The Westerners

by Zane Grey

  “There, you slugger,” he said, his voice like ice. “We’ll take a fly at it Western fashion.”

  “What . . . at?” bellowed Morse, fumbling with the big blue gun. Except for bruises and bloodstains his face went deadly white. “You mean . . . shoot it out?”

  “That’s what I mean, Mister Morse.”

  “But Cameron . . . you . . . I. . . . There’s no call . . . for murder.”

  “No, if you’ve got any guts. But if you haven’t, there’ll be murder. . . . For I’m going to kill you . . . you big loudmouthed bruiser . . . you filthy-minded Easterner! The West hasn’t changed. You cain’t get away with your vile insults . . . to her. Not out heah, Mister Morse. . . . Throw that gun . . . you . . . before I bore you!”

  It was then that Kay burst out of her paralyzed inaction, to find her senses and her spirit. She ran to Phil—almost brushing her breast with his leveled gun. “Phil! For God’s sake . . . wait . . . listen!” she implored.

  “Get out of my way, Kay. I don’t want to kill you, too.”

  “Darling, you can’t kill him. It’d be murder. He won’t fight with a gun. He’s afraid for his life.”

  “So it looks. But no matter. I don’t care a damn.” Bloody and magnificent he stood, not the boy Phil she had known, but a ruthless man in whom the heritage of the West called its fierce law. She sensed more than his succumbing to the creed of cowboy and pioneer. He welcomed this fight and the chance to force Morse to shoot him as a means to the end he believed he deserved.

  “Listen to me or I’ll fight for this gun,” flashed Kay as she seized it with both hands.

  “Let go. That’s a hair-trigger. It might go off.”

  “Will you listen?” she besought him faintly.

  “Yes, if you’ll let go my gun.”

  She released her hold on it and swayed against his breast, which support she needed until she could rally. The unexpected contact of her disengaged his attention from Morse. Kay felt him shake. That moment was one of revelation. A strong and telling current of blood raced back from her heart to revive her. With her arms sliding up around him, her hands locking behind his neck, all doubt, all uncertainty ceased for her, and she knew that this moment of her surrender to her love would save him and herself.

  “Phil, we have made mistakes,” she began eloquently, “but do not crown them by a tragic deed, that would result in death for you and terrible misery for me. You are furious now. Not because Morse whipped you. What is that to you? He’s twice your size and a slugger besides. Nor should you want to kill him because of what he called me. He thinks it’s true. But you know it’s false. . . . Moreover, you are laboring under a delusion about what happened last night. It . . . didn’t happen! I just helped you to believe so for a silly reason of my own. All this has faced me with the real truth. I love you, Phil. I am yours. I could not go back East without you, if I ever go. . . . For the rest, what does that matter? My mother’s trouble . . . your mother’s . . . for which we disgraced ourselves to shame them, these matter little beside our own problem, which, darling, will be a problem no longer the moment you see the truth.”

  Kay felt Phil’s arm over her shoulder, as evidently he made a move with the gun toward Morse.

  “Get out and don’t butt into me again,” he ordered curtly.

  Kay heard Morse thump the gun on the floor, then his dragging footfalls. He opened the door, shuffled out, and closed it.

  “Kay, I hope he gets out of town before I recover from the talk you gave me. It was sure some talk. My God, what a woman can be and do! But that saved his life. I reckon mine, too.”

  She lay against him, exhausted. And whatever his doubt, his uncertainty, he found her warmth and sweetness and surrender beyond his power to withstand.

  “Phil, it was true . . . all I said,” she replied presently, in an unsteady voice.

  “Aw . . . you’ve won, Kay. Don’t rub it in. Lately I’ve reckoned you cared for me. But I couldn’t believe it. You must now.”

  “Care for you? My dear boy, I love you . . . love you as I never loved anyone in my life.”

  “After last . . . night?” he whispered in her hair.

  “Especially after last night.”

  “Oh, Lord! But I cain’t be happy . . . I cain’t ever.”

  “Phil, didn’t I tell you that you were wrong about what you think happened when you were drunk?”

  “Yes, I heahed you. It’s a beautiful lie, my dearest. You’re as noble and forgiving as you are lovely.”

  “I didn’t lie. I swear to God.”

  “Kay, don’t perjure your soul.”

  “Oh, you obstinate cow-headed cowboy!” cried Kay, beside herself. “If you love me, why won’t you believe me?”

  “I’m beginning to grasp the greatness of a woman.”

  “You drove me desperate. I’ll give you one more chance. Do you . . . will you believe me?”

  “No, sweetheart, I cain’t.”

  “Very well, then,” she retorted, and deliberately she raised her lips close to his with a low laugh.

  “Don’t play with me, Kay.”

  “I’m in dead earnest. . . . Must I coax for kisses?”

  “Kay . . . with this bloody nose?” he expostulated, half frantic.

  “Darling, I didn’t ask you to kiss me with your nose,” she said, and, taking his handkerchief from his hand, she tenderly wiped the bleeding member.

  “I must be a sight. My lip’s cut. My face hurts all over.”

  She kissed his twitching mouth, which was suspiciously carmine in hue, and then the several bruises on his face. “There. That ought to soothe the pain. . . . You don’t look so very bad. Phil, I think by the dexterous use of my make-up, I can make you presentable . . . for our honeymoon.”

  “Mercy!” he gasped.

  Then seriously she told him every little detail that had happened the night before upon their return to the cottage, and, as for her motive, she bared her soul to explain that strange and eternal feminine urge.

  “Darling, you give me back something . . . ‘most as much as the promise of your dear self,” he returned solemnly.

  “Come, let me wash the blood off you . . . and myself, too. Oh, that big bully . . . how I hate him. Yet, I ought to love him. He made me realize how I really love you!”

  VII

  On the eve of victory Kay and Phil forgot all about their mothers, forgot everything but the transport of their love, everything save their plan to be married and spend the honeymoon in Arizona before going on to California. To them divorce was a nightmare that had vanished in the sunlight of day. Marriage was the most beautiful dawning of a dream and glory, the consummation of all things, the hope and fulfillment of youth and life.

  On the following day they were married by the famous minister of Reno, who joined together so many who, having failed once or twice, or even more, still followed the gleam.

  “Phil, let’s go inform our dear parents that as far as humanly possible we have made amends for our misconduct,” said Kay radiantly. “And that we shall spend the rest of our lives proving the absurdity of such a place as the Reno divorce mill, and the joy and good of marriage.”

  They drove to the dealer from whom Kay had rented the car. She purchased it outright. Then they went to their cottage, and, while Phil loaded their baggage in the back seat, Kay lingered in the rooms that had unconsciously grown dear. How seldom things affected her like this.

  Phil dropped Kay at the Hotel Reno. “I’ll take the car to the garage, pay some bills, and be back pronto,” he said. “I hope our glad news will finish your mother. It shore will Mom.”

  Kay went directly to her mother’s apartment, striving for an indifferent mien, but eager to reveal the plot that had failed, and to confess her marriage. She found Mrs. Hempstead fully dressed and wholly devoid of some characteristic which Kay could not at once analyze.

  “Oh, it’s you, Kay. I thought you’d come flaunting in pretty soon.”

  “Good morning, Mo
ther. I hope you are well,” rejoined Kay brightly.

  “I’m as well as could be expected under the circumstances. I needn’t ask after your health. You’re a picture of it. And your old beautiful self? God in heaven, how can you burn the candle at both ends, yet still retain your infernal youth and beauty?”

  “Mother, my recipe is simple,” replied Kay naively. “I eat and sleep properly, drink little wine and never cocktails, and keep my conscience clear.”

  “You have the impudence of your generation, my dear. . . . Get it over with.”

  “What?”

  “You evidently came to crow over me in my degradation.”

  “Not at all. I came to make up with you, if you will . . . and to say good bye.”

  “Leaving, eh? I thought Morse would jar you out of your love nest, if Brelsford couldn’t.”

  “Have you seen Jack since yesterday?”

  “Yes, for a moment. He looked as if he’d been in an auto smash-up. And he acted queer, too. Said I was all wrong about you. Then he called me a decadent, silly, old dame, along with some more insulting things, and left to catch his plane.”

  “Morse hits harder, Mother, as Phil and I well know. . . . Yes, you are all wrong about me. Listen to this.” And Kay told her story, not sparing herself.

  “Katherine Hempstead! You played that hoax on me . . . to save me? You disgraced yourself abominably to save me? All the time your atrocious conduct . . . your brazen immorality . . . was a sham . . . a trick to frighten me out of my rights?”

  “All the time, Mother, darling. I’m sorry, and ashamed now. But when I got here, I couldn’t move you.”

  “What’s to become of the young man, Cameron? Brelsford got acquainted with him, said he was a fine fellow, a gentleman, evidently of good family. That you had been as conscienceless with him . . . wrecked his life, as you have so many men.”

  “Conscienceless, I confess. But I’m sure I haven’t wrecked Phil. For this morning I married him.”

  Mrs. Hempstead uttered a faint shriek and fell back from her upright dignity into limp and abject prostration.

  “You astounding . . . terrible young woman!” she ejaculated.

  “Well, I’m settled, finally. I’m finished, Mother . . . except for love, home, husband, babies, happiness. You ought to be glad. Father will be and Polly.”

  “Thank God! This saves me. I want to know the cowboy who could work such magic in Kay Hempstead.”

  “You will like Phil. He’s not a cowboy any more. That range life was his youth. He’s a California planter now.”

  “Does he know you’re worth millions?”

  “I’m sure not. Of course, he saw that I had money. I spent it right and left. Funny thing, Mother, I couldn’t lose. Whenever I gambled, I won. I’m away ahead of the game. Fact is, I bought my car with Reno winnings.”

  “Well, I lost,” declared Mrs. Hempstead bitterly. “It was a lesson I needed. But you know, of course.”

  “I know nothing. What do you mean by lost?”

  “The money I brought with me. Some thousands. My jewels . . . all gone.”

  “Mother! Did Leroyd . . . ?”

  “You might not know he . . . appropriated my property. But you surely know he ran up a gambling debt of ten thousand dollars at Fillmore’s private game.”

  “I don’t surely know.”

  “But you must have seen this?” Mrs. Hempstead reached for a large purse on the table, from which she extracted a letter. This, with shaking hand, and shamed, averted eyes, she gave to Kay. The envelope contained some kind of a report on a single page. The printed heading denoted a detective agency. The details were in type. Kay’s swift gaze ran over a full record of Leroyd’s philandering and gambling while in Reno.

  “Kay, you were right, I apologize,” said her mother sadly. “Leroyd left day before yesterday, without a word to me.”

  “Well, of all things. I hardly guessed he was a gentleman crook. . . . Oh, Mother, how cheaply you got rid of him. Just think.”

  “Yes, cheaply, from a material point of view. . . . Kay, didn’t you put a detective to watch Leroyd?”

  “No, I never thought of such a thing. Honestly. Victor might have done it. But he never told me.”

  “He might have been just that clever. Fetch up your Westerner so that I can see what addition you have made to the Hempstead family. I sincerely hope all your sacrifices . . . your heedless wild actions have not been in vain.”

  Soberly Kay left her mother and went downstairs to meet Phil. But for her marriage she would have regarded the whole circumstance as an ironical joke on herself. Still there was Phil’s mother to think of. And hoping that Phil’s sacrifice of reputation would yet turn her back home, Kay crossed the lobby toward the drawing room to come face to face with Mrs. Cameron.

  Mrs. Cameron hung on the arm of a tall, wide-shouldered, extremely handsome man about whom there appeared something familiar. He had a bronzed, clean-shaven face, wonderful eyes like gray daggers, and clustering chestnut hair whitened over the temples.

  “Heah she is, Frank,” announced Mrs. Cameron grimly.

  “Air you Miss Hilda Wales?” queried this man perfunctorily, with marveling gaze sweeping her down and up.

  “No,” replied Kay, swiftly recovering her equilibrium, and she stood in smiling expectancy with all her natural poise.

  “Then you must be Miss Katherine Hempstead?”

  “No.”

  Phil’s father wrenched his fascinated eyes from the gracious object of his interrogation, and turned to the little wife.

  “Mom, you’re off the trail,” he said, troubled. “This girl shore cain’t be that. . . .”

  “She is, Frank. I know her,” declared Mrs. Cameron vehemently.

  “But she doesn’t look like one of those painted Hollywood actresses,” protested the rancher.

  “Oh, you men! She is an actress. That’s her business. It was her angel face that led our son astray. She could fool God Almighty himself.”

  When Cameron turned to look again at Kay, he was plainly lost. In his eyes Kay read that, if all this were true about her, it did not matter, and he did not blame Phil.

  “Mister Cameron, I have the honor to inform you that I am Phil’s wife and your daughter-in-law,” said Kay sweetly.

  The horror and consternation that gripped Mrs. Cameron evidently did not extend to the steel-eyed rancher. But he was sorely at a loss, between the devil and the deep sea.

  “Missus Cameron, if you’ll listen, I’ll tell you why it’s not so very bad for Phil,” said Kay appealingly.

  Just then Phil came running up opportunely, his face so happy that the sundry bruises and cuts detracted little from its comeliness.

  “Dad!” he whooped, and made at his father, who certainly met him halfway. “Heah with Mom! Aw, you shore look good to my sore eyes.”

  “Howdy, Son. How’d you get bunged up?” replied the rancher coolly, as he let go of Phil.

  “Had a little scrap, Dad. Gosh, I’m glad to see you and Mom together again . . . and heah with Kay. Has she introduced herself?”

  “Wal, I’m not shore, but I reckon she’s Hilda Wales, Kay Hempstead, and Mrs. Phil Cameron, all together. Am I correct?”

  “Right, Dad . . . and am I happy,” flashed Phil. “Mom, get that scared look off your face. Dad, it’s all too wonderful to tell.”

  “So I savvy. But would you mind clearin’ up all this bunk Mom has been feedin’ me, since I got heah?”

  “It’s not bunk, but romance, Dad. I met Kay the night I got heah to Reno. We fell in love right then. At least I did. She had come out to stop her mother from divorcing her father. I had come to keep Mom from divorcing you. Well, we couldn’t do a damn’ thing with either of our mothers. So we planned to throw the wildest stunt we could think of. We played to the gallery . . . gambled, drank, drove, danced, lived together, just two young folk clean gone to hell. All to sicken and scare Missus Hempstead and Mom out of their haids. . . . But, Dad, it was all
a bluff. We played a swell game. Kay’s friends came out and spilled the beans for us. They made us think of ourselves . . . that we couldn’t go on. Besides, we had the game about won. So this mawning we were married.”

  “Wal, I’ll be doggoned,” exclaimed the rancher with a hearty laugh. “Shore is some story. But couldn’t you young folks have had all the romance and 16ve without the shady stuff?”

  Phil looked blank and somewhat crestfallen, while Kay began to see the light. If what she divined were true, then how cruelly had their agonies been wasted?

  “Mom, you sent for Dad?” asked Phil eagerly.

  “Indeed, I did not,” returned his mother. “He came without being asked.”

  “Wal, Son, I reckon I’d’ve knuckled anyway, sooner or later,” interposed the rancher in his cool slow drawl, and his keen eyes twinkled from Phil to Kay. “But the fact is Marcheta eloped with that Mexican, Lopez. Left me cold. And seein’ the error of my ways, I hotfooted it to Reno to square myself with your mother.”

  “Marcheta? The black-eyed little hussy! And I was fond of her!” ejaculated Phil. Then awakening to the irony of his and Kay’s past ventures, he turned to her: “What have we been up against? I just found out Leroyd ran off.”

  “Yes. Mother told me,” returned Kay. “She let me read the record from the detective agency. I thought it was Brelsford. Phil, were you responsible for that?”

  “Shore. I got wise to Leroyd and put the detectives on his trail. They were to mail reports about him to your mother at the end of a week. I forgot it . . . like I forgot everything else.”

  “Making your mother suffer all for nothing?” interposed Mrs. Cameron.

  “No. I’ll never believe that,” declared Phil stoutly. “But Kay and I . . . look what we did . . . how we suffered . . . all for nothing!”

  “Not at all, Phil,” rejoined Kay softly. “We found love. And the West has won me . . . saved me, no doubt.” •

  “Wal, all’s wal that ends wal. I reckon there’ll be a tightenin’ of loose bridles, and a long ride down to sunset,” added the rancher, his fine dark face alight.