a source of sorrow.”

  “But, Lenore, what comfort can I find? To leave you now is going to be horrible. To part from you now . . . I don’t see how I can.”

  Then Lenore dared to broach the subject so delicate, so momentous.

  “You need not part from me. My father has asked me to try to keep you home. He secured an exemption for you. You are more needed here than at the front. You can feed many soldiers. You would be doing your duty . . . with honor. You would be a soldier. The government is going to draft young men for farm duty. Why not you? There are many good reasons why you would be better than most young men. Because you know wheat. And wheat is to become the most important thing in the world. No one misjudges your loyalty . . . And surely you see that the best service to your country is what you can do best.”

  He sat down beside her, with serious frown and somber eyes. “Lenore, are you asking me not to go to war?”

  “Yes, I am,” she replied. “I have thought it all over. I’ve given up my brother. I’d not ask you to stay home if you were needed at the front as much as here. That question I have had out with my conscience . . . Kurt, don’t think me a silly, sentimental girl. Events of late have made me a woman.”

  He buried his face in his hands. “That’s the most amazing of all . . . you . . . Lenore Anderson, my American girl . . . asking me not to go to war.”

  “But, dear, it is not so amazing. It’s reasonable. Your peculiar point of view makes it look different. I am no weak, timid, love-sick girl afraid to let you go. I’ve given you good, honorable, patriotic reasons for your exemption from the draft. Can you see that?”

  “Yes. I
grant all your claims. I know wheat well enough to tell you that if vastly more wheat raising is not done the world will starve. That would hold good for the United States in forty years without war.”

  “Then if you see my point why are you opposed to it?” she asked.

  “Because I am Kurt Dorn,” he replied bitterly.

  His tone, his gloom made her shiver. It would take all her intelligence and wit and reason to understand him, and vastly more than that to change him. She thought earnestly. This was to be an ordeal profoundly more difficult than the confession of her love. It was indeed a crisis dwarfing the other she had met. She sensed in him a remarkably strange attitude toward this war, compared with that of her brother or other boys she knew who had gone.

  “Because you are Kurt Dorn,” she said thoughtfully. “It’s in the name, then . . . But I think it a pretty name . . . a good name. Have I not consented to accept it as mine . . . for life?”

  He could not answer that. Blindly he reached out with a shaking hand, to find hers, to hold it close. Lenore felt the tumult in him. She was shocked. A great tenderness, sweet and motherly, flooded over her.

  “Dearest, in this dark hour . . . that was so bright a little while ago . . . you must not keep anything from me,” she replied. “I will be true to you. I will crush my selfish hopes. I will be your mother . . . Tell me why you must go to war because you are Kurt Dorn.”

  “My father was German. He hated this country . . . yours and mine. He plotted with the IWW. He hated your father and wanted to destroy him . . . Before he died, he realized his crime. For so I take the few words he spoke to Jerry. But all the same he was a traitor to my country. I bear his name. I have German in me . . . And, by God, I’m going to pay.”

  His deep, passionate tone struck into Lenore’s heart. She fought with a rising terror. She was beginning to understand him. How helpless she felt—how she prayed for inspiration—for wisdom.