“Good boy. Now … our work’s done. Now … we can … rest. Good-bye, Black Wing.”
He lay back then—at rest. Unmanned by the sight of Eden’s grief that need no longer be repressed, by his own loss, René looked away from the scene. His dark eyes were brimming, his lean jaw quivering, he was reaching for the rope to take Black Wing away. But Revel didn’t relinquish it to him. Instead, she held it out to Race Coulter.
Race stared at it and stared at her, stared at the couch and out at that blotch in the snow. His face went gray and his eyes shot sparks of terror, as he struck the rope from him, screaming: “Not me! I won’t have him! Don’t make me take him!”
And he ran from temptation, ran, as if Death were after him, ran to his cabin to gather his few effects and get back to the nearest racetrack, to recoup the losses he had sustained in this mad venture, and forget, if that were possible, this golden, accursed horse of the Picture Rocks.
Hearing, as he ran, the mournful howl of the big hound, Capitán, in wild, fitting requiem to his young master Zion.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
DREAMS COME TRUE
Winter’s snow was gone. Spring’s warm sun had made green the rangelands, on which the blossoming sage made brilliant purple patches. Again, one could sit comfortably on the shaded gallery of Trail’s End and look across at that great fluted cup, towering a thousand feet above the jagged summits of the Montezumas. One wondered, if one was curious, as was this latest guest, enjoying the sunset with his picturesque old host, just what had happened to the Jores in the months since they had dropped out of the news.
Old Dad Peppin, pleased about it all, answered: “Pardoned … every mother’s son of ’em!”
Of course. That had been in headlines. “But how did it come about? Politics? I hear Pat Dolan’s hat’s in the ring. Goin’ to be your next congressman. For he’s a mighty popular man. Always had a hunch he engineered it. Pretty slick, if he did … considerin’ public sentiment.”
“Dolan,” Dad Peppin sniffed, “didn’t have a thing to do with it! He’s popular because he’s well advertised, thanks to the Jores. And, to give the devil his dues, he’s honest enough to stick to his principles. Folks can afford to be generous and elect him. It’ud be a shame, if he lost out all around. But the Jore pardon came about, because Luke Chartres went out for it.
“But,” he admitted, as if it still made him nervous to think about this, “Luke didn’t git it any too quick. Got back to Sentry Crags jist in time to save the Jores from bein’ wiped off the earth. For Yance and Abel was bustin’ out of that pass shootin’, to take Joel away from Dolan’s men who had the handcuffs on him, when Luke tears up with a pardon for everyone … but Zion. No need to pardon Zion. He’d never have been held to account … even if he’d lived. But he’d’ve been restrained some place, and he couldn’t ’a’ stood restraint. So it’s a God’s mercy he passed on.”
“But why,” quizzed his curious guest, “did Luke Chartres take up cudgels for the Jores? Strikes me as strange.”
“It wasn’t strange,” Dad assured him. “It was natural. Luke Chartres is Revel Jore’s brother.”
“Holy smoke!”
“That’s what I thought. And then I thought holy smoke to myself for not havin’ guessed it! You see, the Chartres family is a stiff-necked outfit. Regular blue bloods, like their hosses. And when the daughter of the house eloped with Joel Jore, they give out she’d gone to Louisiana to live with kin, and washed their hands of her. Wouldn’t let her name be spoke, and all that tommyrot. Somehow the rumor spread that Joel’s wife was from some high and mighty family. But nobody guessed she was Revel Chartres, and wouldn’t have, but for that horse.”
“Black Wing?”
“Waal, I was goin’ back a generation further. To Black Wing’s mother. Revel Chartres, as she was then, owned the racer, Sahra. Oh, there wa’n’t no papers to that effect. Dads don’t usually make out papers when they give presents to their kids. And when he died, Luke inherited everything. Revel made no claim. Sahra was the only thing she wanted from home. So Joel shanghais the mare and colt away from Val Verde one night … only way a Jore knew to git it. When Luke saw they went in the Picture Rocks, he give up.
“But some years later, runnin’ into a snag in his racin’ career, he thought of Black Wing. The colt would be grown, and might pull him out of the hole. So he decides, there bein’ no legal reason why he couldn’t, to git the Jores out of the way and claim the stallion. Kill two birds with one stone! For he hated the Jores like pizen, for the disgrace they’d cast on his name.
“But when he saw Zion, his own sister’s son”—Dad’s old face lightened, as if this were more to his liking—“it come to him what an unnatural thing he was doin’. And when Zion caught him and Dolan and held ’em as hostage, and Luke talked to the young fellow … waal, Luke told me the tortures comin’ to him in the hereafter holds no terrors, after what he endured, hearin’ Zion tell about Revel, and readin’ between the lines. And he tumbled some Joel wasn’t the devil he’d pictured him.
“So,” Dad went on, with particular satisfaction, “soon as he can, Luke goes up to the basin. He makes it up with his sister. Finds out Yance and Abel don’t wear horns neither. And when he sees his niece, Eden … ‘A Chartres!’ he brags to me. Poppycock! Eden’s a red-blooded Jore, from the ground up. Anyhow, their sufferin’ plumb undone Luke. And he went out to git a pardon for the lot.”
Slowly, his guest digested this. “And Black Wing?” he asked, still curious.
“Waal, now”—old Dad hitched around—“that’s a funny thing. Seems Revel give the stallion to that other hombre who was out for him, the joker in this deck, Race Coulter. Nobody exactly knows the straight of it … to square some obligation, the Reno Kid owed Race. But Race is superstitious. And after seein’ the horse kill Shang Haman … a good riddance, if ever there was one … Race wouldn’t have him. And Chartres vowed he wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole. So they turned him loose to run in the basin. And there he’ll run till he comes to a natural end. For nobody’ll ever bother him.
“They say”—suddenly serious, solemn, with a faraway light in them, Dad’s old eyes went up to the blue-misted dome—“they say he don’t run alone. They say his hoofs is heard of nights poundin’ them rims, like an avengin’ demon! They say …”
“But,” the other interrupted, a skeptic and, hence, not curious in this respect, “you know better than to believe that!”
“No,” said Dad slowly, “I don’t. And neither do you. I like to think so. I like to think Zion’s never left the basin, but runs up there, wild and free, without any responsibility. I said as much to René Rand one day. And he says it might be. He says the spirit of Zion Jore will never die.”
A long pause, in which Dad sat alone with his thoughts, not so solemn, for he chuckled outright. “Things don’t die much in the Picture Rocks. Take this René lad … he’s the best proof of that. You’ve heard about the Reno Kid? A Western fellow that got stranded in a foreign land, took sick there, and come out here, with the Grim Reaper hot after him and ready to swing. Got all shot up, went through the mischief bringin’ Zion home, and come out of it all sound as a dollar. This country’s sure been good medicine for him. I know, for I seen him before and after.”
“Wasn’t he in love with the Jore girl, Eden?”
“And is!” Dad beamed. “And to that extent, it’s a caution. Or would be, if she wasn’t as head over heels in love with him. Marriage don’t seem to cure ’em.”
“Married, huh?”
“Right in this house!” Pride fired the old man’s face. “Yes, sirree! Right here in Trail’s End. Private weddin’ … jist the few hundred Jore friends who could squeeze in. Big Sandy hung buntin’. Give ’em a send-off such as we reserve for our own nobility. A sweeter bride, you never see! A flower, she was, with her blue eyes … purple-blue, like’s on the rims now … and all
swaddled up in that white lace stuff the Chartres women’s been married in since Genesis. Afraid to kiss her, I was. But she up and done it herself. Up and kissed ol’ Dad Peppin on her own initiative.”
Too masculine to relish secondhand kisses, the guest supposed: “They’re making their home at Val Verde, then?”
“Another good hunch gone wrong,” Dad said, grinning. “You couldn’t pry them kids from the Picture Rocks. Say it’s the purtiest place on earth. I’ll be able to give you my impression of it next week. For I’m goin’ up with them, when they come back. They’ve gone over to the Navajo country for a few days’ visit with Joel and Revel, who’s spendin’ their second honeymoon at Revel’s old home. And goin’ to stay, if Luke has his way. He wants Joel to take charge of Val Verde. But René’s goin’ into the cattle business in the basin with Abel and Yance. Abel says it’s allus been his dream, and he’s beginnin’ to believe a Jore can tie to a dream.”
Dreaming himself, forgetting he had any guest, this old friend of Jerico stared off at the great cup, fancying that the golden blaze in the sky above it, and on its rims, and on that one split—a pass forever open—was not the glow of the setting sun, but the reflection of the happiness that had come to the Picture Rocks.
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cherry Wilson enjoyed a successful career as a writer of Western stories for pulp magazines for twenty years, beginning in the mid-1920s. She was born in Pennsylvania, and moved with her family to the Pacific Northwest when she was sixteen. Having had some experience writing for newspapers, when, in 1924, her husband became ill, she decided to try her hand at Western fiction. Over the course of her career she published over two hundred short stories, short novels, and serials. Five serials were published as hardcover novels, and six of her stories were brought to the screen. The majority of her work appeared in the highest paying of the Street & Smith publications, Western Story Magazine. Her stories were highly regarded by both readers and editors, and quite often her work was singled out in letters to the editor, along with Max Brand’s, as being some of the best to appear in Western Story Magazine. Her novels include Stormy (Chelsea House, 1929) filmed as Stormy (Universal, 1935) with Noah Beery Jr. and Jean Rogers, and Empty Saddles (1929) filmed as Empty Saddles (Universal, 1936) with Buck Jones and Louise Brooks. Thunder Brakes, also published in 1929 by Chelsea House, the book publishing division of Street & Smith, was reprinted in 1997 in a hardcover edition in the Gunsmoke series by Chivers Press. However, much of her work has not been read in many years, having appeared originally only in magazines. A good example is “Ghost Town Trail” from Western Story Magazine (10/25/30) which has been collected in The Morrow Anthology of Great Western Stories (Morrow, 1997) edited by Jon Tuska and Vicki Piekarski.
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