by Zane Grey
One afternoon, when the shadows were beginning to lengthen and turn to somber black under the eastern faces of cliffs, Patricia and Eburne sat on the rim in a favorite spot, where a lone giant pine rose from its fragrant mat of fallen needles on the very edge of the chasm. They crouched like eagles upon a mountain crag. The canyon view here was limited to its upper strata of blue limestone and red rock. The wild ruggedness of the North Rim was here at its grandest, a wilderness of timber, of blue cliffs or yellow crags and red slopes, spread out in an utter solitude and dominated by an ever-changing beauty.
Before Patricia had absorbed the canyon or had been absorbed by it she had found conversation impossible. But now she could watch and listen and feel in silence for hours, or she could express herself as never before in her life.
At the ranger’s cabin, in the forest, among the deer, the New York girl had been insatiably thirsty for knowledge. She knew now all about the tragedy of the deer herd, the history of Buckskin Forest, the conflict between the various types and classes of men who lived off the range. Moreover, she had gotten from Eburne the story of his life there in the lonely woods, and she had divined the ideal that kept him there. The two young people, he lonely for contact with someone who would understand him, she lonely in a new world she had never known to exist, gravitated toward each other as two lonely planets.
For a long time they sat there under the ancient pine tree in silence, then suddenly he spoke.
“You have been here ten days,” said Eburne, his fine eyes upon her thoughtful face.
“So long? Oh, impossible,” she exclaimed.
“It doesn’t seem so long. I was surprised when Nels spoke of your supplies getting low. Of course you’re welcome to mine. But they are coarse and not too fresh.”
“How hungry I’ve been! I never knew how good plain food could taste. But I could go without or certainly eat your food to stay a little longer in this blessed place.”
“But you must go presently?” he queried gently.
“Please do not make me think of it,” she entreated, with almost a note of impatience in her voice.
“It is something to be faced,” he said softly. “But before the time comes I hope to know more about you—Patricia.”
She seemed not to notice the ranger’s use of her given name.
“Does that matter, Mr. Eburne?” she asked wistfully.
“No, come to think of it,” he returned thoughtfully. “You came, you will leave. My life will go on here, I suppose, or anywhere else that I may drift. Yet because of these days nothing can ever be the same again.”
“We all change. People have incalculable influence upon each other,” she spoke rather hurriedly, as though to evade her own rushing thoughts. “I have utterly changed in these few days. I owe so much to little Sue, and the canyon—and to you.”
“Me? Indeed you owe me nothing, except what I did in the line of duty. I wish I could have done more.”
“We do not agree on what I owe you. I’ll not argue, but even the minor things which you call ‘in the line of duty’ have meant so much to me. The forest and the deer! I have seen them through your eyes. There are many things, Mr. Eburne.”
“Will you forgive me if I persist in being inquisitive? When you leave the canyon where will you go?”
“Flagstaff, I think, for a little while. I want to see all those wonderful desert places. And if Nels and Sue come to some understanding for the future, I want to help her.”
“They will. He’s a fine, spirited boy, with lots of good in him. She cares, but she’s afraid. She needn’t be, for Nels will go straight. He’ll not be a trail guide very long. That boy is bright. He has a future.”
“You are encouraging me in a secret little plan of my own.”
“Won’t you tell me?” he asked. “I’ve had some little interest in Nels. I got him to come to the Canyon.”
“Sue told me of your kindness to Nels. It was splendid of you…. Now please keep my little secret. If Sue really loves Nels I would like to buy a ranch somewhere around Flagstaff and have him manage it.”
“You are—generous indeed,” he replied slowly. “I’m very happy to hear that…. Then, in such case, you would come to Flagstaff occasionally.”
“I shore would, as Sue says,” answered Patricia happily.
“That’ll be good to know. You’ll be back in the West sometimes….You see, Miss Clay—Patricia—I fell in love with you at first sight. It’s a terrible fact for me, yet somehow it’ll be my salvation. I want you to know—if I wasn’t a poor ranger, I mean—if I had a future worthy of such a woman as you, I’d ask you to marry me.”
“Mr. Eburne! … You shouldn’t … I mean … you don’t know…” murmured Patricia, closing her eyes as they suddenly filled with tears. She could not face him after that simple statement, nor the dreaming canyon below, nor the tumult of uncertainty and panic his confession had aroused. Her ears seemed full of the thrumming beats of her heart. Suddenly she longed to be alone. She had somehow felt that Eburne loved her; but to hear him avow it, with simple strong words, in unconscious pathos, unnerved her completely. She found herself trembling. She could not speak.
“After Flagstaff, you’ll go to California, I suppose, then back east?” he was asking. His eyes were on the far-distant rim of the canyon. Suddenly she found her voice. But it was high-pitched, quavery, unsure.
“California, perhaps, but not east, unless for a brief business trip, and that not for a long time. I’m not sure. I have no plans. I can’t go back … I can’t go back to so many things in my life….” The tears were welling up again. He did not appear to notice her emotion.
“But Sue told me New York was your home,” he asserted in surprise.
“Yes, it was. But I gave up my home, and I shall never go back.”
“Miss Clay! Your family?”
“There was only my father. He did not want me or need me.”
“Wasn’t there someone you—you—loved?” he went on tensely.
“Yes.”
“Was it a husband?”
“No. I have never married.”
“Someone—someone who died in the war—?”
“No. It was only a girl friend.”
Patricia knew that the time had come. She forced herself to tell him all of the truth that was possible for her to confess, and she did it out of respect and sorrow for him, and the longing to appear as nearly as possible in his eyes as she knew herself to be. She had dismissed the past. Recalling it did not hurt, she found to her amazement, but the yoke of that past, the unalterable fact of the dishonor which she had accepted, now suddenly appeared in a different light.
“I’ve been out of the world,” Eburne broke in, “but I’m not quite a recluse. My mother and sister write me often, send me papers, books, and magazines. So while living alone with the deer and the forest, I’ve still kept up pretty well with the times. I know what life is like back there, Patricia, that you’re not at all like the young women I read about and whose pictures I see.”
“You mean I don’t bob my hair, pluck my eyebrows, paint my face, smoke, and all that sort of thing so prevalent in this so-called modern age.”
Eburne laughed. “Well, I hadn’t figured it all out yet as concisely as that, but I suppose it’s what I meant.”
“It’s a queer age, Mr. Eburne, and hard to understand.” She seemed suddenly eager to talk of something other than herself. “I’m for the modern woman, but there are extremes I don’t care to take. Yet you’d find many sensible girls back there, and I’m sure your sister is one.”
“Well, she seemed sensible enough,” he said thoughtfully. “She was twelve when I left home.” Eburne lapsed into silence.
After a time he spoke again. “I’m grateful to you, Miss Clay,” he said, “for what you’ve told me of your life back where you came from. I’m grateful to you, too, for not laughing when I tried to tell you how I feel toward you. You think now that you can’t go back to your old life. But you
couldn’t live the life that we live, that Sue lives out here. And knowing that, I had no right to tell you of my love for you. I ask you now to forget what I said. You say these days on the North Rim have meant much to you. I would never forgive myself if I spoiled the rest of your stay here in the deer forest.” Now he was smiling. “I’m ranger Eburne,” he said, jumping to his feet and holding out his hands to help Patricia up. “This is the tourist season, and please call on me to do all I can—within the line of duty.”
The sun was setting as they started back to camp. There were so many things she had wanted to say, to deny, but the words had not come. Now it was too late.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THERE came a summer storm—great white and black columnar clouds rolling over the chasm, blinding zigzag streaks of lightning, palls of gray rain, and thunderous crack and bellow, and reverberating, endless echoes that confounded the ears and froze the heart.
Patricia and Sue had watched from the rim while the grand pageant swept down upon them out of the west; and, riveted to the spot, they had been caught in the flood of rain. They were drenched to the skin and arrived at the cabin bedraggled and disheveled, but as gay as two schoolgirls returning from a picnic.
A change to warm, dry garments, a good supper, and afterward some blazing sticks and red embers in the fireplace tended to keep up their high spirits. This day marked their friendship as a settled fact. It had been a climax to many all-satisfying days. Even the Dyott incident, harrowing as it had been, had contributed its share to the close bond which had grown between the two girls.
When night set in and the rain ceased, the air grew chill, and the wind roared and rushed through the forest. The gale shook the sturdy cabin and at first was disturbing to Patricia, who feared one of the giant pines might come crashing down on the roof. It was no wonder, the eastern girl thought, that Sue crept close to her. She welcomed her, and then they lay there in the impenetrable darkness, with the roar of the gale enveloping the cabin.
“Shore this’d be great—if only I—I wasn’t unhappy,” said Sue, close to Patricia’s ear.
“What are you unhappy over?” asked Patricia.
“Two reasons. First, this can’t last forever. I’ll be losing you soon.”
“Sue, you’ll never lose me, if you want me near you. I can’t begin to tell you how much I—I care for you, how good you are for me.”
Sue kissed her warmly on the cheek.
“But you’ll go away?”
“Not very soon. And when I do, I’ll come back. What’s the other that makes you unhappy?”
Patricia felt the girl’s reluctance to tell what was troubling her, and at the same time her ardent yearning to confide in her.
“Nels.”
“Sue, you love him?”
This was harder to confess, but Patricia felt it coming like the irresistible tide of pent-up water after a dam has burst. Sue hugged her close and shook as if she had a chill.
“Yes!”
“Oh, I’m glad, Sue. But that should make you happy.”
“Patricia, I’m not unhappy because I love him. It’s the worry, over everything.”
“Sue, are you afraid Nels will go back to drinking and that hard life he used to lead? If so, I think you’re mistaken. Thad Eburne says Nels is pretty much of a man now. Why, Sue, he was only a reckless boy. Hope of winning you has steadied him, made him older. You must consider that, Sue.”
“Shore it’s not that I don’t trust Nels now and that I don’t believe he has turned over a new leaf for good. I do. To be honest, he has shore made me proud of him.”
“Well, then, what in the world is the matter?” queried Patricia.
“Nels wants me to be engaged to him. He swears he’ll not nag me to marry him until he’s saved a lot of money and got a bigger, job. His dream is to own a ranch. Well, shore he’ll never get one unless he goes out heah and homesteads a hundred and sixty acres of Uncle Sam’s wild land. And there’s the rub. I don’t want Nels to live on some lonely homestead without me. I wouldn’t mind the hardship of homesteading, and believe me, it’s shore pioneer life. But I can’t go. I’ve got my mother to take care of. She’s not strong and she’d die out in some log cabin, without comfort or a doctor handy. I couldn’t do my best by Mother in that way. I’ll have to teach school, wherever I can get the most money…. And that’s what’s worrying me.”
“Sue, that’s nothing to worry about,” returned Patricia. “You have a fine young man to love. You have him and your mother to make a home for. Sue, I would gladly change places with you.”
“What!” cried the girl, amazed, and then dropped her head back on the pillow. “Maybe I am a selfish little beast. I thought I had a terrible problem. It was been killing me.”
“Sue, dear, I don’t underestimate your trouble,” replied Patricia seriously. “It is a problem. But it has not worried me, because I have solved it for you.”
“You!” cried Sue, starting up.
“Yes, I,” returned Patricia. “Now Sue, please listen. The immediate present is very easy to dispose of. I want to make my headquarters at the El Tovar for this summer. I am eager to see all these wonderful places you’ve talked about: Rainbow Bridge, Natural Bridge, Monument Valley, Montezuma’s Well, Keetsill and Betatakin, Painted Desert, Petrified Forest, and, in fact, every beautiful and interesting place you know of. I want to hire Nels to arrange these trips for me, buy our own horses, and outfits, as you call them, and get the men or guides necessary. I want you for a companion, or secretary, or chaperon, whatever you want to call it. We’ll certainly take in this deer drive Thad Eburne talks so much about. Then, at some opportune time between two of these trips, I’ll buy a ranch and ask Nels to run it for me, on salary or shares, or both, whatever is fairest to him. You can marry Nels, then, have your mother come to you—and live happily ever afterward.—Now what have you to say?”
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” screamed Sue wildly above the roar of the wind outside. “What a horrible temptation to spring on a poor little weak-minded girl! No! No! Patricia, I can’t—I can’t accept that. Oh, thank you for all you are offering me—us—but we can’t accept your charity, even though I know it comes from the heart.”
“Sue, don’t be hasty. This is a reasonable proposition I am making you.”
“Shore I can’t see that. You’ve been carried away by this canyon. You feel sorry for Nels and me. You want to do some generous thing for us. It’s wonderfully good of you, but I won’t stand for it.”
“Of course there is sentiment about it,” rejoined Patricia persuasively. “But it is business, too. I will have to hire someone to do these things for me. I have indeed been overcome by this canyon. I want to own a place near it where I can come and have my own things. I am sure Nels will consider it a good business proposition.”
“Patricia, have you said anything to that cowboy?” demanded Sue sharply.
“Not a word. Not a hint. I did tell Thad Eburne something of my plans and asked him to regard it as confidential.”
“Aw!” breathed Sue, sinking back. “Shore, I was afraid that accounted for Nels’s being out of his haid lately.”
“How so?”
“Oh, he’s been wanting to kiss me, and everything.”
“Naturally. And of course you let him?”
“I did not.”
“Well! Then I propose that you tell Nels of my plan and then kiss him. That’ll mean acceptance, engagement, marriage, home, future. All in one fell swoop!”
“You torture me,” wailed Sue. “I can’t think. You’ve knocked my legs out from under me…. It all sifts down to money, and I never had any. I don’t know how to figure, to judge what is right. Shore this plan of yours would cost a lot. Such a risk you’d run. Ranching is uncertain unless you can hold on.”
“Sue, I have more money than I know what to do with,” replied Patricia. “It’s all I do have!—Surely you can see how right and good it is for me to help make two fine young people happy, and by doing it fi
nd happiness myself! Is there any doubt of that logic?”
Sue fell upon Patricia’s neck and, burying her face, she began to sob, “Oh! I—love you…. It’s too—much—for me!” She was convinced. The New York girl held her closely and felt the slow tears well from her own eyes and wet her cheeks. In this winning of Sue’s consent to her plan she had won something precious for herself as well. The girl wept as if a long pent-up flood of worry and responsibility had been swept away. But gradually the storm subsided and at length ceased.
“Shore I am a—baby still,” she murmured, with a tremulous little laugh and a catch in her voice. “Something broke in heah,” and she pressed Patricia’s hand to her breast.
“Sue, won’t it be fun telling Nels?” asked Patricia, taking the young girl’s hand.
“That’ll shore be the grandest hour of my life,” burst out Sue. “I’ll begin by being terribly serious. I’ll tell him I’ve at last been persuaded to consider his proposal of marriage…. Oh, gosh! Then I’ll paint in vivid colors my poverty, that he’ll have Mother on his hands and a lot of relatives and we’ll have to live in a homestead cabin. Shore he’ll be game and swallow the whole outfit. But he’ll sort of sink down in his boots. When he gets way down I’ll say, ‘Nelson Stackhouse, do you realize you’re going to marry a fortune?’ I’ll be proud and mysterious. Then, when he’s about out of his haid, I’ll spring my secret on him…. Oh, it’s sweet, it’s beautiful…. And you’re so wonderful to me, Patricia!”
And as outside the storm raged, they talked and planned. Patricia found it romantic to picture in her mind’s eye a great timbered and grazing stretch of ranch land and a rambling, picturesque ranch house, built after ideas of her own. In spite of herself, there appeared in the picture the tall, dark figure of a forest ranger.
“Shore, then you’ll come often,” cried Sue happily.
“It might become a home,” breathed Patricia, almost to herself.