by Zane Grey
“Man, we don’t have to tell. No one but Thiry will ever know.”
“All right. Thet’s much in its favor. I’ll think it over. . . . Meanwhile, I’ll stop Ash if I have to hawg-tie him. An’ you better take the boys an’ go off in the woods somewhere. They deserve a vacation. But no goin’ in to town. Take them huntin’. It’s most turkey season. An’ let me know where you go.”
Well as Trueman Rock knew that country, it was his fortune to be taken by the Preston boys to high hunting-grounds which he had never visited or heard spoken of on the range.
It was up in the mountains back of the Pass, about a day’s climb on horseback, eight thousand feet above the low country. Up there early fall had set in and the foliage was one gorgeous array of color. The camp, which was where they threw their bed-rolls and built their fire, lay in a mountain meadow, at the edge of a magnificent grove of quaking asps. Behind on a gentler slope stood scattered silver spruces and yellow pines, growing larger as they climbed, until on the ridge above they massed in the deep timber line, which like a green-black belt circled the mountain under the gray grisly weathered and splintered peaks.
A golden glamour seemed to float over that grove and to enrich all objects under the aspens, the fallen poles, the rocks and grass, the camp equipment, and the men themselves. It was cast by the golden sunlight falling through the dense aspen foliage, not a quivering leaf of which did not burn pure gold. Even when there was no wind the leaves fluttered, as if endowed with life that was trembling, dying.
Rock fell in love with this place more than any in which he had ever dropped a saddle. How poignantly he needed the beauty, the color, the solitude! He had come up there on the ragged edge of utter desperation. But scarcely were the boys out of sight and the horses grazing along the green-bordered brown stream, still and deep, when Rock began to feel something at work on his restless, seeking, undefeated mind.
The hour was along toward sunset, and the brothers had gone off to hunt a little before the day ended. Rock felt grateful to Preston for this respite up under the peaks. Like scales he cast off the outer and worn vestments of his mental [illegible]strife.
Across the meadow, scarcely half a mile wide at this its upper end, rose a slow undulating mountain slope, in hue so varied and brilliant that it did not seem actual landscape. Scarlet vines covered the boulders and outcropping of rock at the edge of the wood. A grove of oaks, sturdy, spreading wide their branches clad in green-bronze leaves, had thrived to the elimination of spruces, except a few giants that could not be choked out. Back of these oaks, aspen, maple, and pine thickets vied in gold, purple, and green to excel one another. Soon the vast panoply of black timber belt submerged the lower thickets, except in open spots here and there that shone like gold and cerise and scarlet eyes out of the forest. Above the timber line gulches with threads of white snow wound toward the peaks. And lastly the bold steel teeth of rock bit at the blue sky.
A very faint moan of wind floated down from the pines. From some lofty height an eagle whistled piercingly, and as if in reply, on the wooded ridge an elk bugled. Snowbirds were cheeping back in the grove, and on the wing somewhere wild canaries were twittering, both series of notes totally different, yet pregnant with the same portent—autumn was at hand. The wood behind the aspen grove gave forth familiar sounds of nature, the screech of jay, the chatter of squirrel, the crack of antler on dead wood, the rustle and tread and brush of denizens of the wilderness.
Rock dreamily heard all, so restless, so soothing; and yet within them he seemed to hear a step upon his trail. It was the haunting future.
Then a rifle-shot rang out, to crack in echo, to peal along the slopes, and roll away suddenly. Nothing like a gunshot to transform Trueman Rock. He left off his meditations, his watching, listening, waiting absorption, to take up camp tasks. Action was better than rest.
Then the brothers returned to camp, Al with a wild turkey, the twins with nothing. And the atmosphere of loneliness, of solemn solitude, of presageful nature, seemed less in evidence. How quickly Sunset Pass, with its work and problems, fell off the shoulders of the Preston boys! They were young. Rock envied them, though he rejoiced that the trials of the range had not yet settled on them.
“Gee! I seen a big buck,” said Harry, exictedly. “Couldn’t get a bead on him.”
“Hope Dad doesn’t send for us soon,” replied Tom.
“Aw, it’s great, but I hate to miss that dance. Somebody will jilt me,” sighed Al.
In the morning Rock was awakened by the gobbling of turkeys. The boys slept on, blissfully unaware that their favorite game had almost invaded the camp. Rock crawled out, revolver in hand, and soon espied the big birds at the edge of the grove. A gobbler stood up straight, head high, his purple-and-black breast puffed, his beard hanging low. Rock’s hand moved and stiffened, his gun boomed, the turkey fell. A roar of wings attested to the flight of his flock. Shouts behind Rock indicated the alarm, consternation, and delight of the brothers. Securing his gobbler, Rock walked into camp and laid it before the roused Prestons.
“By golly! right in camp!” ejaculated Tom.
“How far was he off?” queried Harry.
“Pretty far. Most fifty yards, I’d say,” replied Rock.
“You nailed him with a six-gun?” queried Al, in wonder and disgust. “Say, you can’t shoot a-tall! Reckon I’d just as lief not be Dunne when you meet up with him.”
Thus the hunting began for Rock, and he entered into it heartily. A white frost glistened on the grass, ice had formed in the pans; the meat the boys had hung up was frozen stiff. Therefore Rock sanctioned the boy’s plan of killing wild game to pack down to the ranch. Hung in the shade, it would not spoil.
“Boys, you try for turkeys and deer,” suggested Rock. “And don’t miss an elk, if you see one. I’ll climb for a sheep.”
For a rider used to horses it was no child’s play to mount to the heights. Rock tortured his lungs and his long legs. He sighted a few rams, but they passed out of range. And he was not good enough sheep-hunter to stalk his game properly. Nevertheless, every day he climbed the slopes, watched for hours from the crags, and returned to camp late, tired physically, yet rested and strengthened in his mind. It was good to get away from the Pass and think with clarifying vision. It was well, too, to be alone, for in the past weeks he had fallen back upon an old habit—the drawing of a gun to bring back and insure the swiftness that had once been his. This action alone was grim indication of his extremity. He dared not slight it, though he fought against admitting the reason for it to his consciousness.
The days passed until Rock had no idea how long he had been absent from the Pass. Nearly a fortnight, he guessed. Then came Indian summer, that enchanting brief period of smoky warm, still days, and floating amber and purple haze in the air.
Al Preston left to go down home for supplies. This threw Rock into a fever of uncertainty. What news would he fetch back? What message from Preston? Would Thiry write? The day was long, the night interminable, the second day unbearable. Rock wandered in the open forest across from, camp, wanting always to be in sight of the trail that came up from below. Mid-afternoon ought to see Al ride in. That would allow ample time for the slow pack-horse. He sat on a pine log in the open forest above the oak grove. The smoky haze, the purple veils, the warm, swimming air, so full of fragrance and dreamy languor, the riotous mosaic of autumn colors, the melancholy birds, the dim sun still high and red above the slope of the mountain—these held Rock in strong grip, making it possible for him to wait.
Then a gray-laden pack-horse emerged from the green wall across the meadow. Rock suffered both thrill and pang. Next came a dark horse holding a slight rider that could not be Al Preston. Who could it be? Not the youngest Preston lad. Perhaps it was some boy Al had brought or sent. For Al was not in sight. Another pack-horse cleft the dark green gap where the trail emerged. And after it Al on his big bay. The foremost rider waved to the boys in camp. How they yelled! Rock watched with eyes starti
ng and expanding. What was there strangely familiar about that rider? Yet he knew he had never seen him before. Rock never forgot a mounted rider. Suddenly he leaped up madly. Thiry!
He ran. He leaped the brook. He made the camp in bounds.
“Thiry! Of all people! . . . Aw, I’m so—glad to see you,” he panted.
“Howdy, Trueman!” Her smile was strained and she scarcely met his eager gaze. He had never seen her in rider’s garb. Could that make such difference? She wore a tan blouse, with blue scarf, fringed gauntlets, overalls, and high boots. She looked like a boy until she dismounted. Rock had a wild desire to snatch her in his arms.
“Boys, throw my pack and unroll my bed,” she said. And while the boys obeyed with unified alacrity she led the stunned Rock away from camp, under the golden aspens, into the forest.
“Glad to see me?” she asked, looking ahead at the windfalls and the splashes of brilliant hues.
“Glad!” he echoed, as if words were inadequate.
“You don’t show it.”
“Thiry! . . . I’m loco.”
She still held his hand, that she had taken openly before her brothers. Rock could not shake off his trance. Still, it did not seem the Thiry he knew. Her cheek was warm with a golden tint, partly from the exposure of the long ride, partly from the reflection of the leaves above. The blood did not come and go, like a life current under a pearl shell. She halted beside a great fallen spruce with rugged seamed bark. “Lift me up,” she said. And when he had complied she held him with strange hands, and looked into his eyes as she had never before. A black squirrel squalled from a silver spruce that towered over them. All around the forest inclosed them, standing and fallen timber, sapling pines and sturdy junipers, patches of aspen, white-stemmed with dead gold foliage, quaking as with a tremor of their roots. The thick tang of pine filled the air.
“Kiss me,” this unknown Thiry said, not shyly, nor yet boldly, but somehow unnaturally for her. When Rock obeyed, restraining himself, in his bewilderment, she put her arms around him and her face against his neck.
“Bad news, Trueman dear,” she said, as if forced.
“Sure I could have guessed it. But it’s welcome, since it fetched you.”
“Ash made a killing of Half Moon steers and shipped the beef from Wagontongue,” went on Thiry, talking by rote.
Rock’s frame jerked with the hot gush of blood through his veins, but he did not voice his anger and dismay. And he remained mute. Her monotone, the absence of any feeling, the abnormal something about her, fortified him to hear catastrophe which would dwarf what she had already told.
“Dad wants you to come in with us—share our fortunes, our troubles—our sins . . . help us fight these enemy outfits. . . . If we——”
“We?” he interrupted, in bitter heat.
“Yes, we. Ash and Dad and I—and my three brothers . . . and you.”
“I! . . . And what do I get for spillin’ blood for thieves? Ah, that is Preston’s game. He wants me to kill—to spread terror among those Wyomin’ outfits. . . . And my reward will be——”
“Me,” she said, without emotion.
“With Ash Preston’s consent?” demanded Rock, angered to probe to the depths of this proposition.
“Dad claims when you become one of us—Ash will have to consent.”
“Thiry Preston!—You ask me to do this thing?”
“Yes,” she droned. But he could feel a changing in the stiff form against him.
“You ask me to be a thief—a killer—to save your rotten brother, your weak and crooked father?” he flung at her, in a stern and terrible voice.
“I—ask—you.”
In violence, almost with brutal force, Rock shook her, as if to awaken her out of a torpor.
“No! No, you poor driven girl!” he cried. “I would die for you, but I’ll never let you ruin your soul by such dishonor. They have blinded you—preyed on your love. Your brother is mad. Your father desperate. They would sacrifice you. Ash would agree to this, meanin’ to shoot me in the back. . . . No, Thiry. . . .”
“You—will not?” she sobbed.
“Never. Not even to have you.”
Suddenly, then, he had a wild weeping creature in his arms, whose cries were incoherent, whose beating hands and shaking body wrought havoc to the iron of his mood. “Oh, thank God—you won’t!” she wept, lifting streaming eyes and working face. “I prayed you’d—refuse. I told Dad you’d never, never do it. . . . I told Ash he lied . . . he’d never let you have me.—But they made me—they drove me—all night they nagged me—until I gave in. . . . Trueman darling, say you forgive. I was weak. I loved him so—and I’m almost broken. . . . But you lift me from the depths. I love you more—a thousand times. Let come what will. I can face it now.”
Hours later Rock kept vigil over a sleeping camp, where near him lay Thiry, in deep slumber, her fair sweet face, sad in repose, upturned to the watching stars. Beyond, her brothers were stretched in a row, likewise with dark faces still and calm in the starlight.
Rock’s heart was full to aching. The night was exquisite, clear and cold, with blue velvet sky lighted by trains of stars, white sparks of fire across the zenith. The night wind sighed through the aspens, soughed in the pines, and roared low up on the mountain slope. Coyotes barked and wolves mourned. Whatever might betide on the morrow, or thereafter, this night was his in all the fullness of requited love, of protective possession. He had forgotten the prayers of his youth, yet it was certain that he prayed. There seemed in finite strength in the grand dark mountain above, and a mystery all about him, in the ceaseless voice of dying insects, in the murmur of wild nature.
In the rose light of dawn, while the Preston boys whistled and shouted at the camp tasks, Rock and Thiry again wandered under the silver spruces, the golden aspens, the scarlet maples, back to that bit of primal forestland.
“Don’t go back to the Pass,” Thiry was pleading.
“I must. I’ll go alone.”
“But I’m afraid. If you meet him— Oh—you will! . . . Trueman, I couldn’t hate you. Once I thought I might. . . . Oh, don’t go!”
She wound her arms around his neck and clung to him with all her might.
“Take me away—far away across the mountains,” she begged, her lips parting from his to implore mercy, and then seeking them again. “It’s the only way. I am yours, body and soul. I ask nothing more of life but that you spare him—and take me. . . . The boys will let us have a pack. We can cross the mountains. It is not yet winter. . . . Then somewhere we two will live for each other. I will forget him and all this horror. And you—will never—kill another man.”
“Thiry girl, hush; you are breakin’ me,” he cried, spent with the might of agonized will that denied her kisses, her lissom pressing form, her clinging arms. “That would be the worst for us both. It would brand me with their guilt and drag you down. . . . No. I shall go alone—make one last stand to save your father.”
Rock rode the zigzag descending trail down to the Pass in four hours—another splendid performance of the sure-footed, tireless horse.
There did not appear to be any untoward condition at the ranch that obviously affected the womenfolk. Preston had ridden off early that morning to a general roundup out on the range, at a place called Clay Hill. Ash Preston and his three brothers were off somewhere, probably also at the roundup, on their return from Wagontongue. No, they had not driven the beef wagons to town this time.
“Reckon I’ll ride over to Clay Hill,” muttered Rock, as if to himself.
“Stay for dinner. It’s ready,” said Mrs. Preston.
“When will Thiry and the boys be in?” asked Alice, thoughtful eyes on Rock.
“Before sundown, sure. They were packin’ when I left.”
“Was Thiry mean to you?” whispered Alice, in an aside. “She had one of her cold, queer spells.”
“No, Allie, she was wonderful good,” replied Rock. “Why did you ask?”
“You look so—s
o queer,” returned the girl hesitatingly. “You’re neither Señor del Toro nor Trueman Rock this day.”
“Now, Allie girl, how do I look?” queried Rock, essaying a smile that would not break, which made him aware of the cold tightness of his face.
“Sort of dark, and far away. Older, Trueman, not like yourself. I’m afraid all’s not well between you and Thiry,” she said, plaintively.
When he ventured no denial, evidently she convinced herself that her intuition had foundation. The children, whom nothing affected adversely, drew Rock out of his brooding calm during the meal. Soon afterward he was riding down the Pass to take the trail up on the range.
The old ranch, where Preston had installed the slaughter-house, had lately been the scene of extensive butchering. It made a hideous blot on the beautiful autumn landscape. And the stench outdid the appearance in hideousness. Clouds of buzzards sailed over the grewsome spot, and hordes of the grisly birds hopped around.
As Rock rode by Slagle’s old well he satisfied himself, even from the saddle, that the dim, unused trail was not so dim. Rock cursed the bull-headed fool who was recklessly marching to his downfall, dragging father and family with him.
Rock climbed out of the Pass, up to the rolling rangeland. It unfolded from this height before and below him, in magnificent stretches, its vast monotony of gray now broken by dots of red and patches of gold. The melancholy season hung over the rangeland like a mantle. But it was invisible; it might have hidden in the smoky blue haze. Slopes and swales, leagues of level land, ridges fringed by cedars, round gray mounds and limitless stretches of green—all were bare of cattle. That added to the desert atmosphere. A brooding silence, that seemed emphasized by the incessant hum of insects, lay over all. How barren of life! Not a hawk or a gopher or a jackrabbit! Far in the distance the range faded in pure obscurity. And through the autumn haze a magenta sun burned, but dully, so that Rock could look into it with his naked eye. And as he rode on, at a swinging lope, while the sun imperceptibly lowered, so the faint magenta hue gained on the gray and green.