Dorn Of The Mountains

by Zane Grey

  “ ‘Evenin’, Miss Helen,” he said as he stalked in. “ ‘Evenin’, Miss Bo. How are you-all?”

  Helen returned his greeting with a welcoming smile.

  “Good evening…Tom,” said Bo demurely.

  That assuredly was the first time she had ever called him Tom. As she spoke, she looked distractingly pretty and tantalizing. But if she had calculated to floor Carmichael with that initial, half-promising, wholly mocking use of his name, she had reckoned without cause. The cowboy received that greeting as if he had heard her use it a thousand times or had not heard it at all. Helen decided if he was acting a part, he was certainly a clever actor. He puzzled her somewhat, but she liked his look, and his easy manner, and the something about him that must have been his unconscious sense of pride. He had gone far enough, perhaps too far in his overtures to Bo.

  “How are you feelin’?” he asked.

  “I’m better today,” she replied with downcast eyes. “But I’m lame yet.”

  “Reckon that bronc’ piled you up. Miss Helen said that shore wasn’t any joke about the cut on your knee. Now a fellar’s knee is a bad place to hurt, if he has to keep on ridin’.”

  “Oh, I’ll be well soon. How’s Sam? I hope he wasn’t crippled.”

  “Thet Sam…why he’s so tough he never knowed he had a fall.”

  “Tom…I…I want to thank you for giving Riggs what he deserved.” She spoke it earnestly, eloquently, and for once she had no sly little intonation or pert allurement, such as was her wont to use on this infatuated young man.

  “Aw, you heard about that,” replied Carmichael with a wave of his hand to make light of it. “Nothin’ much. It had to be done. An’ shore I was afraid of Roy. He’d’ve been mad. An’ so would any of the other boys. I’m sorta lookin’ out for all of them, you know, actin’ as Miss Helen’s foreman now.”

  Helen was unutterably tickled. The effect of his speech upon Bo was stupendous. He had disarmed her. He had, with the firmness and tact and suavity of a diplomat, removed himself from obligation, and the detachment of self, the casual thing he apparently made out of his magnificent championship was bewildering and humiliating to Bo. She sat silently for a moment or two while Helen tried to fit easily into the conversation. It was not likely that Bo would long be at a loss for words, and also it was immensely probable that with a flash of her wonderful spirit she would turn the tables on her perverse lover in a twinkling. Anyway, plain it was that a lesson had sunk deep. She looked startled, hurt, wistful, and finally sweetly defiant.

  “But…you told Riggs I was your girl!” Thus Bo unmasked her battery. And Helen could not imagine how Carmichael would ever resist that and the soft arch glance that accompanied it.

  Helen did not yet know the cowboy, any more than did Bo.

  “Shore. I had to say that. I had to make it strong before that gang. I reckon it was presumin’ of me, an’ I shore apologize.”

  Bo stared at him, and then, giving a little gasp, she drooped.

  “Wal, I just run in to say howdy an’ to inquire after you-all,” said Carmichael. “I’m goin’ to the dance, an’ as Flo lives out of town a ways, I’d shore better rustle.…Good night, Miss Bo, I hope you’ll be ridin’ Sam soon. An’ good night, Miss Helen.”

  Bo roused to a very friendly and laconic little speech, much overdone. Carmichael strode out, and Helen, bidding him good bye, closed the door after him.

  The instant he had departed Bo’s transformation was tragic.

  “Flo! He meant Flo Stubbs…that ugly crossed-eyed bold little frump!”

  “Bo!” expostulated Helen. “The young lady is not beautiful, I grant, but she’s very nice and pleasant. I like her.”

  “Nell Rayner, men are no good! And cowboys are the worst!” declared Bo terribly.

  “Why didn’t you appreciate Tom when you had him?” asked Helen.

  Bo had been growing furious, but now the allusion, in the past tense, to the conquest she had suddenly and amazingly found dear, quite broke her spirit. It was a very pale, unsteady, and miserable girl who avoided Helen’s gaze and left the room.

  Next day Bo was not approachable from any direction. Helen, running often in upon Bo, found her victim to a multiplicity of moods, ranging from woe to dire dark broodings, from them to wistfulness, and at last to a pride that sustained her.

  Late in the afternoon, at Helen’s leisure hour, when she and Bo were in the sitting room, horses tramped into the court, and footsteps mounted the porch. Opening to a loud knock, Helen was surprised to see Beasley. And out in the court were several mounted horse men. Helen’s heart sank. This visit indeed had been foreshadowed.

  “ ‘Afternoon, Miss Rayner,” said Beasley, doffing his sombrero. “I’ve called on a little business deal. Will you see me?”

  Helen acknowledged his greeting while she thought rapidly. She might just as well see him, and have that inevitable interview done with.

  “Come in,” she said, and, when he had entered, she closed the door. “My sister, Mister Beasley.”

  “How d’you do, miss,” said the rancher in bluff loud voice.

  Bo acknowledged the introduction with a frigid little bow.

  At close range Beasley seemed a forceful personality as well as a rather handsome man of perhaps thirty-five, heavy of build, swarthy of skin, and sloe-black of eye, like that of a Mexican whose blood was reported to be in him. He looked crafty, confident, and self-centered. If Helen had never heard of him before that visit, she would have distrusted him.

  “I’d’ve called sooner, but I was waitin’ for old Jos? the Mexican who herded for me when I was pardner to your uncle,” said Beasley, and he sat down to put his huge gloved hands on his knees.

  “Yes?” queried Helen interrogatively.

  “Jos?rustled over from Magdalena, an’ now I can back up my claim…. Miss Rayner, this hyar ranch ought to be mine an’ is mine. It wasn’t so big or so well stocked when Al Auchincloss beat me out of it. I reckon I’ll allow for that. I’ve paper, and old Jos?for witness. An’ I calculate you’ll pay me eighty thousand dollars, or else I’ll take over the ranch.”

  Beasley spoke in an ordinary matter-of-fact tone that certainly seemed sincere, and his manner was blunt, but perfectly natural.

  “Mister Beasley, your claim is no news to me,” responded Helen quietly. “I’ve heard about it. And I questioned my uncle. He swore on his deathbed that he did not owe you a dollar. Indeed, he claimed the indebtedness was yours to him. I could find nothing in his papers. So I must repudiate your claim. I will not take it seriously.”

  “Miss Rayner, I can’t blame you for takin’ Al’s word against mine,” said Beasley. “An’ your stand is natural. But you’re a stranger here an’ you know nothin’ of struck deals in these ranges. It ain’t fair to speak bad of the dead, but the truth is that Al Auchincloss got his start by stealin’ sheep an’ unbranded cattle. Thet was the start of every rancher I know. It was mine. An’ we none of us ever thought of it as rustlin’.”

  Helen could only stare her surprise and doubt at this statement.

  “Talk’s cheap anywhere, an’ in the West talk ain’t much at all,” continued Beasley. “I’m no talker. I jest want to tell my case an’ make a deal if you’ll have it. I can prove more in black an’ white, an’ with witness, than you can. Thet’s my case. The deal I’d make is this…. Let’s marry an’ settle a bad deal that way.”

  The man’s direct assumption, absolutely without a qualifying consideration for her woman’s attitude, was amazing, ignorant, and base, but Helen was so well prepared for it that she hid her disgust.

  “Thank you, Mister Beasley. But I can’t accept your offer,” she replied.

  “Would you take time an’ consider?” he asked, spreading wide his huge gloved hands.

  “Absolutely no.”

  Beasley rose to his feet. He showed no disappointment or chagrin, but the bold pleasantness left his face. And slight as that change was, it stripped him of the only redeeming quality
he showed.

  “That means I’ll force you to pay me the eighty thousand, or put you off,” he said.

  “Mister Beasley, even if I owed you that, how could I raise so enormous a sum? I don’t owe it. And I certainly won’t be put off my property. You can’t put me off.”

  “An’ why can’t I?” he demanded, with lowering dark gaze.

  “Because your claim is dishonest. And I can prove it,” declared Helen forcibly.

  “Who’re you goin’ to prove it to…that I’m dishonest?”

  “To my men…to your men…to the people of Pine…to everybody. There’s not a person who won’t believe me.”

  He seemed curious, discomfited, surlily annoyed, and yet fascinated by her statement or else by the quality and appearance of her as she spiritedly defended her cause.

  “An’ how’re you goin’ to prove all that?” he growled.

  “Mister Beasley, do you remember last fall when you met Snake Anson with his gang up in the woods…and hired him to make off with me?” asked Helen in swift ringing words.

  The dark olive of Beasley’s bold face shaded to a dirty white. “Wha-at?” he jerked out hoarsely.

  “I see you remember. Well, Milt Dorn was hidden in the loft of that cabin where you met Anson. He heard every word of your deal with the outlaw.”

  Beasley swung his arm in sudden violence, so hard that he flung his glove to the floor. As he stooped to snatch it up, he uttered a sibilant hiss. Then, stalking to the door, he jerked it open, and slammed it behind him. His loud voice, hoarse with passion, preceded the scrape and crack of hoofs.

  Shortly after supper that day, when Helen was just recovering her composure, Carmichael presented himself at the open door. Bo was not there. In the dimming twilight Helen saw that the cowboy was pale, somber, grim.

  “Oh, what’s happened?” cried Helen.

  “Roy’s been shot. It come off in Turner’s saloon. But he ain’t dead. We packed him over to Widow Cass’s. An’ he said for me to tell you he’d pull through.”

  “Shot! Pull through!” repeated Helen in slow unrealizing exclamation. She was conscious of a deep internal tumult and a cold checking of blood in all her external body.

  “Yes, shot,” replied Carmichael fiercely. “An’, what ever he says, I reckon he won’t pull through.”

  “Oh, heaven, how terrible!” burst out Helen. “He was so good…such a man! What a pity! Oh, he must have met that in my behalf. Tell me, what happened? Who shot him?”

  “Wal, I don’t know. An’ that’s what’s made me hoppin’ mad. I wasn’t there when it came off. An’ he won’t tell me.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know that, either. I reckoned first it was because he wanted to get even. But after thinkin’ it over, I guess he doesn’t want me lookin’ up anyone right now for fear I might get hurt. An’ you’re goin’ to need your friends. That’s all I can make of Roy.”

  Then Helen hurriedly related the event of Beasley’s call on her that afternoon and all that had occurred.

  “Wal, the half-breed son-of-a-greaser!” ejaculated Carmichael in utter befuddlement. “He wanted you to marry him?”

  “He certainly did. I must say it was a…a rather abrupt proposal.”

  Carmichael appeared to be laboring with speech that had to be smothered behind his teeth. At last he let out an explosive breath. “Miss Nell, I’ve shore felt in my bones thet I’m the boy slated to brand thet big bull.”

  “Oh, he must have shot Roy. He left here in a rage.”

  “I reckon you can coax it out of Roy. Fact is, all I could learn was thet Roy come in the saloon alone. Beasley was there, an’ Riggs….”

  “Riggs!” interrupted Helen.

  “Shore, Riggs. He came back again. But he’d better keep out of my way. And Jeff Mulvey with his outfit. Turner told me he heard an argument an’ then a shot. The gang cleared out, leavin’ Roy on the floor. I came in a little later. Roy was still layin’ there. Nobody was doin’ anythin’ for him. An’ nobody had. I hold thet against Turner. Wal, I got help an’ packed Roy over to Widow Cass’s. Roy seemed all right. But he was too bright an’ talky to suit me. The bullet hit his lung, thet’s shore. An’ he lost a sight of blood before we stopped it. Thet skunk Turner might have lent a hand. An’ if Roy croaks, I reckon I’ll….”

  “Tom, why must you always be reckoning to kill somebody?” demanded Helen angrily.

  “ ‘Cause somebody’s got to be killed around here. Thet’s why!” he snapped back.

  “Even so…should you risk leaving Bo and me without a friend?” asked Helen reproachfully.

  At that Carmichael wavered and lost something of his sullen deadliness.

  “Aw, Miss Nell, I’m only mad. If you’ll just be patient with me…an’ mebbe coax me…. But I can’t see no other way out.”

  “Let’s hope and pray,” said Helen earnestly. “You spoke of my coaxing Roy to tell who shot him. When can I see him?”

  “Tomorrow, I reckon. I’ll come for you. Fetch Bo along with you. We’ve got to play safe from now on. An’ what do you say to me an’ Hal sleepin’ here at the ranch house?”

  “Indeed, I’d feel safer,” she replied. “There are rooms. Please come.”

  “All right. An’ now I’ll be goin’ to fetch Hal. Shore wish I hadn’t made you pale and scared like this.”

  About 10:00 a.m. the next morning Carmichael drove Helen and Bo in to Pine, and tied up the team before Widow Cass’s cottage.

  The peach and apple trees were mingling blossoms of pink and white; a drowsy hum of bees filled the fragrant air; rich dark green alfalfa covered the small orchard flat; a wood fire sent up a lazy column of blue smoke, and birds were singing sweetly.

  Helen could scarcely believe that amid all this tranquility a man lay perhaps fatally injured. Assuredly Carmichael had been somber and reticent enough to raise the gravest fears.

  Widow Cass appeared on the little porch, a gray, bent, worn, but cheerful old woman who Helen had come to know as her friend.

  “My land! I’m that glad to see you, Miss Helen,” she said. “And you’ve fetched the little lass as I’ve not got acquainted with yet.”

  “Good morning, Missus Cass. How…how is Roy?” replied Helen anxiously, scanning the wrinkled face.

  “Roy? Now don’t you look so scared. Roy’s ‘most ready to git on his hoss an’ ride home, if I let him. He knowed you was a-comin’. An’ he made me hold a lookin’ glass for him to shave. How’s thet for a man with a bullet hole through him. You can’t kill them Mormons, nohow.”

  She led them into a little sitting room, where on a couch underneath a window Roy Beeman lay. He was wide awake and smiling, but haggard. He lay partly covered with a blanket. His gray shirt was open at the neck disclosing ban dages.

  “ ‘Mornin’, girls,” he drawled. “Shore is good of you now, comin’ down.”

  Helen stood beside him, bent over him in her earnestness, as she greeted him. She saw a shade of pain in his eyes and his immobility struck her, but he did not seem badly off. Bo was pale, round-eyed, and apparently too agitated to speak. Carmichael placed chairs beside the couch for the girls.

  “Wal, what’s ailin’ you this nice mornin’?” asked Roy, eyes on the cowboy.

  “Huh! Would you expect me to be wearin’ the smile of a fellar goin’ to be married?” retorted Carmichael.

  “Shore you haven’t made up with Bo yet,” returned Roy.

  Bo blushed rosy red. And the cowboy’s face lost something of its somber hue.

  “I allow it’s none of you d-…darn’ bizness if she ain’t made up with me,” he said.

  “Las Vegas, you’re a wonder with a hoss an’ a rope, an’ I reckon with a gun, but when it comes to girls, you shore ain’t there.”

  “I’m no Mormon, by golly…. Come, Missus Cass, let’s get out of here, so they can talk.”

  “Folks, I was jest a-goin’ to say that Roy’s got fever an’ he oughtn’t t’talk too much,” said the old
woman. Then she and Carmichael went into the kitchen and closed the door.

  Roy looked up at Helen with his keen eyes, more kindly piercing than ever. “My brother John was here. He’d just left when you come. He rode home to tell my folks I’m not so bad hurt, an’ then he’s goin’ to ride a beeline into the mountains.”

  Helen’s eyes asked what her lips refused to utter.

  “He’s goin’ after Dorn. I sent him. I reckoned us-all sorta needed sight of thet dog-gone’ hunter.”

  Roy had averted his gaze quickly to Bo. “Don’t you agree with me, lass?”

  “I sure do,” replied Bo heartily.

  All within Helen had been stilled for the moment of her realization, and then came swell and beat of heart, and inconceivable chafing of a tide at its restraint.

  “Can John…fetch Dorn out…when the snow’s so deep?” she asked unsteadily.

  “Shore. He’s takin’ two hosses up to the snowline. Then, if necessary, he’ll go over the pass on snowshoes. But I bet him Dorn would ride out. Snow’s about gone except on the north slopes an’ on the peaks.”

  “Then…when may I…we except to see Dorn?”

  “Three or four days, I reckon. I wish he was here now…. Miss Helen, there’s trouble afoot.”

  “I realize that. I’m ready. Did Las Vegas tell you about Beasley’s visit to me?”

  “No. You tell me,” replied Roy.

  Briefly Helen began to acquaint him with the circumstances of that visit, and before she had finished she made sure Roy was swearing to himself.

  “He asked you to marry him! Jerusalem! Thet I’d never have reckoned. The…low-down coyote of a greaser! Wal, Miss Helen, when I met up with Señor Beasley last night, he was shore spoilin’ from somethin’…now I see what thet was. An’ I reckon I picked out the bad time.”

  “For what? Roy, what did you do?”

  “But, Miss Helen, thet’s the only way. To be afraid makes more danger. Beasley ‘peared civil enough, first off. Him an’ me kept edgin’ off, an’ his pards kept edgin’ after us, till he got me in a corner of the saloon. I don’t know all I said to him. Shore I talked a heap. I told him what my old man thought. An’ Beasley knowed as well as I thet my old man’s not only the oldest inhabitant hereabout, but he’s the wisest, too. An’ he wouldn’t tell a lie. Wal, I used all his sayin’s in my argument to show Beasley thet, if he didn’t haul up short, he’d end almost as short. Beasley’s thick-headed, an’ powerful conceited. Vain as a peacock! He couldn’t see it, an’ he got mad. I told him he was rich enough without robbin’ you of your ranch, an’…wal, I shore put up a big talk for your side. By this time he an’ his gang had me crowded in a corner, an’, from their look, I begun to get cold feet. But I was in it an’ had to make the best of it. The argument worked down to his pinnin’ me to my word thet I’d fight for you when thet fight come off. An’ I shore told him for my own sake I wished it’d come off quick…. When…wal…then somethin’ did come off quick!”