by Zane Grey
She watched the sunset, the first one over a New Mexican landscape, for two years; and the gorgeousness and riot of intense gold, pink, silver, and blue over that far-flung expanse of desert made her ache with the glory of the West. She had had enough of the crowded, sordid, noisy, war-beset East. This was home, and she did not mean the splendid mansion built by the Dons and named Cottonwoods by the Forrests. Home was the open there, the lonely range, and the grand bronze walls from which it sloped, and the ruggedness of the gray-barked cottonwoods, their strength, color, music, and their shade.
Someone tapped on the door. Startled out of her reverie, Virginia called, “Come in.” The door opened to admit her father.
“Are you alone?” he asked, coming to the window.
“Ethel is asleep in the bedroom,” replied Virginia, studying her father’s face.
“May I smoke?”
“I’d prefer you didn’t. I hate cigarette smoke in my rooms. There’s enough of it outside.”
“Shore you’re a queer girl,” he rejoined, as he sat down, to look at her with amusement and curiosity. “You love money, travel, friends, excitement, horses, don’t you?”
“I’m afraid so, especially the last.”
“Ethel’s mother has been telling me aboot you,” went on Lundeen. “She has a high opinion of you. Thinks you ought to get married.”
“Yes, she’s told me—the old match-maker.”
“I’d like to talk to you aboot that presently. . . . We’re not very well acquainted, Virginia—that is, like we used to be when we were poor an’ you were a kid.”
“How could we be? You sent me away to school while I was growing up, and to travel afterward.”
“Shore. It’s my fault. But there were reasons why I didn’t want you heah, outside of my wish to give you a good education.”
Virginia did not encourage him to explain those reasons. She feared his candor. He was too cool, too sure of himself, and now, as often in her youth, she divined that she was not a great factor in his life. Still, he did not seem lacking in affection, nor in a complacent pride in her.
“Mrs. Wayne tells me you’re home for good. No more rustlin’ aboot.”
“Did you read my last letter?”
“Wal, if I did I’ve forgotten.”
“Father, you want me to stay home now, don’t you?”
“Why, I shore do, Virginia, providin’ you’re—Wal, like your mother. It’d please me to see the ranch overrun by young people. I’m away a good deal. An’ the place ought to be kept up.”
“I can’t be like my mother. I’ve a mind of my own.”
“Wal, that was plain today when you told Malpass where to get off. I wish you hadn’t done it, Virginia. He hasn’t spoken to me yet, but he shore was riled.”
“That is nothing to me. I was annoyed because my horses were not here, and he discharged Jake and Con. The nerve of him! I shall get them back. Why are there nothing but Mexicans on the ranch?”
“He prefers them. Cheaper an’ easier to manage. I’m bound to admit he’s right. Cowboys, when you haven’t any cattle, are a blamed nuisance.”
“Aren’t you running any cattle?” asked Virginia, in surprise.
“No. Cattle went to nothin’. Ruined a lot of ranchers. Clay Forrest, for instance. All he had was in cattle. He was cattle poor.”
“How did you come into possession of Cottonwoods?” inquired Virginia, casually, but under veiled eyes she watched him keenly.
“Wal, at the beginnin’ of the war I sold out, an’ for the first time in my life had money. Malpass was the brains of my luck. He advised it. He went in with me an’ we lent Forrest money. Malpass saw the break comin’ an’ knew we’d catch Forrest. Wal, the crux of it came when Malpass struck rich silver in an old mine of Forrest’s land. Up in the foothills. Padres in the early days had worked it, an’ Malpass had a map. Got it in Mexico. On the strength of that we lent Forrest all the money we had an’ could raise. Forrest owed it. He was in a bad fix then, an’ it went from bad to worse. Yet the fool had faith in cattle goin’ up, so he bought more an’ more. But cattle dropped to nothin’. That ruined Forrest. Our deal went into the courts, an’ we got Forrest’s land an’ stock. By land I mean this ranch, which was a Spanish grant. The property below, where Forrest lives now an’ which was our home for so long, was not on the grant. It always was Forrest’s, an’ that was all he saved out of the wreck.”
“Father, did you consider that an honest deal?” queried Virginia.
“Wal, it was business, an’ that’s pretty sharp these days. Clay Forrest an’ I clinched from the time we came heah from Georgia. I laid many a hard knock to him. So it didn’t grieve me to take over his property. Ha! Ha!”
“But the old mine where Malpass found the silver. How about that?”
“Made our fortune. We got money out of it to develop the phosphate mines in the South. An’ there’s where our big money comes from.”
“Are you and Malpass partners?”
“Yes, in our minin’ deals. But this ranch is mine.”
“Father, it was crooked,” declared Virginia, feelingly.
“Wal, it always was dog eat dog with me an’ Forrest. An’ I won’t split hairs over it, arguin’ with you.”
“Such a deal might not show Forrest’s rights in court, because naturally you’d claim you discovered the silver after you got the land. But morally it is dishonest.”
“No, not in this heah day an’ age. You’re a woman, an’ you always were sentimental aboot the Forrests.”
“But at least you will split the proceeds from the silver mine?”
“I wouldn’t give Clay Forrest a dollar to save his life,” declared Lundeen, with hate swelling in every word.
“Then I shall,” replied Virginia, calmly and coldly.
“Wal, you won’t do anythin’ of the kind. You haven’t it to give. That two hundred thousand I put on interest for you isn’t available.”
“Where is it?” asked Virginia, aghast.
“Malpass took the principal, or most of it, an’ invested it down South. We needed some money quick. Of course you’ll gain in the long run. But you can’t get hold of it now.”
“Then I have no—no income?”
“We’ll fix that up, Virginia. I reckon there’s ten thousand or so to your credit in bank. By the time you spend it we’ll arrange the other.”
“Mr. Augustine Malpass! . . . He seems—ahem—quite important in the affairs of the Lundeens.”
“Wal, I reckon,” returned her father with a short laugh, ignoring her scorn. “An’ that brings me to the point. You rode me off the trail. . . . Virginia, as far back as three years ago me an’ August talked over a marriage between you an’ him, when the proper time came.”
“Indeed! How interesting!”
“You needn’t be so cuttin’. You shore owe it to August that you got your education an’ travel, an’ that you’re heah at Cottonwoods now. It was his brains.”
“I have much to thank Mr. Malpass for,” returned Virginia, in bitter passion.
“Virginia, I hope you’re not mixed up in any love-affair.”
“No, I’m not, if that will relieve your extreme anxiety about me.”
“Wal, I’m glad. For my heart is set on this. I don’t want to rush you, daughter, but in good time, I hope——”
He rose, evidently disconcerted by the sudden turn of her head, to face him with her contempt and shame.
“You are proposing marriage for me—with Mr. Malpass?”
“It amounts to that,” he answered, regaining his assurance.
“Thank you. I feel immensely flattered that you’d like to see me the wife of a crook.”
“Virginia, he’s no more that than I am,” protested Lundeen, impatiently.
“Assuredly not. You’re both crooks. The meanest of crooks—the kind that can’t be apprehended.”
“Wal, I’ll allow you’ve reason to be upset,” he added, moving toward the door. “Recko
n you’ll get over that an’ think aboot it.”
“Father, I don’t understand you. I don’t know you,” she ended, passionately. “I refuse—once and for all!”
Chapter Five
MANY a time, years ago it seemed to him, Clifton Forrest had ridden down the shady road along the edge of the cottonwood valley, to the little town of San Luis, which was populated by Indians and Mexicans. The trading-store there had finally been taken from Lundeen by Clifton’s father, who had then run it more to help his many employees than to exact profit from them. The few bits of silver that it now brought in constituted the extent of the Forrest income. Toward San Luis Clifton walked now, and when he fell down, which he did often, he got up and went on.
“Cliff,” his mother had said the day of his arrival home, “your father tried to stick in that store. But he couldn’t. I hired one Mexican after another. If one was lazy, another was dishonest, and our only income is from that store. Think of that, my son! It used to be one of your father’s charities.—What sad pass we have come to!”
“Mother, I’ll run the store,” Clifton had replied, with cheer and smile that hid his earnestness. And this was why he was trudging along the road, not, despite his mental and physical ills, insensible to the glory of the May morning.
The white snowy cotton seed was floating in the amber air and falling like thistledown on the green grass. Quail ran across the road, leaving tiny tracks in the dust. Birds and colts and calves showed their delight in the balmy air and golden sunshine of spring. Clifton felt the renewal of nature in his own heart and along his veins. He could not help being glad that he had to live instead of die. How he had longed to give up the struggle! Who but one like himself could understand the torture of body, the destruction of faith, the end of hope, the unutterably soothing thought of rest and oblivion?
He could not walk many rods without resting; and he chose the spots where he had halted the day before, and the first day. Some of these he thought he never would reach, yet he did; and there, wet with cold sweat, his internal organs in hideous turmoil, his wounds as cruel as burning hell, he sat awhile, beaten, but unconquerable. Already a marvelous thing had happened to his mind. It had direction and immutability. He had been on his last legs, but now he laughed at the idea. He became conscious of something unquenchable at work within him. So he scouted weakness, misery.
The little adobe store, once a trading-post, was situated off the road, on a bank above the irrigation ditch that supplied water to the natives, whose homes were scattered along the gentle slope above the valley.
The natives had small farms, and a few head of cattle, upon which they subsisted when not working in some capacity on the range. The decline of the cattle business had made them poor and unable to buy much. Therefore the store was fairly well stocked with canned goods, merchandise, tobacco, and all the necessary requirements of horsemen. In addition, there were many blankets and baskets which Forrest had purchased from the Indians.
Clifton had cut the price of everything in the store, but the natives were slow to respond. Outside, by the door, stood an old rustic chair with sheepskin lining, and to Clifton it was the most comfortable one he had ever rested in. Here he passed most of the day, a good deal of which he slept away from sheer exhaustion. The natives, except the wild ragged youngsters, did not pass by often, and they seldom lingered. On the first day Clifton found out that the natives had never overcome the distrust engendered in them during the Lundeen régime of high prices and sharp dealing. Clifton made a present to his informant, and that was his initial act through which he meant to regain confidence.
The view from the old rustic chair could not have been surpassed anywhere in the low country. The whole valley lay in sight, some of it showing between the trees; high on the knoll shone the white-and-red house of Lundeen, rising out of the green like a castle. Across the road and the valley, shallow winding canyons with ridges between sloped up to the mountains, that from this distant vantage-point rose massively in alternate climbing areas of beauty and desolation, forests of green and gold all the more verdant for the contrast of the colossal wrinkled cliffs and crags of rock, and walls of bronze like iron, and peaks of porphyry.
When the Lundeen cars raced down the valley road, raising long trails of dust, Clifton saw them with unconsciously growing hate, like fire that ate slowly under the surface. When he saw the clean-limbed, long-maned horses come leisurely into view with their riders in gay colors, he would hastily turn away from a sight bitter as gall. His precious energy, so meager and so weak, frittered away in agitations he should have restrained. But how impossible to help it yet! These instances began to stir intimations of a driving force that was not wholly due to devotion to his father and mother. But he made no attempt to analyze it.
The day passed like a dream half remembered. Then began the toiling homeward. He told himself this was nothing—nothing. To get his broken bones and lacerated muscles to function!
Dusk caught him stalled at the niche in the adobe wall from which he took a short cut. When his father loomed under the trees, Clifton had survived the worst of his collapse.
“Wal, son, Ma was anxious an’ sent me to meet you,” he said, and helped Clifton to his feet. He never alluded to Clifton’s condition. If it caused him distress, he gave no sign. Clay Forrest had always been a man who considered physical defects things to conceal. But he did not lack gentleness.
“I was stuck here last night.”
“Cliff, somethin’ happened today,” returned Forrest, with perturbation.
“What?”
“I got back early, an’ there talkin’ to Ma was that Lundeen girl.” He made the announcement with suppressed feeling. “I’d showed her the door the other time, an’ I did it again. But she wouldn’t leave. Shore I couldn’t throw her out. An’ there I was.”
“Well!” ejaculated Clifton. This intelligence made his exhaustion as if it were not.
“Ma said, ‘Virginia wants a word with you,’ an’ it was plain Ma was shore wantin’ her to get it. But I swore I’d listen to no Lundeen. She was white an’ her eyes were big. I couldn’t help thinkin’ what a handsome lass! An’ brave—she wasn’t a darn bit afraid. She said, ‘I’ve come heah to ask you somethin’, an’ I’m goin’ to do it.’ Wal, seein’ I was out of luck an’ couldn’t get rid of her quick, I told her to fire away. An’ she shore did it, short an’ sweet.”
“Dad, you could never tell anything. Hurry.”
“Cliff, she told me before she went away two years ago she had a couple of hundred thousand dollars in bank. She found, on gettin’ home, she had only ten thousand left. Malpass had persuaded her father to let him have the rest. . . . An’ by Heaven! Cliff—that girl begged me to take the ten thousand!”
Clifton halted, and even in the dusk he could see his father’s ox-like eyes rolling. “She did! What for?”
“I asked her, an’ she said she believed we had been wronged, an’ she wanted to help right it in what little way she could. Begged me to take the last of her money, an’ when I replied I couldn’t do it, she tried to persuade me to take half. Then I said we Forrests would starve to death before we’d accept a dollar of Lundeen money. . . . Cliff, she cried out it wasn’t Lundeen money, but Forrest money. I was sort of stumped at that. She was actually testifyin’ against her father. I could use that when the deal goes to court again, as it shore will.”
“You could, but you won’t,” declared Clifton.
“Cliff, I’m not ashamed to admit she made me soft for a minute, but I soon got over it. I’d use anythin’ against Jed Lundeen.”
“Dad, you’d never sacrifice the girl, even if she is a Lundeen,” protested Clifton.
“Wal, now, why wouldn’t I?” demanded Forrest, letting go his hold on Clifton.
“If for no other reason, because I wouldn’t let you.”
“Hell! Are you in love with that girl?”
“No. I—I hate her, I guess. . . . But I’ve sense enough to see she’s
good.”
“Wal, Cliff, you shore are. An’ so is Ma. Reckon it’s aboot the last straw. . . . My stock, my land, my home—an’ now my family—gone over to these cursed Lundeens!”
Forrest stalked away under the gloom of the cottonwoods.
“Dad!” cried Clifton, seeing that his father was leaving him. No answer came. The heavy footfalls died away, and not in the direction of the house. Clifton went on, muttering to himself: “Oh, this is getting worse. I’m afraid altogether it’s more than I can bear. . . . What a thing for Virginia Lundeen to do!—Wonderful! . . . I knew she was good. It wasn’t all pity. She knows her father is a thief. I wish she hadn’t given dad that hunch. And this Malpass. I wonder if he can be that greaser-like rider who used to hang round the post, when Lundeen ran it.”
Excitement carried him on, and he arrived at the house, breathless, but unconscious of fatigue. The living-room was cheerfully bright and supper ready. Clifton related to his mother the conversation between him and his father.
“He’s implacable, Cliff,” she said, with a calmness that soothed him. “But for me he’d have shot Lundeen an’ Malpass long ago. We have our task, my son.”
“Mother, it plumb riled me when he said I—I was in love with Virginia. It sure floored me. And when I denied it he came out more bitter. He even said you loved her, too.”
“I do, an’ I’m afraid he’s guessed.”
“Mother!”
“Go on with your supper, son,” she returned. “As for Virginia—I used to love her when she was a ragged, wild child. An’ I reckon it’s come back. She’s grown beautiful, Cliff, an’ spite of it all she’s unspoiled. She might spend money like wastin’ water, but it means little to her. I think it noble of her to offer what they’d left her.”