by Zane Grey
That giggle saved Monty a stroke of apoplexy.
“Running? What for?” queried the mother as Rebecca mounted the porch.
“Mother, it was the funniest thing. I called Sam, but he didn’t hear. I went out to tell him supper was ready. He had a great, high stack of alfalfa up. Of course, I wanted to climb it and slide down. Well, Sam got mad and ordered me not to do any such thing. Then I had to do it. Such fun! Sam growled like a bear. Well, I couldn’t resist climbing up for another slide. Do you know, Mother, Sam got perfectly furious. He has a terrible temper. He commanded me not to slide off that stack. And when I asked him what he’d do if I did…he declared he’d spank me. Imagine! I only meant to tease him. I wasn’t going to slide at all. Then you could see I had to. So I did. I…oh, dear!…I fetched the whole top of the stack down on us…and, when I got out from under the smothering hay…and could see…there was Sam, running for dear life.”
“Well, for the land’s sake!” ejaculated Mrs. Keitch dubiously, and then she laughed. “You drive the poor fellow wild with your pranks. Rebecca, will you never grow up?” Whereupon she came out to the porch rail and called: “Sam!”
Monty started up, opened his door to let it slam, and replied, in what he thought the funniest voice: “Hello?”
“Hurry to supper.”
Monty washed his face and hands, brushed his hair, while his mind whirled. Then he sat down bewildered. Dog-gone me! Can you beat that girl? She didn’t give me away. She didn’t lie, yet she never told…. She’s not goin’ to tell. Must have been funny to her. But shore it’s a daid safe bet she never got kissed thet way before. I just cain’t figger her out.
Presently he went to supper and was grateful for the dim light. Still he felt the girl’s eyes on him. No doubt she was now appreciating him as a real Arizona Gentile rowdy cowboy. He pretended weariness, and soon hurried away to his cabin, where he spent a night of inexplicable dreams and waking emotions. Remorse, however, had died a natural death after Rebecca’s story to her mother.
With dawn came the blessed work into which Monty plunged, finding all relief except oblivion. Rebecca did not speak a single word to him for two weeks. Mrs. Keitch finally remarked it and reproved her daughter.
“Speak to him?” asked Rebecca in haughty amaze. “Maybe…when he crawls on his knees!”
“But, Daughter, he only threatened to spank you. And I’m sure you gave him provocation. You must always forgive. We cannot live at enmity here,” said the good mother persuasively.
Then she turned to Monty.
“Sam, you know Rebecca has passed eighteen and she feels an exaggerated sense of maturity. Perhaps if you’d tell her you were sorry….”
“What aboot?” asked Monty, when she hesitated.
“Why, about what offended Rebecca.”
“Aw, shore. I’m awful sorry,” drawled Monty, his keen eyes on the girl. “Turrible sorry…but it’s aboot not sayin’ an’ doin’ more…an’ then spankin’ her to boot.”
Mrs. Keitch looked aghast, and, when Rebecca ran away hysterical with mirth, she seemed positively nonplussed.
“That girl! Why, Sam, I thought she was furious with you. But she’s not. It’s sham.”
“Wal, I reckon she’s riled all right, but it doesn’t matter. An’ see heah, lady,” he went on, lowering his voice, “I’m confidin’ in you an’ if you give me away…wal, I’ll leave the ranch. I reckon you’ve forgot how you told me I’d lose my haid over Rebecca. Wal, I’ve lost it, clean an’ plumb an’ otherwise. An’ sometimes I do queer things. Just remember thet’s why. This won’t make no difference. I’m happy heah. Only I want you to understand me.”
“Sam Hill,” she whispered in ecstatic amaze. “So that’s what ails you? Now all will be well.”
“Wal, I’m glad you think so,” replied Monty shortly. “An’ I reckon it will be…when I get over these growin’ pains.”
She leaned toward him. “My son, I understand now. Rebecca has been in love with you for a long time. Just let her alone. All will be well.”
Monty gave her one mute, incredulous stare, and then he fled. In the darkness of his cabin he persuaded himself of the absurdity of the sentimental Mrs. Keitch’s claim. Then he could sleep. But when day came again, he found the harm had been wrought. He lived in a kind of dream and he was always watching for Rebecca.
Straightway he began to make discoveries. Gradually she came out of her icy shell. She worked as usual, and apparently with less discontent, especially in the mornings when she had time to sew on the porch. She would fetch lunch to the men out in the fields. Often Monty saw her on top of a haystack, but he always quickly looked away. She climbed the wall trail; she gathered armloads of wildflowers. She helped where her help was not needed.
On Sundays, she went to church at White Sage and in the afternoon entertained callers. But it was noticeable that her Mormon courtiers grew fewer as the summer advanced. Monty missed in her the gay allure the open coquetry, the challenge that had once been marked.
All this was thought-provoking for Monty, but nothing to the discovery that Rebecca watched him from afar and when near at hand. Monty could not credit it. Only another instance of his addled brain. It happened, moreover, that the eyes that had made Monty Smoke Bellew a great shot and tracker, wonderful out on the range, could not be deceived. The hour he lent himself, in stifling curiosity, to spying upon Rebecca he learned the staggering truth.
In the mornings and evenings, while he was at work near the barn or resting on his porch, she watched him, thinking herself unseen. She peeped from behind her window curtain, through the leaves, above her sewing, from the open doors—from everywhere the great, gray, hungry eyes sought him. It began to get on Monty’s nerves. Did she hate him so that she planned some dire revenge? But the eyes that watched him in secret seldom or never met his own any more. Sometimes his consciousness took hold of Mrs. Keitch’s strangely tranquil words, and then he had to battle fiercely to recover his equilibrium. The last asinine thing Smoke Bellew could ever do would be to give in to vain obsession. But the situation invoked and haunted him.
One noonday Monty returned to his cabin to find a magical change in his single room. He could not recognize it. Clean and tidy and colorful it flashed at him. There were Indian rugs on the clay floor, Indian ornaments on the log walls, curtains at his windows, a scarf on his table, and a gorgeous bedspread on his bed. In a little Indian vase on the table stood some stalks of golden daisies and purple asters.
“What happened around heah this mawnin’?” he drawled at meal hour. “My cabin is spruced up so fine.”
“Yes, it does look nice,” replied Mrs. Keitch complacently. “Rebecca has had that in mind for some time.”
“Wal, it was turrible good of her,” said Monty.
“Oh, nonsense,” returned Rebecca with a swift blush. “Ma wanted you to be more comfortable.”
“Ma did? How you trifle with the precious truth, Daughter! Sam, I never thought of it, I’m ashamed to say.”
Monty escaped somehow, as he always managed to escape when catastrophe impended. But one August night when the harvest moon rose, white and grand, above the black cañon rim, he felt such a strange, impelling presentiment he could not leave his porch and go in to bed. It had been a hard day—one in which the accumulated cut of alfalfa had mounted to unbelievable figures. Cañon Walls Ranch, with its soil and water and Sam, was simply a gold mine. All over southern Utah the ranchers were clambering for that alfalfa.
The hour was late. The light in Rebecca’s room had long been out. Frogs and owls and night hawks had ceased their lonely calls. Only the insects hummed in the melancholy stillness.
A rustle startled Monty. Was it a leaf falling from a cottonwood? A dark form crossed the barred patches of moonlight. Rebecca! She passed close to him as he lounged on the porch steps. Her face flashed white. She ran down the lane and stopped t
o look back.
“Dog-gone! Am I drunk or crazy or just moonstruck?” ejaculated Monty, rising. “What is that girl up to? Shore she seen me heah. Shore she did.”
He started down the lane, and, when he came out of the shadow of the cottonwoods into the moonlight, she ran fleetly as a deer. But again she halted and looked back. Monty stalked after her. He was roused now. He would see this thing through. If it were another of her hoydenish tricks…. But there seemed to be an appalling something in this night flight out into the cañon under the full moon.
Monty lost sight of her at the end of the lane. But when he reached it and turned into the field, he espied her far out, lingering, looking back. He could see her moon-blanched face. She ran on, and he followed.
That side of the cañon lay clear in the silver light. On the other the looming cañon wall stood up black, with its last rim moon-fired against the sky. The alfalfa shone brightly, yet kept its deep dark, rich, velvety hue.
Rebecca was making for the upper end where that day the alfalfa had been cut. She let Monty gain on her, but at last with a wild trill she ran to the huge, silver-shining haystack and began to climb it.
Monty did not run; he slowed down. He did not know what was happening to him, but his state seemed to verge upon lunacy. One of his nightmares! He would awaken presently. But then the white form edged up the steep haystack. He had finished this mound of alfalfa with the satisfaction of an artist.
When he reached it, Rebecca had not only gained the top, but was lying flat, propped on her elbows. Monty went closer—right up to the stack. He could see her distinctly now, scarcely fifteen feet above his head. The moonlight lent her an exceeding witchery. But it was the mystery of her eyes that seemed to end all for Monty. Why had he followed her? He could do nothing. His threat was but an idle memory. His anger would not rise. She would make him betray his secret and then, alas, Cañon Walls could no longer be a home for him.
“Howdy, Sam,” she said in a tone that he could not comprehend,
“Rebecca, what does this mean?” he asked.
“Isn’t it a glorious night?”
“Yes. But the hour is late. An’ you could have watched from your window.”
“Oh, no. I had to be out in it. Besides, I wanted to make you follow me,”
“Wal, you shore have. I was plumb scared, I reckon. An’…an’ I’m glad it was only fun. But why did you want me to follow you?”
“For one thing I wanted you to see me climb your new haystack.”
“Yes? Wal, I’ve seen you. So come down now. If your mother should ketch us out heah….”
“And I wanted you to see me slide down this one.”
The silvery medium that surrounded this dark-eyed witch was surely charged with intense and troubled potentialities for Monty. He was lost and he could only look the query she expected.
“And I wanted to see terribly…what you’d do,” she went on, with a seriousness that must have been mockery.
“Rebecca, child, I will do…nothin’,” replied Monty almost mournfully.
She got to her knees, and leaned as if to see him closer. Then she turned around to sit down and slid to the very edge. Her hands were clutched, deep in the alfalfa.
“You won’t spank me, Sam?” she asked in impish glee.
“No. Much as I’d like to…an’ as you shore need it…I cain’t.”
“Bluffer. Gentile cowpuncher…showing yellow…marble-hearted fiend!”
“Not thet last, Rebecca. For all my many faults, not thet,” he said sadly.
She seemed fighting to let go of something that the mound of alfalfa represented only in symbol. Surely the physical effort for Rebecca to hold her balance there could not account for the strain of body and face. All the mystery of Cañon Walls and the beauty of the night hovered over her.
“Sam, dare me to slide,” she taunted.
“No,” he retorted grimly.
“Coward.”
“Shore. You hit me on the haid there.”
Then ensued a short silence. He could see the quivering. She was moving, almost imperceptibly. Her eyes, magnified by the shadow and light, transfixed Monty.
“Gentile, dare me to slide…into your arms!” she cried a little huskily.
“Mormon witch! Would you…?”
“Dare me!”
“Wal, I dare…you, Rebecca…but, so help me Gawd, I won’t answer for consequences.”
Her laugh, like that other sweet, wild trill, pealed up, but now full of joy, of certainty, of surrender. And she let go her hold, to spread wide her arms, and come sliding on an avalanche of silver hay down upon him.
VI
Next morning, Monty found work in the fields impossible. He roamed about like a man possessed, and at last went back to the cabin. It was just before the noonday meal. Rebecca hummed a tune while she set the table. Mrs. Keitch sat on her rocker, busy with work on her lap. There was no charged atmosphere. All seemed serene.
Monty responded to the girl’s sly glance by taking her hand and leading her up to her mother.
“Lady,” he began hoarsely, “you’ve knowed long my feelin’s for Rebecca. But it seems…she…she loves me, too. How thet come aboot I cain’t say. It’s shore the wonderfulest thing. Now, I ask you, for Rebecca’s sake most…what can be done about this heah trouble?”
“Daughter, is it true?” asked Mrs. Keitch, looking up with serene and smiling face.
“Yes, Mother,” replied Rebecca simply.
“You love Sam?”
“Oh, I do.”
“Since when?”
“Always, I guess. But I never knew till this June.”
“I am very glad, Rebecca,” replied the mother, rising to embrace her. “As you could not or would not love one of your own creed, it is well that you love this man who came a stranger to our gates. He is strong, he is true, and what his religion is matters little.”
Then she smiled upon Monty. “My son, no man can say what guided your steps to Cañon Walls. But I have always felt God’s intent in it. You and Rebecca shall marry.”
“Oh, Mother,” murmured the girl rapturously, and she hid her face.
“Wal…I’m willin’…an’ happy,” stammered Monty. “But I ain’t worthy of her, lady, an’ you know that old….”
She silenced him. “You must go to White Sage and be married at once.”
“At once! When?” faltered Rebecca.
“Aw, Missus Keitch, I…I wouldn’t hurry the girl. Let her have her own time.”
“No, why wait? She has been a strange, starved creature. Tomorrow you must take her, Sam.”
“Wal an’ good, if Rebecca says so,” said Monty with wistful eagerness.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Will you go with me, Mother?”
“Yes,” suddenly rang out Mrs. Keitch as if inspired. “I will go. I will cross the Utah line once more before I am carried over. But not White Sage. We will go to Kanab. You shall be married by the bishop.”
In the excitement and agitation that possessed the mother and daughter then Monty sensed a significance more than just the tremendous importance of an impending marriage. Some deep, strong motive urged Mrs. Keitch to go to Kanab, there to have her bishop marry Rebecca to a Gentile. One way or another it did not matter to Monty. He rode in the clouds. He could not believe in his good luck. Never in his life had he touched real happiness until then.
The womenfolk were an hour late in serving lunch, and during that the air of vast excitement permeated their every word and action.
“Wal, this heah seems like a Sunday,” said Monty, after the hasty meal. “I’ve loafed a lot this mawnin’. But I reckon I’ll go back to work now.”
“Oh, Sam, don’t…when…when we’re leaving so soon,” remonstrated Rebecca shyly.
“When are we leavin’?”
“Tomorrow…early.”
“Wal, I’ll get that alfalfa up anyhow. It might rain, you know. Rebecca, do you reckon you could get up at daylight for this heah ride?”
“I could stay up all night, Sam.”
Mrs. Keitch laughed at them. “There’s no rush. We’ll start after breakfast. And get to Kanab early enough to make arrangements for the wedding next day. It will give Sam time to buy a respectable suit of clothes to be married in.”
“Dog-gone. I hadn’t thought of thet,” replied Monty ruefully.
“Sam Hill, you won’t marry me in a ten-gallon hat, a red shirt, blue overalls, and boots,” declared Rebecca.
“How about wearin’ my gun?” drawled Monty.
“Your gun!” exclaimed Rebecca.
“Shore. You’ve forgot how I used to pack it. I might need it over there among them Mormons who’re crazy about you.”
“Heavens! You leave that gun home.”
Monty went his way, marveling at the change in his habits and in his life. Next morning, when he brought the buckboard around, Mrs. Keitch and Rebecca appeared radiant of face, gorgeous of apparel. But for the difference in age anyone might have mistaken the mother for the intended bride.
The drive to the Kanab with fresh horses and light load took six hours. The news spread over Kanab like wildfire in dry prairie grass. For all Monty’s keen eyes, he never caught a jealous look, nor did he hear a nasty word. That settled with him the status of the Keitches. Mormon friends. The Tyler brothers came into town and made much of the fact that Monty would soon be one of them, and they planned another fall hunt for wild mustangs and deer. Waking hours sped by and sleeping hours were few. Almost before Monty knew what was happening he was in the presence of the august bishop.
“Will you come into the Mormon Church?” asked the bishop.
“Wal, sir, I cain’t be a Mormon,” replied Monty in perplexity. “But I shore have respect for you people an’ your church. I reckon I never had no religion. I can say I’ll never stand in Rebecca’s way, in anythin’ pertainin’ to hers.”