Silvermane

by Zane Grey

  “Sam, we’re going to need help this spring,” said Mrs. Keitch. “We’ll want a couple of men and a teamster…a new wagon.”

  “Wal, we shore need aplenty,” drawled Monty, “an’ I reckon we’d better think hard.”

  “This ranch is overflowing with milk and honey. Sam, you’ve made it bloom. We must make a deal. I’ve spoken to you before, but you always put me off. We ought to be partners.”

  “There ain’t any hurry, lady,” replied Monty. “I’m happy heah, an’ powerful set on makin’ the ranch go big. Funny no farmer hereabouts ever saw its possibilities. Wal, thet’s our good luck.”

  “Boller wants my whole alfalfa cut this year,” went on Mrs. Keitch. “Saunders, a big cattleman…no Mormon, by the way…is ranging south. And Boller wants to gobble all the feed. How much alfalfa can we cut this year?”

  “Countin’ the new acreage upward of two hundred tons.”

  “Sam Hill!” she cried incredulously.

  “Wal, you needn’t Sam Hill me. I get enough of that from Rebecca. But you can gamble on the ranch from now on. We have the soil an’ the sunshine…twice as much an’ twice as hot as these farmers out in the open. An’ we have water. Lady, we’re goin’ to grow things.”

  “It’s a dispensation of the Lord!” she exclaimed fervently.

  “Wal, I don’t know aboot that, but I can guarantee results. We start new angles this spring. There’s a side cañon up heah that I cleared. Just the place for hogs. You know what a waste of fruit there was last fall. We’ll not waste anythin’ from now on. We can raise food enough to pack this cañon solid with turkeys, chickens, hogs.”

  “Sam, you’re a wizard, and the Lord merely guided me that day I took you in,” replied Mrs. Keitch. “We’re independent now and I see prosperity ahead. When Andrew Boller offered to buy this ranch, I saw the handwriting on the wall.”

  “You bet. An’ the ranch is worth twice what he offered.”

  “Sam, I’ve been an outcast, in a way, but this will sweeten my cup.”

  “Wal, lady, you never made me no confidences, but I always took you for the happiest woman I ever seen,” declared Monty stoutly.

  At this juncture the thoughtful Rebecca Keitch, who had listened as was her habit, spoke feelingly: “Ma, I want a lot of new dresses. I haven’t a decent rag to my back. And look there!” She stuck out a shapely foot, bursting from an old shoe. “I want to go to Salt Lake City and buy things. And if we’re not so poor any more….”

  “My dearest, I cannot go to Salt Lake,” interrupted the mother in amaze and sorrow.

  “But I can. Sue Tyler is going with her mother,” burst out Rebecca, passionately glowing.

  “Of course, Daughter, you must have clothes to wear. And I have long thought of that. But to go to Salt Lake? I don’t know. It worries me. Sam, what do you think of Rebecca’s idea?”

  “Which one?” asked Monty.

  “About going to Salt Lake to buy clothes.”

  “Perfectly ridiculous,” replied Monty blandly.

  “Why?” flashed Rebecca, turning upon him with great eyes aflame.

  “Wal, you don’t need no clothes in the first place….”

  “Don’t I?” demanded Rebecca hotly. “You bet I don’t need any clothes for you. You never look at me. I could go around here positively stark naked and you’d never even see me.”

  “An’ in the second place,” went on Monty with a wholly assumed imperturbability, “you’re too young an’ too crazy aboot boys to go on such a long journey alone.”

  “Daughter, I…I think Sam is right,” rejoined the mother.

  “I’m eighteen years old!” screamed Rebecca. “And I wouldn’t be going alone.”

  “Sam means you should have a man with you.”

  Rebecca stood a moment in speechless rage, then she broke down. “Why doesn’t the damn’ fool…offer to take me…then?”

  “Rebecca!” cried Mrs. Keitch in horror.

  Monty, meanwhile, had been undergoing a remarkable transformation. “Lady, if I was her dad….”

  “But you’re not,” sobbed Rebecca.

  “There, Daughter…and maybe next year you could go to Salt Lake,” added Mrs. Keitch consolingly.

  Rebecca made a miserable compromise, an acceptance rendered vastly significant to Monty by the deep, dark look she gave him as she flounced away.

  “Oh, dear,” sighed Mrs. Keitch. “Rebecca is a good girl. Now she often flares up like that and lately she has been queer. If she’d only set her heart on some man.”

  III

  Monty had his doubts about the venture to which he had committed himself. But he undertook it willingly enough, because Mrs. Keitch was tremendously pleased and relieved. She evidently feared this high-spirited girl. As it happened, Rebecca rode to Kanab with the Tylers, with the understanding that she would return on Monty’s wagon.

  The drive took Monty all day and there was a good deal of upgrade. He did not believe he could make the thirty miles back in daylight hours, unless he got a very early start, and he just about knew he never could get Rebecca Keitch to leave Kanab before dawn. Still the whole prospect was one of adventure, and much of Monty’s old devil-may-care spirit seemed to rouse to meet it.

  He camped on the edge of town, and next morning drove in and left the old wagon at a blacksmith shop for repairs. The four horses were turned into pasture. Then Monty went about executing Mrs. Keitch’s instructions, which had to do with engaging helpers, and numerous purchases. That evening saw a big, new, shiny wagon at the blacksmith shop, packed full of flour, grain, hardware, supplies, harness, and what-not. The genial storekeeper who waited upon Monty averred that this Keitch must have had her inheritance returned to her. All the Mormons were kindly interested in Monty and his work at Cañon Walls, which had become talk all over the range. They were likable men, except the gray-whiskered old patriarchs who belonged to another day. Monty did not miss seeing several very pretty Mormon girls, and their notice of him pleased Monty immensely when Rebecca happened to be around to see.

  Monty ran into her every time he entered a store. She spent all the money she had saved up, and all her mother had given her, and she borrowed the last few dollars he had.

  “Shore, you’re welcome,” said Monty in reply to her thanks. “But ain’t you losin’ your haid a little?”

  “Well, so long’s I don’t lose it over you, what do you care?” she retorted gaily with a return of that dark glance that had mystified him.

  Monty replied that her mother had expressly forbidden her to go into debt for anything.

  “Don’t you try to boss me, Sam Hill,” she warned, but she was still too happy to be angry.

  “Rebecca, I don’t care two bits what you do,” said Monty shortly.

  “Oh, don’t you? Thanks. You always flattered me,” she returned mockingly. It struck Monty then that she knew something about him or about herself that he did not share.

  “We’ll be leavin’ before sunup,” he added briefly. “You’d better let me have all your bundles so I can take them out to the wagon an’ pack them tonight.”

  Rebecca demurred, but would not give a reason, which must have meant that she wanted to gloat over her purchases. Monty finally prevailed upon her, and it took two trips for him, and a boy he had hired, to carry the stuff out to the blacksmith’s.

  “Lord, if it should rain!” ejaculated Monty, happening to think that he had no extra tarpaulin. So he went back to the store and got one, and hid it, with the purpose of having fun with Rebecca in case a storm threatened.

  After supper Rebecca drove out to Monty’s camp with some friends.

  “I don’t like this. You should have gone to the rim,” she said loftily.

  “Wal, I’m used to campin’,” he drawled.

  “Sam, they’re giving a dance for me tonight,” announced Rebecca.


  “Fine. Then you needn’t go to bed a-tall, an’ we can get an early start.”

  The young people with Rebecca shouted with laughter, and she looked dubious.

  “Can’t we stay over another day?”

  “I should smile we cain’t,” retorted Monty with unusual force. “An’ if we don’t get an early start, we’ll never reach home tomorrow. So you just come along heah, young lady, aboot four o’clock.”

  “In the morning?”

  “In the mawnin’. I’ll have some breakfast for you.”

  It was noticeable that Rebecca made no rash promises. Monty rather wanted to give in to her—she was so happy and gay—but he remembered his obligations to Mrs. Keitch, and remained firm.

  As they drove off, Monty’s sharp ears caught Rebecca complaining: “…and I can’t do a solitary darn’ thing with that Arizona cowpuncher.”

  This rather pleased Monty, as it gave him distinction, and was proof that he had not yet betrayed himself to Rebecca. He would proceed on these lines.

  That night he did a remarkable thing, for him. He found out where the dance was being held, and peeped through a window to see Rebecca in her glory. He did not miss, however, the fact that she did not outshine several other young women there. Monty stifled a yearning that had not bothered him for a long time. Dog-gone it! I ain’t no old gaffer. I could dance the socks off some of them Mormons. He became aware presently that between dances the young Mormon men came outside and indulged in fist fights. He could not see any reason for these encounters, and it amused him. Gosh, I wonder if thet’s just a habit with these hombres. Fact is, though, there’s shore not enough girls to go ’round. Holy Mackerel, how I’d like to have my old dancin’ pards heah! Wouldn’t we wade through thet corral? I wonder what’s become of Slim an’ Cuppy, an’ if they ever think of me. Dog-gone.

  Monty sighed and returned to camp. He was up before daylight, but not in any rush. He had a premonition what to expect. Day broke and the sun tipped the low desert in the east, while Monty leisurely got breakfast. He kept an eye on the look-out for Rebecca. The new boy, Jake, arrived with shiny face, and later one of the men engaged by Mrs. Keitch came. Monty had the two teams fetched in from pasture, and hitched up. It was just as well that he had to wait for Rebecca, because the new harness did not fit and required skilled adjustment, but he was not going to tell her that. The longer she made him wait, the longer would be the scolding she would get.

  About 9:00 a.m. she arrived in a very much overloaded buckboard, gay of attire and face, and so happy that Monty, had he been sincere, could never have reproved her. But he did it, very sharply, and made her look like a chidden child before her friends. This reacted upon Monty so pleasurably that he began afresh. But this was a mistake.

  “Yah! Yah! Yah! Yah!” she screamed at him. And her friends let out a roar of merriment.

  “Becky, you shore have a tip-top chaperon,” remarked one frank-faced Mormon boy. And other remarks were not wanting to hint that one young rider in the world had not succumbed to Rebecca.

  “Where am I going to ride?” she asked curtly.

  Monty indicated the high driver’s seat: “Unless you’d rather ride with them two new hands on the other wagon.”

  Rebecca scorned to give reasons, but climbed to the lofty perch.

  “Girls, it’s nearer heaven than I’ve ever been yet!” she called gaily.

  “What do you mean, Becky?” replied a pretty girl with roguish eyes. “So high up…or because…?”

  “Go along with you,” interrupted Rebecca with a blush. “You think of nothing but men. I wish you had…but good bye…good bye. I’ve had a lovely time.”

  Monty clambered to the driver’s seat, and followed the other wagon out of town, down into the desert. Rebecca appeared moved to talk.

  “Oh, it was a change. I had a grand time. But I’m glad you wouldn’t let me go to Salt Lake. It’d have ruined me, Sam.”

  Monty felt subtly flattered, but he chose to remain aloof, and disapproving.

  “Nope. Hardly thet. You was ruined long ago, Miss Rebecca,” he drawled.

  “Don’t call me ‘miss’,” she flashed. “And see here, Sam Hill…do you hate us Mormons?”

  “I shore don’t. I like all the Mormons I’ve met. They’re just fine. An’ your ma is the best woman I ever knew.”

  “Then I’m the only Mormon you’ve no use for,” she retorted with bitterness. “Don’t deny it. I’d rather you didn’t add falsehood to your…your other faults. It’s a pity, though, that we can’t get along. Mother depends on you now. You’ve certainly pulled us out of a hole. And I…I’d like you…if you’d let me. But you always make me out a wicked, spoiled girl. Which I’m not. Why couldn’t you come to the dance last night? They wanted you. Those girls were eager to meet you.”

  “I wasn’t asked…not that I’d’ve come anyhow,” stammered Monty.

  “You know perfectly well that in a Mormon town or house you are welcome,” she said. “What did you want? Would you have had me stick my finger in the top hole of your vest and look up at you like a dying duck and say…‘Sam, please come?’”

  “My Gawd, no. I never dreamed of wantin’ you to do anythin’,” replied Monty hurriedly. He was getting over his depth here, and began to doubt his ability to say the right things.

  “Why not? Am I hideous? Aren’t I a human being? A girl?” she queried with resentful fire.

  Monty deliberated a moment, as much to recover his scattered wits as to make adequate reply. “Wal, you shore are a live human creature. An’ as handsome as any girl I ever seen. But you’re spoiled somethin’ turrible. You’re the most awful flirt I ever watched, an’ the way you treat these fine Mormon boys is shore scandalous. You don’t know what you want more’n one minnit straight runnin’. An’ when you get what you want, you’re sick of it right then.”

  “Oh, is that all?” she burst out, and then followed with a peal of riotous laughter. But she did not look at him or speak to him again for hours.

  Monty liked that better. He had the thrill of her presence, without her disturbing chatter. The nucleus of a thought tried to wedge into his consciousness—that this girl was not indifferent to him. But he squelched it.

  At noon they halted in a rocky depression, where water filled the holes, and Rebecca got down to sit in the shade of a cedar.

  “I want something to eat,” she declared imperiously.

  “Sorry, but there ain’t nothin’,” replied Monty imperturbably as he mounted to the seat again. The other wagon rolled on, cracking the rocks under its wheels.

  “Are you going to starve me into submission?”

  Monty laughed at her. “Wal, I reckon if someone took a willow switch to your bare legs an’…wal, he might get a little submission out of you.”

  “You’re worse than a Mormon!” she cried in disgust as if that was the end of iniquity.

  “Come on, child,” said Monty with pretended weariness. “If we don’t keep steppin’ along lively, we’ll never get home tonight.”

  “Good! I’ll delay you as much as I can. Sam, I’m scared to death to face Mother.” And she giggled.

  “What about?”

  “I went terribly in debt. But I didn’t lose my ‘haid’ as you say. I thought it all out. I won’t be going again for ages. And I’ll work. Then the change in our fortunes tempted me.”

  “Wal, I reckon we can get around tellin’ your mother,” said Monty lamely.

  “You wouldn’t give me away, Sam?” she asked in surprise with strange, intent eyes. She got up to come to the wagon.

  “No, I wouldn’t. ’Course not. What’s more, I can lend you the money…presently.”

  “Thanks, Sam. But I’ll tell Mother.”

  She got up and rode beside him for miles without speaking. It seemed nothing to Monty, to ride in that country and keep
silent. The desert was not conducive to conversation. It was so sublime as to be oppressive. League after league of rock and sage, of black ridge and red swale, and always the great landmarks looming as if unattainable. Behind them the Pink Cliffs rose higher the farther they got, to their left the long, black fringe of the Buckskin gradually climbed into obscurity, to the fore rolled away the colored desert, an ever-widening bowl that led the gaze to the purple chaos in the distance—that wild region of the rent earth called the cañon country.

  Monty did not tell Rebecca that they could not get even halfway home, and that they would have to camp. But mentally, as a snow squall formed on the Buckskin, he told her it likely would catch up with them and turn to rain.

  “Oh, Sam!” she wailed, aghast. “If my things got wet!”

  He did not give her any assurance or comfort, and about midafternoon, when the road climbed toward a divide, he saw that they would not miss the storm. But he would go in camp at the pines and could weather it.

  Before sunset they reached the highest point along the road, from which the spectacle down toward the west made Monty acknowledge that he was gazing at the grandest panorama ever presented to his enraptured eyes. He was a Nature-loving cowboy of long years on the open range.

  Rebecca watched with him, and he could feel her absorption. Finally she sighed and said, as if to herself: “One reason I’ll marry a Mormon…if I have to…is that I never want to leave Utah.”

  They halted in the pines, low down on the far side of the divide, where a brook brawled merrily, and here the storm, half rain and half snow, caught them. Rebecca was frantic. She did not even know where her treasures were packed.

  “Oh, Sam, I’ll never forgive you!”

  “Me? What have I got to do with it?” he queried in pretended amazement.

  “Oh, you knew it would rain,” she said. “And if you’d been half a man…if you didn’t hate me, you…you could have saved my things.”