Outcasts of Picture Rocks

by Cherry Wilson

  “Mother begged them to let you stay”—her nervous gaze was on the trail—“if only for a few weeks more. She told them you might have a relapse.”

  “I won’t, girl.”

  “They say”—distractedly, as she shortened rein—“they don’t dare let you stay, when you admit you came from Race Coulter.”

  “Eden.”

  She wheeled her horse away from him. “I want you to know, René, I don’t care about that. I don’t care what was in your heart when you came to the Picture Rocks. I know it’s been true since. I know if there was any kinks in it, you’ve got them straightened. I … I … Oh, good-bye.”

  She would have dashed away, but he caught her saddle, holding her. “Eden”—his dark eyes burned with intense fire—“you trust me still?”

  “Yes,” she said, and again, “yes.”

  Mad with joy at this, at something else in her lovely face, René’s voice sang out: “I’ll go, then, but … I’ll come back.”

  Mad with terror at that, she pleaded: “Don’t, René! Don’t try it. Promise me! You’d never get in again. Shang … Oh, René, don’t think of it even. Forget you’ve ever been here. Forget us all.”

  Forget her? “Eden,” he said tensely, “there’s things I’d like to say, but I can’t. I ain’t my own man. I ain’t even a man … yet. But I will be someday. And when I am, I’ll come. These rims, guns, all the Shangs this side of Halifax can’t keep me out.”

  And to give him strength till then, he put up his arms and drew her down till her wild heart beat on his.

  “I’ll come,” he whispered huskily. “I’ll come … as sure as the ole rocks stand.”

  Then, with her kiss upon his lips, intoxicated with joy, his soul sweeping the very clouds, he watched her riding down the trail, watched until the green leaves that had framed her in his first conscious glimpse of her had swallowed her again. He little guessed how like a dream all this would seem when next he saw her, dreaming now how quickly he’d get well with her to live for.

  He woke with a start to hear another set of violent hoofbeats on the slope, to see the black that had carried him into the basin pounding up with Zion on its back. He was holding the big rifle in his hands, and in his eyes there was a savage blaze. That resolve there was no mistaking.

  Zion was crying: “I’m huntin’ Shang!”

  CHAPTER NINE

  BLACK WING

  Zion’s vengeful gaze was scouring the bushy slopes. “I’m huntin’ Shang!” he blazed. “I’m goin’ to kill him … dead! He’s up here … some place! He tagged Eden!”

  Then René knew that in their last meeting, as on the first one, the shadow of Shang Haman had been over them. Shang had seen their farewell. His heart stopped, overcome by a terrible fear for Eden, and he cried hoarsely: “What’s Shang done?”

  “He’s talked ’em down on you!” Zion flamed.

  In his relief René could have laughed. “It’s all right, Zion.” He tried to soothe him. “Eden told me. They’re just goin’ to send me back.”

  “Back?” It had anything but a soothing effect. “Back … where you was dyin’ at?”

  “It’s all right.” René held that gaze by his very earnestness. “You see, I got a start here. I can get well anywhere. I had to go sometime, you know. As well be now.”

  One instant Zion pondered this. “Yes,” he mused then, “of course, you’d be goin’. Nobody’d stay in this basin ’less they had to.” Undergoing one of his startling transformations, his dangerous mood was replaced by one of wild enthusiasm. “As well be now!” His voice trembled with eagerness. “And I’ll go, too! I’ll go out there with you!”

  Terrified by this decision, the last thing he could allow to happen after his promise to Eden, René insisted: “I can’t take you, Zion!”

  Shocked, hurt by this refusal, Zion looked at him. “Why not?” he asked then, his lips quivering.

  “Because,” desperately René offered every reason he could think of except the real one—that Zion wouldn’t fit in, “you couldn’t stand it, raised like you’ve been. You saw what it done to me. It might do worse to you. You ain’t felt walls till you feel a city. Walls like a house … that close. Even when you’re outside. Pressin’ on you. Smotherin’ the very breath.”

  “I won’t stay in them places.” Zion was again all eagerness.

  “You might have to!” cried René out of his bitter experience.

  “I’ll ride away from them so fast,” Zion said, and laughed, “you can’t see me for dust.” And he slipped his rifle in its scabbard in readiness for travel.

  “There’s other things.” René racked his brain for them. “The law that keeps you shut up here. There’ll be a thousand Pat Dolans out there. Every place you go, there’ll be one … watchin’ you, anxious to see you slip, so they can say they caught a Jore.”

  “Will they know?” Zion’s eyes sparkled. “Honest, will they know me out there?”

  “Zion, you don’t savvy the danger.”

  Talking of danger to a Jore. “Pard”—Zion underwent another baffling change—“I want to show you something. Get your horse and come along.”

  René shook his head. “I can’t. I got to go back. They’ll think I’m hidin’ out. They’re just waitin’ to send me now.”

  “Let ’em wait,” Zion entreated. “It won’t hurt. They ain’t told you yet. They don’t know Eden did. Please, pard. I want to show you something. I’ll bet you’ll say I can go then.”

  Impelled by the young fellow’s excitement, ready to do anything he asked but take him out of the basin, René went with him, wondering what Zion had to show him, his wonder growing as Zion kept on beyond the north horn of the lake. Then, turning west, they began a steady climb of the sun-flushed slopes, taking them farther into the basin than he had ever been. And ever the strange fire in Zion’s soul blazed higher, so that his lithe figure strained forward in the saddle, even while he held it back to a moderate pace, remembering that René couldn’t ride as he could yet.

  Up they climbed, and still up, toward the fluted edge of the great cup, coming out finally on a high mesa where, it seemed, they could go no farther. Sharply across their path reared that great rock barrier, the wall that ringed the basin, the wall that Zion was always riding into, when he wanted to run—like the wind that swoops down and rushes on and never stops or turns around. Now he had ridden into it again.

  Pulling up beside him, René was amazed to see all his fire gone and his wild face overcast by some strange doubt—doubt that flickered in his eyes, fixed on René with strange intensity, and trembled in his voice as he asked in pitiful uncertainty: “We’re pards, ain’t we?”

  With assurance René rejoined: “We sure are, Zion.”

  Instantly, Zion kindled again. “It’s all right, then. Pards don’t keep things.” And before René could speculate on what he meant, he flung an arm out at the cliff, excitedly confiding: “There’s the secret pass.”

  Stunned by the unexpectedness of this, René could only stare at the rock wall, seemingly unbroken anywhere, unscalable, rocketing hundreds of feet into the air, where it split up into pinnacles.

  “You ain’t lookin’ right,” Zion shouted with boyish laughter. “Look down. Here! Between these rocks. Can’t you see daylight?”

  Then René’s eyes fell on the mound of shattered rock at the foot of the cliff—remains of pinnacle that, wearying in the ages of standing up there, had fallen and been dashed to bits. And he saw an opening in it. It looked like a tunnel, worn through the wall of the ancient crater by the action of water in the ages when this basin had been a lake, and running completely through the rim, for he could see, if not daylight, at least a faint gloom, as of light that has survived a long, dark, and tortuous journey.

  Long he stared at it, trying to grasp the astounding fact that, thus, with no preparation, no conscious effort, he w
as seeing the pass for which the whole state sought. This was the pass the Jores were said to use on their lawless excursions. This was the pass Luke Chartres had spent a year of his valuable time to find. And Sheriff Dolan had …

  “Why’s it left like this?” he asked jerkily of Zion in alarm. “Right now a posse may be headed toward it. I warned your uncles. Why ain’t they guardin’ it?”

  “It’s guarded, you bet,” said Zion, and laughed at René’s bewilderment. “We guard it from Sentry Crags. We can see the country outside this pass from there. If anyone drifts this way, we send a man over.”

  So they watched both passes at the same time. “But at night,” cried René, thinking of Pat Dolan, wild to raid the basin, driven by the sharp goad of ambition, and with so little to stop him. “You can’t watch it after dark.”

  “No need to,” smiled Zion, canny in all pertaining to the Picture Rocks. “The outside openin’ is high on a shelf, covered with rocks like this. Horses can’t get within a mile of it no time. And men has to climb to it hand over hand, hundreds of feet. It’s risky in daylight. They couldn’t do it at night, even Jores.” He plucked eagerly at René’s sleeve. “Let’s crawl through. I’ll show you.”

  But René didn’t want to know any more of the Jores’ secrets. Already he knew too much, when he was leaving the Picture Rocks and going out where Race was.

  “If this is what you wanted to show me,” he said wearily, “let’s go back.”

  “This?” The blue eyes flashed scorn. “This ain’t nothin’. This just happened to be on the way. Wait till you see!”

  In ten times his first excitement, he wheeled his horse and was off again, so wrought up that, for long stretches, he forgot to wait for René, and remembering, would dash back all contrition, insisting that René rest. Then, unable to endure the delay, he would race on again, leading the way along the great hogback that bisected the basin. Coming at last to its highest point, a timberless knoll where René, halting to rest his steaming horse and his own fagged self, forgot fatigue, forgot Zion, who was whirling back to wait for him, forgot that the Jores were waiting—everything—in the panorama spread before him.

  On his left the hogback dropped off into a jumble of forested mountain and canyon, wild as on the day of creation. On his right, by more gradual stages, it rolled down to the level floor of the basin, where the lake flashed in the noon glare and the cabins nestled in the green trees on its shore, and, awesomely, over him and all around, the age-scarred, iron-stained rim—of the very world, it seemed. It stretched without a break, save that thin split at Sentry Crags and the washout at its foot that had been so long a secret, but with many a break on its top, rags of crags, like tombstones to the world that was.

  “Come on!” cried Zion with fierce impatience, tearing off at a gallop down where the wildest jumble was.

  Trees rose above them. Grass brushed their stirrups. René wondered at another change in Zion. He was even more tense, but alert and cautious, his restless eyes questing, now studying the ground, now searching the crests, now scouring the canyon pockets. Suddenly, jerking up at the foot of a low, green ridge, he implored silence with a finger on his lips. Then, slipping from his horse, he motioned René to do likewise. And with a soundless movement René found impossible to emulate, he crawled up the brushy ridge to the summit, where he dropped flat, parted the grass, and looked down.

  René, creeping up to drop breathless beside Zion, did the same. He saw below them a little valley of unearthly beauty, luxurious with grass and wildflowers, and a spring that bubbled up to overflow its ferny banks and flash away in a mad little stream. Nothing more. Nothing to account for the way Zion was trembling against him.

  “Hush,” said the young fellow. “They’re comin’.”

  Coming? Who? René looked the question. Tingling through all his being at Zion’s thrilled whisper: “Wild ones.”

  Then his heart leaped as over the green slope beyond, down to the spring, streamed a band of wild horses, the finest he had ever seen. Then it ceased to beat as his rapt gaze fell on the one in the rear, a glorious stallion—creamy skin glistening in the sun, mane and tail like spun gold, swirling about him, like nothing he’d ever seen, like a horse you’d dream about.

  “Black Wing,” whispered Zion.

  CHAPTER TEN

  BREAKING AWAY

  Then, suddenly looking at Black Wing, René knew vast pity for Race Coulter, felt complete sympathy with his desire, understood all his mercilessness. There wasn’t much a man wouldn’t do for such a horse—for Black Wing. There weren’t any more like him. There were creatures out there men called horses. But this was what the Creator had in mind when he made the first one—this royal, fiery thing, poised near the spring, his feet in the wind-stirred ferns, his head high, vigilant while his subjects drank. He pitied all men who hadn’t seen him, was angered that such a horse should be hidden.

  Anger shook his whisper: “It’s a crime he’s wild.”

  Zion laughed softly. “He ain’t, pard.” And quickly, to repress René’s outburst, he went on: “Oh, he’s wild enough. But just because I let him be. Because I like him that way. He’s broke … though. I broke him. I been a whole year doin’ it. Nobody knows but me … and you, now. That’s all right, ain’t it?”

  Right then, with Black Wing in his blood, René didn’t know whether it was or not.

  But Zion knew in his heart. “Watch.” Pride flamed in his eyes. “Just watch. I’ll show you.”

  Noiselessly, moving some distance from René, he put his fingers to his mouth and whistled. Instantly, the wild band broke into flight, vanishing over the opposite slope, all but the horse like sunshine that whirled and stood, himself quivering, tossing his proud head up and sending a silver whistle back. Zion repeated the call. Black Wing circled back toward him, passing from sight beneath the slope. René was sure his eyes had tricked him. Sure he had dreamed Black Wing.

  Then he caught the soft thud of unshod hoofs on grass, and before his incredulous eyes, quite close, burst the golden horse, starting at sight of him, but held by the white magic of the young man in buckskin, who was slowly approaching, murmuring endearments.

  While Zion slipped a light rope from the front of his shirt, quickly fashioning a hackamore to fit that slim nose, the stallion swung, and René saw, on the satiny curve of one creamy hip, that jet-black wing—the mark that had been on every colt to the Crusader strain, upsetting track dope.

  Spellbound, he watched. He saw Zion’s brown arms flash up, saw his dark face press that golden cheek. On his brain forever was seared this picture of the wild young creature and the wild horse, in the full flush of their untried strength, their tameless, fearless spirits sorely tried by the powerful urges that were their heritage.

  As Zion lightly bounded to Black Wing’s back, René wanted to stop him, to scream that the rider’s name was Death. But he remembered that Zion must have ridden him often, and that the prophecy could not apply to him. Nevertheless, terror chilled his rapture in the stallion’s grace of motion, as it whirled and danced before him, controlled only by the light hackamore and the pressure of Zion’s knees.

  He could have sobbed with relief when, riding close, the young fellow slipped down and stood with one arm flung over Black Wing’s neck.

  “Tell me,” earnestly he appealed to René, “are there many out there can beat him?”

  “None in the whole world, Zion!”

  The young fellow nodded. “That’s what I reckoned. Else folks wouldn’t come in for him. A man did once, you know. A man who knows horses, they say. They say he …” A wild light flared in his eyes. René knew he was thinking of Race. Fiercely, he proclaimed, his arm possessively tightening about that golden head: “He’s mine!”

  René felt a mad desire to dispute it, to tell Zion that this horse belonged to the first man to put a brand on him. He even knew an insane longing to be that man.
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  “There’s others out there would claim him, if they could,” said the young fellow moodily. “Dad told me so … before they locked him away. Black Wing wasn’t born here. Dad stampeded him in with his mother, when he was little. He had a right to her.”

  What right had Joel Jore to the racer of Luke Chartres, the mare Sahra?

  “Dad always watched him close,” Zion went on. “He said Black Wing was worth a dozen caches, like they got in banks and places. So does Uncle Abel and Yance say that. They say he’d make us very rich, if we had him out of the Picture Rocks.”

  So the Jores knew they had a fortune in horseflesh. Then why did they let him run?

  “Zion,” René asked, “why don’t you brand him?”

  “Brand him?” echoed Zion blankly. “Why?”

  “So folks will know he belongs to you. So they won’t try to steal him.”

  “But there’s nobody to steal him, pard. Shang might. But he wouldn’t dare try it.”

  “Outsiders, I mean!” cried René earnestly. “You Jores ain’t safe, while he’s let run. You couldn’t hide a horse like that so news of him wouldn’t get out. So men wouldn’t risk their necks to get him. Brand him … to stop outsiders from breakin’ in.”

  “We stop ’em at Sentry Crags. One man got in … but just because I let him. I wanted him to see what he was missin’. You couldn’t believe Black Wing unless you seen him.”

  Nor even then.

  “Black Wing,” Zion mused wistfully, “is like I am. Walls weary him. He wants to run.”

  Crusader’s son craved a clear track for the release of inborn urges, just as the grandson of old Jerico must have for the universe.

  “Pard,” cried Zion, his wild face glowing, “I’m goin’ with you! And I’m ridin’ Black Wing!”

  Riding Black Wing out of the basin, out where Luke Chartres could claim him, could command all the forces of wealth and law to enforce that claim—away from the Jores, the only safeguards for him. For once, René had no doubts to whom to be loyal; for once, the interests of Race Coulter and the Jores were identical. Black Wing must stay here.