by Zane Grey
“What promise?”
“Aboot takin’ me to town in a sleigh, with bells ringin’. An’ snowballin’ me. Oh, I’m shore I’ll love this winter.”
“Yes, I’ll keep my promise, and I bet you beg for mercy.”
“Me!”
Uncle Jim laughed heartily. His interest in their talk and plans, in all that concerned them, hinted of the loneliness of his life and what he felt he had missed.
“I like a little winter, too. Shore makes this here beef steak taste good. … Son, have you told the little lady your news?”
“Yes. And there’s further proof she’s an angel.”
“Oh, Jim, such nonsense!” she protested. “Bein’ glad with you don’t—doesn’t make me no angel. I keep tellin’ you thet I’m shore not related to no angel yet.”
“Haw! Haw! I’ll bet he finds thet out, Molly,” put in the rancher, heartily. “Reckon if I’d ever been keen on girls I’d have wanted one thet would scratch an’ bite.”
Molly blushed. “Uncle, I hope I’ve not got thet much cat in me,” she said, anxiously.
Jim made good his promise, and when he had Molly bundled in the sleigh beside him, her cheeks like roses and her dark curls flying, he was as proud as she was delighted. Much to his satisfaction, all the young people of Flagerstown appeared to be out sleigh-riding also; and many a girl who had made Jim uncomfortable when he was a tenderfoot saw him now with Molly.
They had lunch at the hotel and drove home in the brilliant sunshine, with the white world so glaring that they could hardly face it. All too soon they arrived at the ranch.
“That was glorious,” said Molly, breathing deeply. “Jim, I’m shore a lucky girl. I’m so—so happy it hurts. I’m afraid it won’t last.”
“Sure it’ll last,” replied Jim, laughing. “Unless you’re a fickle little jade.”
“Jim Traft, I’m as—as true as steel,” she retorted, vehemently. “It’s only you may tire of me—or—or your family won’t accept me.”
“Say, you’re not marrying my family.”
The word marriage or any allusion to it always silenced Molly. She betrayed that she saw the days fleeting by toward the inevitable, and her joy submerged any doubts.
Jim drove around to the barn, having in mind the latter half of his promise to Molly, which surely she had forgotten. As they went by the big bunk-house Bud Chalfack poked his ruddy cherub face out of the door and yelled, “Hey, Boss, thet ain’t fair.”
Jim yelled back, “Get yourself a girl, you cowboy.”
At the barn he handed the reins to a Mexican stable boy, and helped Molly out. Then he led her into the lane toward the ranch-house. She was paddling along beside him through the deep snow and babbling merrily. When fully out of sight of the hawk-eyed cowboys Jim snatched up a big handful of snow, and seizing Molly he washed her rosy face with it.
“Jim Traft—you—you—” she sputtered, as he let her go. Then before she could recover her sight and breath he snatched up a double handful of snow and pitched that at her. His aim was true. It burst all over her in a white shower. She screamed, and bending quickly she squeezed a tight little snowball and threw it at Jim. He managed to save his eye, but it struck him on the head. Molly, it appeared, was no mean antagonist. Then fast and furious came the little snowballs. Never a one missed!
“Hey, you said—you’d never had a snowball fight,” he panted.
“Shore never had. But I can lick you, Missouri,” she replied, her high gay laugh pealing out.
Jim realized that she would make good her word unless he carried the battle to close range. Wherefore he rushed her, getting a snowball square on the nose for his pains. She dodged.
“Aw, Jim—stand up—an’ fight square,” she squealed.
But he caught her, tumbled her into the snow, rolled her over and over, and finally swept a great armful upon her. Then he ran for dear life, tinglingly aware of the snowy cyclone at his heels.
Later Jim emerged from concealment and walked down to the bunk-house. He had not seen the boys for several days. He stamped on the porch.
“Hey, don’t pack no snow in hyar,” yelled a voice. “I gotta do the sweepin’ fer this outfit.”
Jim opened the door and went in. The big room was cheerful with its crackling fire, and amazingly clean, considering it harbored the hardest cowboy outfit in Arizona.
“Howdy, boys!” he sang out.
“You needn’t come an’ crow over us,” answered Bud. “Sleighridin’ with Molly Dunn!”
Jackson Way looked askance at Jim’s snowy boots, his lean young face puckered and resentful. “Boss, I reckon you had this snow come on purpose.”
Hump Stevens spoke from his bunk, where he lay propped up, cheerful and smiling.
“How are you, Hump?”
“Rarin’ to go, Boss. I been walkin’ around this mornin’. An’ I won all the money the boys had.”
“Good work,” said Jim, and turning to Uphill Frost, who sat before the fire in a rocking-chair, with a crutch significantly at hand. “And you, Up?”
“Boss, I ain’t so damn good, far as disposition goes. But I could fork a horse if I had to.”
“Great! Where’re Cherry and Lonestar?” went on Jim.
“They hoofed it in town to see Slinger,” replied Frost.
“I haven’t been to the hospital for three days,” said Jim. “How’s Slinger coming around?”
“He was up, walkin’ around, cussin’ Doc fer not lettin’ him smoke all he wants. Reckon time hangs heavy on Slinger. He can’t read much, an’ he says he wants to get back in the woods. Asked why you didn’t come to see him. Didn’t he, Bud?”
“Sure. Slinger complained like hell of your neglect, Boss. I seen him yestiddy. An’ I told him thet no one never seen you no more. Then he cussed Molly fer not fetchin’ you.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll see him tomorrow,” replied Jim, contritely.
Curly Prentiss, the handsome blond young giant of the Diamond outfit, sat at a table, writing with absorbed violence. He alone had not appeared to note Jim’s entrance.
“Curly, I’ve news for you.”
But Curly gave no sign that he heard, whereupon Jim addressed Bud. “What ails Curly?”
“Same old sickness, Boss. I’ve seen Curly doubled up with that fer five years, about every few months. Mebbe it’s a little wuss than usual, fer his girl chucked him an’ married Wess Stebbins.”
“No!”
“Sure’s a fack. They run off to Winslow. You see, Curly come the high an’ mighty once too often. Caroline bucked. An’ they had it hot an’ heavy. Curly told her to go where it was hot—so she says—an’ he marched off with his haid up. … Wal, Carrie took him at his word. Thet is—he’d unhooked her bridle. Wess always was loony over her, an’ she married him, which we all reckon was a darned good thing. Now Curly is writin’ his funeral letter, after which he aims to get turrible drunk.”
“Curly,” spoke up Jim, kindly.
“Cain’t you leave me alone heah?” appealed the cowboy.
“Yes, in a minute. Sorry to to disturb you, old man. But I’ve news about Yellow Jacket, Jed Stone and his Hash Knife outfit.”
“To hell with them! I’m a ruined cowboy. Soon as I get this document written I’m goin’ to town an’ look at red licker.”
“Nope,” said Jim, laconically.
“Wall, I jest am. Who says I cain’t?”
“I do, Curly.”
“But you’re not my boss. I’ve quit the Diamond. I’ll never fork a hoss again.”
“Curly, you wouldn’t let us tackle that Hash Knife gang without you?”
“Jim, I cain’t care aboot nothin’. My heart’s broke. I could see you all shot. I could see Bud Chalfack hung on a tree an’ laugh.”
“Curly, didn’t you and I get to be good friends?”
“Shore. An’ I was durn proud of it. But friendship’s nuthin’ to love. Aw, Boss, I’m ashamed to face you with it. … Caroline has turned out to be false. C
hucked me fer thet bowlegged Stebbins puncher! Who’d ever thought I’d come to sech disgrace?”
“Curly, it’s no disgrace. Wess is a good chap. He’ll make Caroline happy. You didn’t really love her.”
“Wha-at!” roared Curly. And when his hearers all greeted this with a laugh he sank back crestfallen.
“Curly, there’re some good reasons why you can’t throw down the Diamond at this stage,” said Jim, seriously, and placed a kindly hand on the cowboy’s shoulder.
“Jest you give me one, Jim Traft,” blustered Curly, and he lay down his pencil.
Jim knew perfectly well that this wonderful young Westerner could not be untrue to anyone. “First, then, Curly. You’ve already got a few head of stock on the range. In a few years you’ll be a rancher on your own account.”
“No reason atall. I don’t want thet stock. I’d have given it to Bud if he hadn’t been so nasty aboot Caroline. Swore she’d finally come to her senses. Then I gave the cattle to Hump, heah.”
“Well, Hump can give them back. … Another reason is Uncle Jim is throwing us plumb against the Hash Knife outfit. Now what would the Diamond amount to without Curly Prentiss?”
“I don’t give a—a damn,” rejoined Curly. But it was a weak assertion.
“See there, Boss,” yelled Bud, red in the face. “He hates us all jest because thet red-headed Carrie Bambridge chucked him.”
“Curly, it’s just as well,” went on Jim. “Listen, and all of you. This is a secret and not to be spoken of except among ourselves. Uncle Jim is sure Bambridge is crooked. Making deals with the Hash Knife.”
All the cowboys except Curly expressed themselves in different degrees of exclamation.
At length Curly spoke. “Even if Bambridge was crooked—that’d make no difference to me.”
“Did you ask Caroline to marry you?” queried Jim, kindly.
“Dog-gone-it, no,” replied Curly, and here his fine, frank face flamed. “Boss, I never was sure I cared that much, till I lost her.”
“Curly, it wasn’t the real thing—your case on Caroline.”
“Ahuh. —Jim, you haven’t given me any argument why I shouldn’t go out an’ drown my grief in the bottle—an’ shoot up the town—an’ kill somebody or get put in jail.”
“No? All right. Here’s another reason,” replied Jim, and he drew a photograph out of his pocket and laid it on the table in front of Curly.
The cowboy started, bent over, and became absorbed in the picture.
Bud Chalfack started, too, but Jim waved him back.
“My Gawd! Boss, who is this?” asked Curly.
“My sister, Gloriana May Traft.”
“Your sister? —Jim, I shore ought to have seen the resemblance, though she’s ten million times better-lookin’ than you. … But how is she a reason for my not goin’ to the bad?”
“Curly it’s as simple as pie,” said Jim. “Gloriana is a sick girl. She’s coming West for her health. She’ll arrive on Monday, on the Western Special. Now, I ask you, have you the heart to bust up the Diamond—to get drunk and worry me to death—when I’ve this new trouble on my hands?”
Curly took another long look at the photograph, and then he turned to Jim with all the clouds vanished from eyes and face. To see Curly thus was to love him.
“Boss, I haven’t got the heart to throw you down,” he replied. “It’s my great weakness—this heah heart of mine. … I reckon I wasn’t goin’ to—anyhow. … An’ I’ll go down to meet the Western Special with you.”
Jim, if he had dared, could have yelled his mirth. How well he had known Curly.
“Lemme see thet pictoore?” demanded Bud, advancing.
Curly handed the photograph back to Jim, and said, blandly, “Bud, gurls of high degree shouldn’t interest you.”
“Boys, I want you all to see Glory’s picture,” said Jim, calmly, though he reveled in the moment. “Come, take a look.”
Bud and Jackson Way leaped forward; Uphill Frost forgot his crutch; Hump Stevens hopped out of his bunk; and they all, with Curly irresistibly drawn, crowded around Jim.
The long silence that ensued attested to the beauty of Gloriana Traft.
Finally Bud exploded: “Lord! ain’t she a looker?”
“Prettier even than Molly Dunn,” added Way, as if that was the consummation of all beauty.
“I never seen no angel till this minnit,” was Uphill Frost’s encomium.
“Ef I jest wasn’t a crippled cowpuncher an’ had a million dollars!” exclaimed Hump Stevens, with a sigh. “Boss, her name fits her.”
Curly Prentiss reacted peculiarly to all this. It seemed he resented the looks and sighs and fervid comments of his comrades, as if they had profaned a sacred face already enshrined in his impressionable heart.
“Wal, I’m informin’ you gentlemen of the range thet I saw her first,” he said, loftily.
Bud took that as an insult. Frost swore his surprise. Hump Stevens stared in silence. Jackson Way laughed at the superb and conceited cowboy. Then Curly addressed Jim. “Boss, it’s shore plain the Diamond will be busted now.”
CHAPTER
4
JIM did not see much of Molly on Sunday. She kept to her room except at meal hours. He found opportunity, however, to ask her to go in to town with him on Monday to meet his sister.
“I’d rather not, Jim,” she replied, as if her mind had long been made up. “She’d rather you didn’t fetch any girl, especially your girl, to meet her, thet’s shore.”
“But why, Molly?” he queried.
“It’ll be a surprise to her—the way things are with you an’ me. An’ it oughtn’t come the minute she gets heah.”
“We don’t need to tell her—right away.”
“She’d see it. … Jim, you should have written home weeks ago—to tell your folks aboot me.”
“I suppose I ought. Really I meant to. Only I just didn’t write.”
“Wall, I reckon it’d be better not to let her know right away. I could hide it. But I’m shore afraid you couldn’t. Uncle Jim will blurt it out.”
“Molly! The idea—not telling Gloriana we’re engaged,” he protested, mystified by her gravity.
“Jim, it’ll be all right if only she takes to me, but if she’s like you when you first struck Flag—she won’t.”
“I was pretty much of a snob,” he admitted. “Molly, I’m the better for all I’ve gone through. … You realize, don’t you, how much I——”
The entrance of Molly’s mother prohibited the rest of that tender speech. And Jim presently left the living-room perturbed in mind. He could not rid himself of a premonition that Gloriana’s coming heralded disaster. No further opportunity to speak privately to Molly presented itself that day; and early Monday morning Molly trudged off to school like any country girl, wading through the snow. How serious she was about her studies!
In the afternoon Jim sent for Curly Prentiss, who appeared as if by magic, most gorgeously arrayed in the gayest and finest of cowboy habiliments.
“For goodness sake! Why this togging up?” exclaimed Jim.
Curly appeared to be laboring under stress.
“Had hell with the outfit,” he said. “Come near punchin’ Bud. He swore I ought to wear a plain suit—which is somethin’ I don’t own—but I’m no business man, or even a rancher yet. An’ I want to look what I am.”
“Oh, you mean you want my sister Gloriana to see you’re a real cowboy?”
“Shore do.”
“Big hat, gun, spurs and all?”
“I reckon.”
“Well, Curly, she’ll see you, all right. She could see you a mile away.”
“Jim, don’t you give me any of your chin aboot how I look. I had enough from Bud an’ Jack an’ Uphill. An’ my feelin’s are hurt. … They’re goin’ to meet thet train, all of them except Hump. He wanted us to carry him on a stretcher. Up is goin’ on a crutch—the damn fool!”
“Fine. The sooner you all see Gloriana May the sooner y
ou’ll be miserable. … I’ve ordered the buck-board to meet the train. Let’s walk in, Curly, and stop to see Slinger.”
“It’s a good idea. A little movin’ around might steady me. I’d shore hate to meet Jed Stone or thet Pecos gun-thrower.”
So they strode out into the snow. The weather had moderated somewhat and the day was superb, with crisp tangy air. Curly manifestly was on the eve of a great adventure. Jim had to laugh when he thought again of how Glory would affect these simple, sentimental cowboys. It would be murder. He reflected that she would very likely be more Gloriana May at nineteen than she had been at eighteen. Worry over them he had no room for; all that seemed centered upon Molly. Curly stalked like a centaur, his spurs clinking, and talked like a boy engaged upon some lofty venture.
Meanwhile their long steps soon brought them to the edge of town and eventually the modest hospital, which, unpretentious as it was, had become the boast of cowboys.
They found Slinger Dunn the only inmate, besides an attendant or two, and he was limping up and down a warm and comfortable room. His dark face, bronze and smooth like an Indian’s, wreathed into a smile at sight of his visitors. He had gained since Jim had last seen him. His long hair, black as the wing of a crow, hung down over the collar of the loose woolen dressing-gown he wore, in which obviously he felt ill at ease. Jim always thrilled at sight of Slinger, and had reason to do so, beyond appreciation of his striking figure and piercing eyes. Anyone who had ever seen Molly Dunn would at once connect Slinger with her.
“Howdy, boys! It’s aboot time you was comin’,” he drawled. “Molly came in on her way to school, or I’d shore be daid now.”
“Patience, Slinger. Why, you’ve made a marvelous recovery!” said Jim, cheerily.
“Slinger, you backwoods son-of-a-gun, only five weeks ago you was a sieve of bullet holes,” declared Curly. “An’ heah you can walk aboot.”
“Wal, it’s easy fer you fellars to talk, but I’d like to see you stand stayin’ heah. Day after day—night after night. Thet damn Doc won’t give me any more cigarettes an’ only a nip of whisky. Set down, boys, an’ tell me some news.”
“Slinger, just as soon as you can ride we’re off for Yellow Jacket,” announced Jim.