by Zane Grey
Then he sighted the bloody rifle barrel, and cast it from him. It appeared then that he had sustained injuries that needed attention, but he could do little more than wash off the blood and bind up his head. Both arms and hands were badly bruised and beginning to swell. Fortunately no bones had been broken.
* * * * *
Tappan finished strapping the tarpaulin upon the burro, and, taking up both his and Blade’s supply of food, he called out: “Come on, Jenet!”
Which way to go? Indeed, there was no more choice for him than there had been for Blade. Toward the Mogollon Rim the snowdrift would be deeper, and impassable. Tappan realized that the only possible chance for him was downhill. So he led Jenet out of camp without looking back once. What was it that had happened? He did not seem to be the same Tappan that had dreamily tramped into this woodland.
A deep furrow in the snow had been made by the men packing firewood into their camp. At the end of this furrow the wall of snow stood up higher than Tappan’s head. To get out on top without breaking the crust presented a problem. He lifted Jenet up and was relieved to see that the snow held her, but he found a different task in his own case. Returning to camp, he gathered up several of the long branches of spruce that had been part of the shelter, and, carrying them out, he laid them against the slant of snow he had to surmount, and by their aid he got on top. The crust held him.
Elated and with revived hope, he took up Jenet’s halter and started off. Walking with his rude snowshoes was awkward. He had to go slowly and slide them along the crust. But he progressed. Jenet’s little steps kept her even with him. Now and then one of her sharp hoofs cut through, but not to hinder her particularly. Right at the start Tappan observed something singular about Jenet. Never until now had she been dependent upon him. She knew it. Her intelligence apparently told her that, if she got out of this snow-bound wilderness, it would be owing to the strength and reason of her master.
Tappan kept to the north side of the cañon where the snow crust was strongest. What he must do was to work up to the top of the cañon slope, and then keep to the ridge, travel north along it, and so down out of the forest. Travel was slow. He soon found he had to pick his way. Jenet appeared to be absolutely unable to sense either danger or safety. Her experience had been of the rock confines and the drifting sands of the desert. She walked where Tappan led her, and it seemed to Tappan that her trust in him, her reliance upon him, were pathetic.
“Well, old girl,” said Tappan, “it’s a horse of another color now…hey?”
At length he came to a wide part of the cañon, where a bench of land led to a long gradual slope, thickly studded with small pines. This appeared to be fortunate and turned out to be so, for, when Jenet broke through the crust, Tappan had trees and branches to hold while he hauled her out. The labor of climbing that slope was such that Tappan began to appreciate Blade’s absolute refusal to attempt getting Jenet out. Dusk was shadowing the white aisles of the forest when Tappan ascended to a level. Yet he had not traveled far from camp, and that fact struck a chill upon his heart.
To go on in the dark was foolhardy. So Tappan selected a thick spruce, under which there was a considerable depression in the snow, and here made preparation to spend the night. Unstrapping the tarpaulin, he spread it on the snow. All the lower branches of this giant of the forest were dead and dry. Tappan broke off many and soon had a fire. Jenet nibbled at the moss on the trunk of the spruce tree. Tappan’s meal consisted of beans, biscuits, and a ball of snow that he held over the fire to soften. He saw to it that Jenet fared as well as he. Night soon fell, strange and weirdly white in the forest, and piercingly cold. Tappan needed the fire. Gradually it melted the snow and made a hole down to the ground. Tappan rolled up in the tarpaulin and soon fell asleep.
* * * * *
In three days Tappan traveled about fifteen miles, gradually descending, until the snow crust began to fail to hold Jenet. Then whatever had been his tasks before, they were now magnified. As soon as the sun was up, somewhat softening the snow, Jenet began to break through, and often, when Tappan began hauling her out, he broke through himself. This exertion was killing even to a man of Tappan’s physical prowess. Besides the endurance to resist heat and flying dust and dragging sand seemed another kind than that so needed to toil on in this snow. The endless snow-bound forest began to be hideous to Tappan—cold, lonely, dreary, white, mournful, the kind of ghastly and ghostly winter land that had been the terror of Tappan’s boyish dreams! He loved the sun, the open. This forest had deceived him. It was a wall of ice. As he toiled on, the state of his mind gradually and subtly changed in all except the fixed and absolute will to save Jenet. In some places he carried her.
The fourth night found him dangerously near the end of his stock of food. He had been generous with Jenet. But now, considering that he had to do more work than she, he diminished her share. On the fifth day Jenet broke through the snow crust so often that Tappan realized how utterly impossible it was for her to get out of the woods by her own efforts. Therefore, Tappan hit upon the plan of making her lie in the tarpaulin, so that he could drag her. The tarpaulin doubled once did not make a bad sled. All the rest of that day Tappan hauled her. And so all the rest of the next day he toiled on, hands behind him, clutching the canvas, head and shoulders bent, plodding and methodical, like a man who could not be defeated. That night he was too weary to build a fire, and too worried to eat the last of his food.
Next day Tappan was not dead to the changing character of the forest. He had worked down out of the zone of the spruce trees; the pines had thinned out and decreased in size; oak trees began to show prominently. All these signs meant that he was getting down out of the mountain heights. But the fact, hopeful as it was, had drawbacks. The snow was still four feet deep on a level, and the crust held Tappan only about half the time. Moreover, the lay of the land operated against Tappan’s progress. The long, slowly descending ridge had failed. There were no more cañons, but ravines and swales were numerous. Tappan dragged on, stern, indomitable, bent to his toil.
When the crust no longer held him, he hung his snowshoes over Jenet’s back and wallowed through, making a lane for her to follow. Two days of such heart-breaking toil, without food or fire, broke Tappan’s magnificent endurance. But not his spirit. He hauled Jenet over the snow and through the snow, down the hills and up the slopes, through the thickets, knowing that over the next ridge perhaps was deliverance. Deer and elk tracks began to be numerous. Cedar and juniper trees now predominated. An occasional pine showed here and there. He was getting out of the forestland. Only such mighty hope as that justified could have kept him on his feet.
He fell often, and it grew harder to rise and go on. The hour came when he had to abandon hauling Jenet. It was necessary to make a road for her. How weary, cold, horrible the white reaches! Yard by yard Tappan made his way. He no longer perspired. He had no feeling in his feet or legs. Hunger ceased to gnaw at his vitals. His thirst he quenched with snow—soft snow now, that did not have to be crunched like ice. The pangs in his breast were terrible, cramps, constrictions, the piercing pain in his lungs, the dull ache of his over-taxed heart.
Tappan came to an opening in the cedar forest from which he could see afar. A long slope fronted him. It led down and down to the open country. His desert eyes, keen as those of an eagle, made out flat country, sparsely covered with snow, and black dots that were cattle. The last slope! The last pull! Three feet of snow, except in drifts, down and down he plunged, making way for Jenet! All that day he toiled and fell and rolled down this league-long slope, wearying toward sunset to the end of his task, and likewise to the end of his will.
Now he seemed up and now down. There was no sense of cold or weariness, only direction. Tappan still saw! The last of his horror at the monotony of white faded from his mind. Jenet was there, beginning to be able to travel for herself. The solemn close of an endless day found Tappan arriving at the edge of the
timbered country where wind-bared patches of ground showed long, bleached grass. Jenet took to grazing.
As for Tappan, he fell with the tarpaulin under a thick cedar, and with strengthless hands plucked and plucked at the canvas to spread it, so that he could cover himself. He looked again for Jenet. She was there, somehow a fading image, strangely blurred. But she was grazing. Tappan lay down and stretched out, and slowly drew the tarpaulin over him.
A piercing cold night wind swept down from the snowy heights. It wailed in the edge of the cedars and moaned out toward the open country. Yet the night seemed silent. The stars shone white in a deep blue sky, passionless, cold, watchful eyes, looking down without pity or hope or censure. They were the eyes of Nature. Winter had locked the heights in its snowy grip. All night that winter wind blew down, colder and colder. Then dawn broke, steely, gray, with a flare in the east.
Jenet came back where she had left her master. Camp! She had grazed all night. Her sides that had been flat were now full. Jenet had weathered another vicissitude of her life. She stood for a while, in a daze, with one long ear down over her meek face. Jenet was waiting for Tappan, but he did not stir from under the long roll of canvas. Jenet waited. The winter sun rose in cold yellow flare. The snow glistened as with a crusting of diamonds. Somewhere in the distance sounded a long-drawn discordant bray. Jenet’s ears shot up. She listened. She recognized the call of one of her kind. Instinct always prompted Jenet. Sometimes she did bray. Lifting her gray head, she sent forth a clarion: Hee-haw hee-haw-haw…hee-haw how-e-e-e-e!
That stentorian call started the echoes. They pealed down the slope and rolled out over the open country, clear as a bugle blast, yet hideous in their discordance. But this morning Tappan did not awaken.
CAÑON WALLS
I
“Wal, heah’s another forkin’ of the trail!” ejaculated Monty, as he sat cross-legged on his saddle and surveyed the prospect. “Thet Mormon shepherd back a ways gave me a good steer. But dog-gone it, I hate to impose on anyone, even Mormons.”
The scene was Utah, north of the great cañon, with the wild ruggedness and magnificence of that region exemplified on all sides. Monty could see clear to the Pink Cliffs that walled the ranches and villages northward from this country of breaks. He had come up out of the abyss, across the desert between Mount Trumbull and Hurricane Ledge, and he did not look back. Kanab must be thirty or forty miles, as a crow flies, across this dotted valley of sage. But Monty did not know Utah, or anything of this north-rim country.
He rolled his last cigarette. He was hungry and worn out, and his horse was the same. Should he ride on to Kanab and throw in with one of the big cattle companies north of there or should he take to one of the lonely cañons and hunt for a homesteader in need of a rider? The choice seemed hard, because Monty was tired of gunfights, of two-bit rustling, of gambling, and other dubious means by which he had managed to live in Arizona. Not that Monty entertained any idea he had been really dishonest. He had the free-range cowboy’s elasticity of judgment. He could find excuses even for his last escapade. But one or two more stunts like this last one at Longhill would make him an outlaw. He reflected that, if he were blamed for the Green Valley affair, also, which was not improbable, he might find himself an outlaw already, whether he agreed or not.
If he rode on to the ranches north, sooner or later someone from Arizona would come along; if he went down into the breaks of the cañon, he might find a job and a hiding place where he would be safe until the thing blew over and was forgotten. Then he would take good care not to fall into another. Bad company and a bottle had brought Monty to this pass, which he really believed was undeserved.
Monty dropped his leg back and slipped his boot into the stirrup. He took the trail to the left and felt relief. It meant that he was avoiding towns and ranches, outfits of curious cowboys, and others who might have undue interest in wandering riders.
In about an hour, as the shepherd had directed, the trail approached and ran along the rim of a cañon. Monty gazed down with approving eyes. The walls were steep and very deep, so deep that he could scarcely see the green squares of alfalfa, the orchards and pastures, the groves of cottonwoods, and a gray log cabin. He espied cattle and horses toward the upper end. At length the trail started down, and for a while then Monty lost his perspective, and, dismounting, he walked down the zigzag path, leading his horse.He saw, at length, that the cañon boxed here in a wild notch of cliff and thicket and jumbled wall, from under which a fine stream of water flowed. There were many acres that might have been under cultivation. Monty followed the trail along the babbling brook, crossed it above where the floor of the cañon widened and the alfalfa fields shone so richly green, and so on down a couple of miles to the cottonwoods. When he emerged from these, he was close to the cabin, and he could see where the cañon opened wide, with sheer red-gold walls, right out upon the desert. Indeed, it was a lonely retreat, far off the road, out of the grass country, a niche in colored cañon walls.
The cottonwoods were shedding their fuzzy seeds that like snow covered the ground. An irrigation ditch ran musically through the yard. Chickens, turkeys, calves had the run of the place. The dry odor of the cañon here appeared to take in the fragrance of wood smoke and baking bread.
Monty limped on, up to the cabin porch, which was spacious and comfortable, where no doubt the people who lived there spent many hours during fine weather. He espied a girl in the open door. She wore gray linsey, ragged and patched. His second glance made note of her superb build, her bare feet, her brown arms, and eyes that did not need half their piercing quality to see through Monty.
“Howdy, miss,” hazarded Monty, although this was Mormon country.
“Howdy, stranger,” she replied very pleasantly, so that Monty ceased looking for a dog.
“Could a thirsty rider get a drink around heah?”
“There’s the brook. Best water in Utah.”
“An’ how about a bite to eat?”
“Tie up your horse and go ’round to the back porch.”
Monty did as he was bidden, not without a couple more glances at this girl who, he observed, made no movement. But as he turned the corner of the house, he heard her call: “Ma, there’s a tramp Gentile cowboy coming back for a bite to eat!”
When Monty reached the rear porch, another huge place under the cottonwoods, he was quite prepared to encounter the large woman, of commanding presence, but of more genial and kindly face.
“Good afternoon, ma’am,” began Monty, lifting his sombrero. “Shore you’re the mother to that girl out in front…you look alike an you’re both arfel handsome…but I won’t be took for no tramp Gentile cowpuncher.”
The woman greeted him with a pleasant laugh. “So, young man, you’re a Mormon?”
“No, I ain’t no Mormon, either. But particular, I ain’t no tramp cowboy,” replied Monty with spirit, and just then the young person who had roused it appeared in the back door with slow, curious smile. “I’m just lost an’ tuckered out, an’ hungry.”
For reply she motioned to a pan and bucket of water on a nearby bench, and Monty was quick to take the hint, but performed his ablutions very slowly. When he came out of them, shivering and refreshed, the woman was setting a table for him and bade him take a seat.
“Ma’am, I only asked for a bite,” he said.
“It’s no matter. We’ve plenty.”
Presently Monty sat down to a meal that surpassed any feast he ever attended. It was his first experience at a Mormon table, the fame of which was known on every range. He had to admit that distance and exaggeration had not lent enchantment here. Without shame he ate until he could hold no more, and, when he arose, he made the woman of the house a gallant bow.
“Lady, I never had such a good dinner in all my life,” he said fervently. “An’ I reckon it won’t make no difference if I never get another. Just rememberin’ this one will be enough.�
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“Blarney. You Gentiles shore have the gift of gab. Set down and rest a little.”
Monty was glad to comply, and leisurely disposed his long, lithe, dusty self in a comfortable chair. He laid his sombrero on the floor, and hitched his gun around, and looked up, genially aware that he was being taken in by two pairs of eyes.
“I met a shepherd lad up on top an’ he directed me to Andrew Boller’s ranch. Is this heah the place?”
“No. Boller’s is a few miles farther on. It’s the first big ranch over the Arizona line.”
“Shore I missed it. Wal, it was lucky for me. Are you near the Arizona line heah?”
“We’re just over it.”
“Oh, I see. Not in Utah a-tall,” said Monty thoughtfully. “Any men about?”
“No. I’m the Widow Keitch, and this is my daughter Rebecca.”
Monty guardedly acknowledged the introduction, without mentioning his name, an omission the shrewd, kindly woman noted. Monty was quick to feel that she must have had vast experience with men. The girl, however, wore an indifferent, rather scornful air.
“This heah is a good-size ranch…must be a hundred acres just in alfalfa,” went on Monty. “You don’t mean to tell me you two women run this ranch alone?”
“We do mostly. We hire the plowing, and we have to have firewood hauled. And we always have a boy around. But year in and out we do most of the work.”
“Wal, I’ll be darned!” ejaculated Monty. “Excuse me…but it shore is somethin’ to heah. The ranch ain’t so bad run-down at that. If you’ll allow me to say so, Missus Keitch, it could be made a first-rate ranch. There’s acres of uncleared land.”
“My husband used to think so,” replied the widow, sighing. “But since he’s gone we have just managed to live.”