The Westerners

by Zane Grey

  “Is this child related to you?” asked Wingfield.

  “No. Five years ago . . . over on the mountain range I happened to find a woman along the road. . . . She was a crazed thing . . . ill . . . suffering. I put her on my burro. Fetched her here. She gave birth to a child. . . . She lingered a few days and died. The child lived. Meant to take her . . . somewhere . . . to a home. But I loved her. I kept her. All these years I’ve kept her. No cowboy or hunter ever found me, until now. No one ever dreamed old Pegleg Smith became the camp robber of the range. Many’s the time I have laughed over my other name. . . . The camp robber!”

  Wingfield fell on his knees beside the bed.

  “Old-timer, tell me . . . her name?” begged Wingfield hoarsely, his lean hands clutching at the blanket.

  “Her name is Fay.”

  “No. Not the child . . . the woman . . . her mother . . . her name?”

  “I never knew. She never told. But in her delirium she would cry out . . . ‘Lex . . . Lex, my husband!’ . . . an’ she died crying that name. I’ve never forgotten.”

  “Merciful God!” moaned Wingfield, sinking down. “Man . . . I was that husband . . . this is my baby.”

  “Who are you?” queried Smith, rising upon his elbow, with hope illuminating his face.

  “Lex Wingfield. . . . Her name was Fay Kingsley. We were married in Denver. It was here in Arizona . . . on this range. . .at Springer that I made her unhappy, and she left me.”

  “Kingsley . . . Denver . . . Springer, yes, she mentioned those names,” replied Smith eagerly and softly. “How strange! I never wanted to leave this cañon. Something chained me here. . . . So, it was the camp robber who found little Fay’s father.”

  Wingfield leaped up with a start. The child had come in.

  “Is you better?” she asked with sweet solicitude.

  “No, little Fay. . . . You are losing your grandad. . . . But you . . . are gaining . . . your daddy.”

  The Westerners

  I

  All the way west to Reno, Katherine Hempstead had a growing realization that her desire to save her mother from disgrace might develop a far-reaching good for herself.

  The journey had been a revelation. She belonged to the Eastern class who preferred to travel abroad rather than discover their own country. The Great Plains, the grand Rockies, the glorious desert had charmed and fascinated Katherine, and finally had awakened in her a strange longing. Had she really ever known what it meant to be free, alone, self-sufficient? Her mother’s ridiculous affair with the fortune-hunting Leroyd had shocked Katherine out of her gay devotion to amusement, and had driven her post-haste across the continent to try to prevent the impending Hempstead divorce and scandal. Long gazing from a Pullman window through saddened and thoughtful eyes had worked upon her the alchemy of wonder and discontent.

  To Katherine’s surprise, Reno did not disgust her. A vague anticipation of crude people, raw life, hideous buildings did not materialize. She registered at the famous Hotel Reno, where her mother and Leroyd were staying, and sallied forth to see the town, conscious of an unfamiliar sensation of excitement. It was her first experience on foot, at night, in a strange city. Unconsciously she shrank from the meeting with her mother. She wanted to compose herself to new surroundings, to a perplexing situation, to think. And to her amazement she found that the process of constructive thinking was difficult and elusive. Now there was a new sensation, not experienced since her sixteenth year. Katherine had to laugh at this, and label it as a girlish dream of adventure that never would materialize. At twenty she seemed sophisticated, worldly, old in the modern outlook on things.

  It was a Saturday night in early May. She needed the coat she had put on. The air was keen, cold, sweet, but did not appear to have enough oxygen in it for her. A few blocks of quick walking took her breath. This distance brought her apparently into the center of Reno. The street was crowded with cars and pedestrians, moving under the garish red and purple neon lights. Jazz music pealed out from somewhere. The atmosphere and brilliance were suggestive of holiday. Katherine felt it incongruous to be reminded of the Riviera, Monte Carlo, even Coney Island. Presently she grasped that the significance of this must be what she had sensed coming West, the loosening of restraint, the effect of open spaces, the spirit of play. She did not need to be told that Prohibition was on its last legs.

  Between almost every store and restaurant there was a garish or elaborate edifice devoted to games of chance. The names intrigued her. Golden Fleece, The Elite, Nevada Club, Last Chance, The Show Down were among the names she passed within two blocks. The clink of silver and rattle of roulette wheels were not unenticing to Katherine. She loved to gamble. It was in her blood. But her bridge and golf gambling, like that onboard continental liners and in the gilded palaces of Europe, had been indulged in with her own class. Here, if she wanted to play, it would be among a motley crowd. Her training forbade that. But as the subtle thing stirred within, she yielded so far as to decide that, if she could find a suitable companion, she certainly would not leave Reno without taking a fling at the gambling tables.

  Katherine was aware that men stared at her. Not that this was an unusual state of affairs, except that she was in a town of unknown possibilities and alone. The fact, however, that she was not accosted reassured her. Reno, she had heard, was a city where all women and especially women unaccompanied could feel safe from annoyance, and so far there seemed justification for the statement. That fact alone would be something of a novelty to Katherine. She had never been able to escape from the tributes to striking beauty.

  Crossing the street, she suddenly surrendered to temptation, and entered the most pretentious of the gambling halls. Ablaze of light and wave of sound assailed her. The place appeared to be an enormous hall, crowded by rings of men and women around the different games. She stood a while, watching.

  Many of the numerous people around her appeared to be merely spectators, some of them quite apparently tourists. She went closer, presently, to get a view of the players around one of the roulette wheels, and discovered men and women in evening dress at elbows with pale-faced gamblers and rough-visaged miners and ranchers.

  No one appeared to notice Katherine, an omission that grew upon her and at first piqued her. So accustomed had she always been to the immediate attention that her beauty attracted, that the lack of it seemed almost strange. But when she analyzed it, it was with a growing appreciation of the new sense of freedom her apparent insignificance engendered.

  Presently, when Katherine had satisfied her curiosity, she left the hall. Upon emerging on the street, she found she had become turned around and was unsure of her direction. She did not want to inquire of any of the doubtful-looking loungers lined up outside, so started walking slowly along. About half a block farther on she hailed a tall young man who looked reassuring.

  “Will you please direct me to the Hotel Reno?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied, halting. “Six squares this way.”

  “Thank you. I was completely turned around.”

  “But see heah, lady. You cain’t find it without turning off. Street’s closed. That’s a fire.”

  The shrieking siren of a fire-engine and a congestion down the street verified his statement.

  “Oh! Can I go in a taxi?” inquired Katherine.

  “Sure, if you can find one.”

  “I’m a stranger in Reno.”

  “So am I. Got in today. I’m not crazy about it. My mother is at the Reno. I am going there. If you like, you can come with me.”

  Katherine gave him an appraising glance. He was tall and had wide shoulders. His face, clean-cut and tanned, proclaimed him to be around twenty-five or twenty-six years old. She could not determine the color of his eyes, but they were piercing and troubled. They certainly were not taking stock of her. And that gave Katherine a chance for a keener glance. During the last half of her journey to Reno, she had seen cowboys, cattlemen, rangers, and this superb young Westerner belonge
d to this class.

  “Thanks. I can risk it, if you can,” she replied, with her low laugh. And then she was walking beside him.

  Naturally she expected him to speak. But he was silent. She had to quicken her stride a little. She felt something shy or aloof about him, and she was prompted to feel him out. “Is it safe . . . and proper for a girl to be out alone at night in Reno?” she asked, to get his reaction.

  “Safe heah, if anywhere in the West. But I reckon hardly proper.”

  “Oh! You see, I just arrived. I wanted to look around. I walked down the street. Then I went in one of the gambling places.”

  Her confidence did not seem to arouse his interest or curiosity. For all she could tell, this Westerner might think she was a moving-picture actress or a schoolteacher or an adventuress, or he might not have thought about it at all. This was a new type of individual to Katherine Hempstead. She kept pace with his long stride, which she saw he at least tried to accommodate to her shorter one. They walked on half a block in silence. Katherine could not recall when she had wanted to giggle as she wanted to now. She looked up at him and decided that she could no longer deny he was more than handsome. His hair appeared to be tawny or chestnut, and it had the little curl or wave women admired. She was struck again by an impression of trouble that emanated from him.

  “Didn’t you say you just arrived in Reno?” she asked, becoming uncomfortable at his protracted silence.

  “Yes. This afternoon. My train was late.”

  “I’m from New York. Where did you come from? I can tell you’re Western.”

  “California. But I’m not native. I was born in Arizona and lived there on a ranch till I was twenty. Then Dad sold his cattle, and we went to California.”

  “Do you like California as well?”

  “It’s shore fine. But not Arizona. I cain’t explain.”

  “You miss the range?” she queried sympathetically.

  “’Deed I do, lady.”

  “The way you say that makes me think you’ve been a cowboy. But I never heard a cowboy speak, save in a movie.”

  “I rode the range from the time I could fork a hoss until I was twenty.”

  “How interesting! And how soon could you fork a horse?”

  “Guess I was close to being born on one and bareback at that. But I was six when I took to herding cattle.”

  “Goodness! Didn’t you ever go to school?”

  “Yes. I went through high school and had two years . . . I should say terms . . . at Normal College in Flagstaff.”

  “I was wondering how . . . when you ever got the education you seem to have, if you rode a horse all your life.”

  “We go to school in winter out heah.”

  He led Katherine off the main street, to make a detour around a block. It was evident from the noise and smoke that the fire was located on the far side of this square. Katherine had another new sensation—an urge to run to a fire. She was finding unplumbed capacities in herself. The young Westerner, however, was more interesting than the fire. Katherine waited again for him to speak voluntarily. But he did not, nor look at her.

  “Your mother is staying at my hotel?” she inquired.

  “Yes. I haven’t seen her yet. And I shore hate to. . . . I’ve come to try to . . . I’ve come to try to stop Mom from divorcing Dad.”

  “Ah!” Katherine was startled almost to the point of halting in her tracks. The information frankly volunteered by her escort, given with a poignancy of emotion in sharp contrast to his former reserve, found an instant response in her. This meeting was becoming a more than casual one.

  Suddenly it seemed potent. The young Westerner’s trouble found an answering chord in her heart. “I’m sorry,” went on Katherine slowly. “This divorce craze. . . . It’s not so very bad though for grown-up children like you. . .and me.”

  He did not catch the import of her last words. “It’s a craze, all right. Not so wrong for young folk like us. But for old people, Mother and Father, it’s daid wrong.”

  “I agree with you. Oh, I hope you can stop your mother . . . persuade her to patch it up!”

  That expression appeared to hit the young man hard. “I’m afraid you don’t know Mom. It’ll take an earthquake to shake her. If it was only something else . . . anything else.”

  “Another woman?” interposed Katherine.

  “A girl! Only a girl sixteen years old . . . and a Mexican girl at that,” he burst out, as if it relieved him to unburden himself.

  “A Mexican señorita! She’d be pretty, of course?”

  “Pretty? Why Marcheta is the prettiest kid that ever bloomed in California. I was sweet on her myself before I got wise to Dad’s break. Funny thing. Marcheta liked Dad more than she did me. But then Dad is a grand guy. You’d never guess he is fifty. . . . I don’t blame him much for falling for Marcheta. Mom cain’t or won’t understand. I reckon you savvy, ma’am. It’s Dad’s only slip, so far as I know. And we’ve been like brothers. When Mom found out, I tried to take the blame. I lied myself blue in the face. But Dad would have none of that. So Mom is heah to divorce Dad . . . and I reckon we’re ruined.”

  There was a poignant misery in this outburst that entirely disregarded the fact that it was to an entire stranger that such confidences were made. Katherine was quick to understand and respond.

  “Surely it is not so bad as that. Don’t give up,” she rejoined eloquently. “Perhaps I can help you, Mister Arizona. You and I have something in common.”

  “What do you mean . . . ma’am?” he queried, with a catch in his breath. And for the first time he turned to look at her. They had gone around another block. Katherine saw the hotel looming up and beyond it a dark mountain, crowned by white stars. She was in the grip of a swiftly developing and thought-arresting situation. But her impulse brooked no restraint.

  “I am from New York,” she said earnestly. “My mother is here with her boy friend. He is a fortune-hunter. My father . . . well, he maintained an expensive apartment uptown and spent much time away from home. That gave my mother the chance she was looking for, I fear. She came out here to divorce him, and she brought this man with her. If I can’t persuade or force her to her senses, she will go on with it and marry this person. That will raise a rotten scandal. It will ruin Mother.”

  “Aw! Shore it will. . . . What damn’ fools these old people are!” ejaculated the young man with passion. “Your case is worse than mine. It just makes me see red.”

  “What’s your name?” asked Katherine, inspired in spite of an effort to restrain the drift of this interview.

  “Phil Cameron.”

  “Mine is Katherine Hempstead. Let’s combine our nerve and our wit. Let’s stop our mothers from doing this thing.” The words were out before Katherine stopped to consider.

  “What? Why . . . why . . . Miss Hempstead,” Cameron stammered, blushing like a girl. “You mean for you and I to put our heads together . . . to help one another . . . to . . . ?”

  “Precisely. Two heads are better than one. You are Western. I am Eastern. We might make a pair to draw to . . . to use poker lingo. How about it, Arizona?”

  They had halted on the corner, under the bright light. Katherine did not flinch under the most searching scrutiny to which she had ever been subjected. But her heart did skip a beat at the look that marked the keen glance of appraisal. It told her that she had more than passed muster.

  “It’s a great idea, Miss Heapstead,” he finally burst out. “What luck for me! I felt so . . . so sick and blue I wanted to die. How did you ever drop out of the sky like this? It’s just wonderful. I cain’t believe my eyes and ears. But I say yes, ma’am, bless you! And if it’s fighting you need, I’ll never fail you.”

  “I believe it. I’m lucky, too. We don’t need to inquire into the workings of fate. . . . Shake hands, Phil.”

  He appeared awkward and under a spell, but his hand left hers paralyzed.

  “Oh! Ah, Arizona, I’ll want to use this member again,” she said
. “Call for me here or give me a ring at nine in the morning. Now let’s go in and beard our respective lionesses in their dens.”

  II

  On the way to her room Katherine observed that the hotel appeared to be patronized by well-dressed people; there was music and dancing in the dining room, flowers everywhere, and all the appointments indicated a catering to a cosmopolitan elite.

  Katherine telephoned the office from her room and asked for Mrs. Henry Watson Hempstead. The clerk informed her that Mrs. Hempstead was at dinner. Katherine had dined on the train. She took off her coat and hat, all at once aware that she was tired, and that excitement still abided with her. Deciding to put off seeing her mother until next day, Katherine changed her traveling clothes for comfortable pajamas, and sat down to rest and ponder.

  She was here in Reno. She had met an interesting young Westerner and had impulsively made a compact with him. The three facts had given rise to a feeling which she could not analyze, except that it was not disagreeable. Katherine got no further than that in her pondering.

  Presently she called Mrs. Hempstead again and received an answer. “Hello. Who is this?” How well Katherine recognized that voice.

  “Mother, it’s Kay.”

  “Kay! Where are you?”

  “Here.”

  “In Reno?”

  “Yes. At this hotel.”

  “My God! You would. But I never thought you’d follow me. Kay, why in the world did you come?”

  “Do you need to ask?”

  “Yes, I do. Who told you?”

  “Father. He let me read your letter. I had just arrived home from Miami. I didn’t even unpack . . . and here I am.”

  “Darling, it was adorable of you. But so foolish. That horrible train ride. . . .”

  “Was glorious for me, Mother. It made me ashamed that I knew so little about my own country. It did something else to me . . . I don’t know what.”

  “Indeed? How interesting! My eyes were so full of dust I couldn’t see out. You like the West, Kay?”