by Zane Grey
“Oh, how barren and wild!” exclaimed Georgiana. “I expected it all green, because you said it was cattle country. There’s no grass—nothing level—all seems so terribly rough.—Surely we can’t ride down there. Can we?”
“You bet we can. Yes, it’s hard goin’, but cattle live in those canyons an’ there’s where we chase them, rope them, brand them.”
“No!”
“Sure is. I’ll tell you, Georgie, it’s really rougher than it looks, but it’s also better for cattle than it looks. There’s water in the canyons an’ those gray bare spots are grass.—Look. See that old white-faced bull standin’ down there lookin’ up at us.—An’ there’s three steers lower down in the brush.—Georgia, that’s what I’m ridin’ this ridge for—to get a line on where the cattle are. They’re stragglin’ all over an’ it takes a lot of lookin’ to locate them. An’ when it comes to roundin’ them up—well, it’s what you call ‘good night’!”
Georgiana gazed everywhere but the right place, and had to have the cattle pointed out to her. It pleased Cal to see she was interested.
“What do you know about that!” she exclaimed. “A few white dots—faces of cattle—in all that awful up-and-down country. It’s so different from what I imagined. I thought a cattle ranch a wonderful level green plain, dotted with cows and calves—and the rest of the cattle folks—and water and shady trees. Gee! it takes some guy to be a rider, doesn’t it?”
“Ahuh! If you mean a fellow not afraid of long hours, hard ridin’, bad cows an’ steers—”
“Bad cows? Are there really such?”
“Georgie, the wild old cows with calves are sure bad. They will chase a rider off the map. I’ve seen many a spill, an’ some gored horses, sorry to say.”
The girl became thoughtful, and swept her gaze from the first shallow depths of the canyon, where the cattle were grazing, to the far-distant, dark depths of the Tonto, and beyond to the great domed black mass of Diamond Butte, and to the wonderful lines of ridges sloping endlessly away from it down out of sight into the basin. This scene always held Cal for a moment, and he had gazed at it in all kinds of weather and at all hours of the day. The wilderness and loneliness of it were only equaled by its tremendous ruggedness. Yet some of the sloping ridges seemed graceful of line, soft and gray, and really beautiful. But for the most part the stark ribs of the earth showed, with only a little verdure to relieve their nakedness. Rain fell seldom there—only a few rains a year, and sometimes none—and then the water tore down the rough slopes too swiftly to freshen the soil. Mostly it sloughed away the earth. Everywhere were meandering gullies worn in the slopes, showing the yellow earth and red rock, and these deepened and widened as they ran down into the canyons. The sun was bright and glaring, the sky blue without a cloud. The cool air bore a tang of the desert. Indeed, it was a vast area dominated by the sun. In all the bare spots showed the many-spiked gray-green cactus, the mescal plant typical of dry sun-baked waste places.
“If I were a man, I’d love such a life,” mused Georgiana.
That remark was so compelling that Cal again had to fight to hold back the news of his intention to give the pinto Blazes to her. What would she say and do? Cal was about afraid to think. But prospect of the giving had become doubly sweet, and presently he would blurt it out.
“Well, Georgiana, I have work to do,” said Cal, finally. “The three canyons to look over, an’ that’ll take ridin’. But when I leave the trail to ride off a little ways here an’ there you can stop to rest.”
“Let me ride everywhere with you,” she said.
“Nope. You’ll get enough before the day’s over. Besides, there’ll be places where you can’t follow me. Come on now.”
“Say, Cal—don’t forget that swell lunch I put up,” she returned.
“Ahuh! I thought you’d remind me of that. But it’s hours before we can eat.”
“Hours? . . . Look here, boy, I can’t live on scenery.”
“Georgie, the longer we save that lunch, the better we’ll enjoy it.”
“I suppose you think I can live on love,” she pouted.
“No, Georgiana. I’ve had wild dreams about you, but never any as wild as that,” he replied, with a steady look at her.
“Ahuh!” she retorted, imitating him again. “All the same, my wise friend, I could live on it if I wanted to.”
Cal rode on, certain that the day would be lost, and perhaps something of its charm, if he continued to bandy words with Georgiana. So calling for her to follow, he trotted his horse down the trail. At a point below, where the depression of the ridge formed what riders called a saddle, he turned off to the left and surveyed the ocean, dusty patches of ground until he found a well-defined cattle trail leading down over the ridge into the next canyon. Cattle tracks showed pointing in each direction, and the fresher ones were headed away from him. To his keen eyes, this was an indication that cattle from the canyon to his left were watering in the canyon on his right. That was all he needed to learn about this immediate locality. He rode on then with eyes searching the slopes for the white and red of the Thurman cattle. These were few and far between, and after a mile of riding he knew the scarcity of cattle sign meant that grass was scant this season on these mescal ridges. The blades of the soapweed had been nipped, and likewise the low scrubby oak brush. His cattle browsed on leaves when they could not find grass.
Riding to and fro across this slowly descending league-long ridge, he used up all of the rest of the morning hours and some besides, and frequently he had to leave Georgiana alone for longer than he liked. But he did not shirk the task given him.
“Believe me, Cal, you’re the first fellow who ever took me out and left me to entertain myself,” complained the girl.
“Georgie, you came with me,” he protested. “I’ve got to do my work.”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter—only I imagined you were crazy about me,” she said, indifferently.
Cal could only stare, not uncertain how to take her, but far from knowing what to do. As often before, his silence worked better than any words.
“I was only kidding you,” she continued, with a gay laugh. “Honest, Cal, I’m having a dandy time. I’m glad to be left alone a bit. It’s new. Maybe I’ll dig up a sensible thought. But I’m most starved.”
“Just a little longer. We’ll ride down to the jump off.”
He led on then, down a steep slope littered with loose rocks where the horses found hard going, down through mescal and oak, and over patches of bleached grass, to the wall of the Tonto. The tremendous gorge yawned a thousand feet, its near slope a succession of benches of broken cliff and splintered crag with niches choked with cedar and piñon, and the opposite one a sheer red wall, like bronze, unscalable and beetling. Far below murmured Tonto Creek, a green-and-white stream of water, winding through its iron confines. North and south ran this precipitous gorge, a V-shaped vent in the earth’s granite crust, dark and gloomy on the shaded side, bright and stark on the other. In both directions it soon turned into the bold bulk of what appeared the mountain mass. There was no sound save the low roar of the running water. Not a sign of life! Wild and desolate, the place seemed haunting.
“If I ever want to jump over the top into no man’s land, lead me here!” ejaculated Georgiana. And that was all the tribute she paid the Tonto.
Cal’s observant eye noted that she did not dismount without a little sign of lameness. He tied the horses and then, possessing himself of the lunch-bag, he led Georgiana to a flat rock where a low piñon made shade, and the drop was sheer.
That half hour, during which they dispatched the lunch to the last morsel, was the pleasantest and happiest he had ever spent with Georgiana. She was just nice—not teasing, not provocative, not lofty, or strange or haughty, not coquettish, not anything but a hungry, wholesome girl, unconsciously glad to be alive, to be there in this wonderful place. He hated by word or action to dispell the charm. Still, maybe when he told her of the gift of the pinto she would
only be all the nicer. Instinctively, however, he feared she would precipitate catastrophe. Therefore, he vacillated between his honest desire to give pleasure and his vague premonition of results.
“Cal, you’re growing thoughtful,” observed Georgiana.
“Ahuh!—Would you like to know my thoughts?”
She gave him a comprehensive little glance, and then shook her head dubiously.
“I reckon not—if they are the same as your looks.”
“Georgie, I’m goin’ to homestead the Rock Spring Mesa,” he declared, bluntly, without regard for her wishes.
“You told me that once before,” she said. “But you didn’t explain what it meant. . . . Homestead. The word’s a new one on me, but it sounds nice.”
“Listen,” he began, earnestly. “In unsettled parts of the West the government encourages homesteaders. Now a homesteader picks out one hundred an’ sixty acres of likely ground that he can clear an’ cultivate. The better soil an’ water, of course, the better his chances to develop a good ranch. He builds a log cabin an’ a corral. The government requires him to do so much work on this place—so much improvement a year for three years. Then if he proves up, as they call it, he is granted a patent for the land an’ owns it. That entitles him to certain range rights. He can run so many cattle on an’ near his ranch. . . . An’ that’s what I’m goin’ to do.”
“You’ll be a regular pioneer,” replied Georgiana, dreamily. “I read something once—some book about a pioneer girl. Believe me, she sure had it coming to her.”
“What? Work, loneliness, struggle?”
“I’ll say so. . . . Cal, when you stay on your ‘homestead’ will you be by yourself?”
“I should smile. I’ll have to cook my own meals, do the washin’, chop wood, milk the cow, plow an’ sow an’ cut an’ haul.”
“Good night!” She regarded him with a new curious thoughtfulness, as If she were seeing another phase of him.
“Cal, don’t be offended, but you’re no country jake, no boob, as I call them. You’re a smart fellow and you could do well in the city. Why don’t you do that?”
“Long ago, Georgie, I had my temptations,” he replied, dreamily. “Many boys go to the cities, an’ none I ever knew did well. I love the open country—the lonely places. My people were all pioneers. It’s in me. An’ let me tell you, Georgie, the pioneer, the rancher, the farmer are in my eyes the real Americans. There would never have been any cities, or any businessmen, if the pioneers had not blazed the trails an’ opened up the wild country.”
“Cal, that’s big, serious talk—and somehow it makes me feel little, thoughtless, self-centered. Mary sometimes talks that way. . . . Oh, I was born at the wrong time for a girl. I’m no good.”
“Aw, Georgie, don’t talk silly,” he remonstrated.
“Cal, I’m what they call the twentieth-century girl, the modern flapper,” responded Georgiana, with sudden bitterness. “We’re a queer type, so I read. We won’t be bossed. We’re bound to have our own way. We defy all conventions. We’re going to do as men have always done. We’re going to be free.”
Pondering that for a long moment, Cal finally replied: “Georgie, I don’t understand what you mean, an’ I don’t want to argue with you about it. But I’ll say this. I know the things you mentioned are not the big things of life. If the girls of your kind are all thinkin’ that way, it’ll be bad for the future. Women are to make homes.”
“Listen to him!” exclaimed Georgiana. “Make homes? Yes—for the lords of creation—for men. Cal, that’s the same old talk, the same old bunk.”
“Bunk?” echoed Cal, suddenly stirred. “It’s nothin’ of the kind. Everybody has to have a home or—or else . . . Georgie, all the wild animals have dens, burrows, caves—homes. An’ they have mates. That’s all they live for. Now if you women—you new women—don’t intend to make homes for men, what’s to become of us?”
“You can search me, Cal,” she replied, with a gay laugh. “They’ll all have to ‘homestead,’ like you’re going to.”
Cal gazed silently down into the depths of the canyon. Her words jarred on him. They seemed flippant. They were somehow false. She did not know what she was talking about. He could not reason out the explanation for his convictions, but he felt their truth. How long had Tonto Canyon yawned there under the blue sky of day and the dark mantle of night? How many races of men had come and gone since this gorge had been made? Times changed, the peoples changed with them, but the fundamental relation of man and woman would never change.
“I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings,” resumed Georgiana, presently. “Cal, maybe I’m not so rotten as I seem.”
“I think you’re all right,” replied Cal, soberly. “Well, if we want to get back to the ranch by sundown, we’d better be rustlin’.”
“Oh, it’s so nice here. Will you fetch me again?”
“Sure. Next week we round up the cattle here an’ drive them to the big pasture. That’ll be worth seein’. But you’ve got to be sensible an’ careful now, an’ do as you’re told. Some of these wild cattle are bad.”
“I promise.—And will you let me ride Blazes again?”
“Well—after today, I reckon you’ll not have to ask me that,” he said, with an air of mystery.
“Cal! Do you mean I’m no longer a tenderfoot?” she flashed, eagerly.
“No, I wasn’t thinkin’ of that.”
“What then? You’re so—so queer.”
“Reckon Blazes won’t be mine after today.”
“Oh, Cal—you wouldn’t sell Blazes or trade him to anybody! When I love him so!”
“I sure wouldn’t.”
“Say, boy, you’re talking riddles,” she protested, and she sat up, and got to her knees, and confronted him with earnest, shining doubtful eyes.
The moment was pregnant with both joy and pang for Cal. Something had been decided for him. And never had the Tonto so filled him with its peace and promise, or seemed so sad and lonely, and strong with its sense of ages.
“Georgie, after today Blazes will not belong to me,” he said, with eyes steady on hers.
“Why?” she queried, quick as a flash.
“Because—this mornin’ I gave him to you.”
Georgiana gazed at him blankly. It took a second for that wholly unexpected fact to penetrate. Her eyes opened very wide, her lips parted.
“Gave—him—to—me?” she echoed, breathlessly.
“I sure did. Blazes—with saddle, blanket, bridle—is yours.”
“Oh, Cal!—Mine?” she cried, rapturously.
“Sure is,” replied Cal, beginning to shake. Her face had changed as if by magic. If he had expected to see it joyous, his imagination had failed him. Smile, flash, light—these were ecstatic, and as he gazed spellbound by her loveliness, the golden rosy radiance paled to a singular degree.
“You darling!” she cried, and she bent swiftly to kiss him full on the lips.
Cal sustained a shock. For an instant all around him seemed to reel and his heart labored high in his breast. Presently the green canopy of the friendly piñon became as formerly, and the Tonto yawned beneath him, deep, lonely, wild, with its murmuring waters. And the everlasting rocks seemed to share something of life and eternity with him. Georgiana had flown to where the horses were tied, and Cal could now hear her laughing and crying out her joy of her precious possession. Then he heard her quick light footsteps returning. He got up and turned to face her.
“Cal, I’ll say you’re a regular fellow,” she said, with hand outstretched, and she came right up to him where he now leaned against the big branch of the piñon.
Cal took her in his arms. She did not draw back, rather leaned to him, with glad face uplifted and the little gloved hand going to his shoulder.
“Georgie—you shouldn’t—have kissed me,” he said, huskily.
“Why not? You sure deserved it. And I wanted to. . . . I’ll do it again if you think it wasn’t enough.”
“I didn�
�t want thanks,” he replied, unsteadily. “I just wanted to make you happy.”
“You succeeded, boy, and I’ll never forget this day.”
“But, Georgie—I—I love you,” he burst out.
“Well—all the more reason I should kiss you,” she declared.
“No. No . . . unless you love me.”
“Of course I love you, Cal—that is—I think—”
Cal clasped her tight, lifting her slender form, and bent to her upturned, glowing face. A bewilderment of sudden joy overwhelmed him and his restraint went to the winds. He kissed her hair, her cheeks, and then her mouth. And realization of her response suddenly made him blind—strong—rough in the expression of his love. But he knew when she cried out in laughing protest and forcibly drew back from him. Still, she did not wholly slip out of his arms.
“Cal!—You don’t want a homestead. You want a cave. You’re some little caveman I’ll tell the world.”
“Georgie—forgive me—if I was—”
“Cal, where did you ever learn to kiss like that?” she interrupted, with mock or arch jealousy. Her face was rosy, her sombrero had fallen off, her hair was disheveled. It took all Cal’s will power to refrain from enveloping her again. Probably he would have yielded to it but for her strange question.
“Why, Georgie . . . I didn’t learn—it’s only because I love you,” he protested.
“Now don’t you try to kid me, Cal Thurman,” she replied, shaking a finger in his face. “I’ve half a mind to think you a regular lady-killer of the Tonto. No fellow could come across with kisses like yours unless—”
“Georgie, I swear to Heaven I never kissed but two girls—an’ that was long ago—when I was a mere boy.”
“I’m the only girl you ever loved?” she demanded, half in earnest, and yet half mockingly.
“Why, of course,” he said, simply.