Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 1014
A thick amber light hung under the trees, heavy as if it had substance. A strong exhilaration possessed Tanner. He was growing old, but the effect of the Tonto seemed to renew his youth. The solitude of the slopes and valleys, the signs of wild game in the dust of the trail, the babble of the brook, the penetrating fragrance of pine and spruce, the brush, the dead leaves, the fallen cones, the mat of needles, the lichened rocks — these were physical proofs that he had come home to the environment he loved best.
“Reckon I’ll not go away no more,” he muttered as he trudged through the gap in the cliff, up and down over the gray stones. “Onless, of course, the Ameses go,” he added as an afterthought. “Shore was a good idee thet I planned to send my winter’s catch out by stage.”
The valley of the Tonto was full of golden light. The sun had just set behind the bold brow of Mescal Ridge, and a wonderful flare of gold, thrown up against a dark bank of purple cloud, seemed to be reflected down into the valley. Cappy sat down on a log above the creek, where many a time he had rested before, and watched the magic glow on field and slope and water. Already the air had begun to cool. The gold swept by as if it had been the transparent shadow of a cloud, swift and evanescent, like a dream, or a fleeting happiness. Wild ducks went whirring down the creek, the white bars on their wings twinkling. A big buck, his coat the gray-blue of fall, crossed an opening in the brush. Up high somewhere an old gobbler was calling his flock to roost.
Tanner’s watch and reverie were interrupted by the cracking of hoofs on the rocks of the trail up the creek. Soon two riders emerged from the green, and the first was Rich Ames. He waved a glad hand, then came on at a trot. Cappy stood up, conscious of how good it was to see this Tonto lad again. Rich Ames on horseback was surely pleasant to gaze upon, but when he slid out of his saddle, in one long lithe step, he sent a thrill to the old trapper’s heart.
“Wal, lad, hyar I am, an’ damn glad to see you,” said Tanner, as he swung on the extended hand and gripped it hard.
“Same heah, old timer,” drawled Rich Ames, his cool, lazy voice in strong contrast to the smile that was like a warm flash.
The second rider trotted up and dismounted. He was as tall as Ames, only heavier, and evidently several years the senior. His features were homely, especially his enormous nose. He had a winning smile and clear gray eyes. He wore the plain jeans of the homesteader, which looked dull and drab beside Rich Ames’ gray fringed buckskin.
“Sam, it’s shore old Cappy Tanner, my trapper pard,” said Rich. “Cap, meet my friend, Sam Playford.”
“How do!” greeted Playford, with an honest grin. “What I haven’t heard about you ain’t worth hearin’.”
“Wal, any friend of Rich’s is mine,” replied Cappy, cordially. “You’re new hyarabouts?”
“Yes. I come in last April.”
“Homesteadin’?”
“I been tryin’ to. But between these two Ames twins I have a plumb job of it.”
“Twins? — Which ones?”
The boys laughed uproariously, and Rich jabbed a thumb into Sam’s side.
“Cappy, it shore’s not Manzi an’ Mescal,” he drawled.
“Ahuh! Must be Nesta an’ you, then? I’m always forgettin’ you’re twins, too. Though, Lord knows, you look like two peas in a pod.”
“Yep, Cap, only I take a back seat to Nesta.”
“Where is thet lass? My pore eyes are achin’ for a sight of her,” returned Tanner.
“You’ll have them cured pronto, then,” said Rich. “For she’s comin’ along the trail somewheres behind. Mad as a wet hen!”
“Mad! What’s the matter?”
“Nothin’. She’s been stayin’ at Snells’, over at Turkey Flat. She an’ Lil Snell have got thick since last winter. I like Lil an’ I reckon she’s all right. But all the same I don’t want Nesta stayin’ long over there. So I went after her.”
Sam turned down the trail. “She’s comin’ now, an’ I reckon it’ll be safer for me to run along till you cheer her up,” he said.
“Take my horse with you, Sam, an’ turn him loose in the pasture,” rejoined Rich.
Cappy strained his eyes up the leafy trail.
“Wal, I see something,” he said at last. “But if it’s Nesta she’s comin’ awful slow.”
“Cap, she’s got an eye like a hawk. She sees me, an’ she’ll hang back till I go. . . . Old timer, I’d begun to fear you’d died or somethin’. Dog-gone, but I’m glad you’ve come!”
In these words and the wistfulness of his glance Rich Ames betrayed not only what he said but the fact that a half year had made him older and graver.
“You’ve had some trouble, Rich?”
“Shore have.”
“Somethin’ beside — Tommy’s death?”
“Reckon so.”
“Wal, what is it?”
“It’s aboot Nesta. An’ it’s got me plumb up a tree . . . . But, Cap, I want more time to tell you. So I’ll run along home while you meet Nesta.”
A bay pony emerged from the wall of green down the trail. Its rider was a bareheaded girl whose bonnet hung over her shoulders. She sat her saddle sideways. But when she neared the pine log where the trapper leaned watching, she partly turned. Then she sat up, startled. The petulant droop of her vanished and her red lips curled in a smile of surprise and delight. She slid off the saddle to confront him.
“Cappy Tanner! . . . So it was you Rich was talkin’ to?” she cried.
“Wal, Nesta, if it’s really you, I’m sayin’ howdy,” rejoined the trapper.
“It’s me, Cappy. . . . Have I changed so — so much?”
The beautiful blue-flashing eyes, so characteristic of the Ameses, met his only for a moment. It was the change in her and not the constraint that inhibited Tanner. Hardly more than six months ago she had been a slender, pale-faced girl, pretty with all the fairness of the family. And now she seemed a woman, strange to him, grown tall, full-bosomed, beautiful as one of the golden flowers of the valley. Cappy passed a reluctant gaze from her head to her feet, and back again. He had never seen her dressed becomingly like this. Her thick rich hair, so fair that it was almost silver, was parted in the middle above a low forehead just now marred by a little frown. Under level fine brows her eyes, sky-blue, yet full of fire, roved everywhere, refusing to concentrate upon her old friend. Any stranger who had ever seen Rich Ames would have recognized her as his twin sister, yet the softness of her face, its sweetness, its femininity were features singularly her own.
“Changed? Wal, lass, you are,” replied the old trapper, slowly, as he took her hands. “Growed into a woman! . . . Nesta, you’re the purtiest thing in all the Tonto.”
“Ah, Cappy, you haven’t changed,” she replied, suddenly gay and glad. And she kissed him, not with the old innocent freedom, but shyly, in a restraint that did not lack warmth. “Oh, I’m so happy you’re here! I’ve thought of you every day for a month. Did you come today? You must have, for Rich didn’t know.”
“Jest got in, lass, an’ I never knowed what home seemed like before.”
She slipped an arm under his, and then, with her horse following, she led him toward the cabin.
“Cappy, I’m more in need of a true friend than ever before in all my life,” she said, soberly.
“Why, lass, you talk as if you hadn’t any!” returned Tanner, reprovingly.
“I haven’t. Not one single friend — unless it’s you.”
“Wal, Nesta, I don’t savvy thet, but you can depend on me.”
“Cappy, I don’t mean no one cares for me. . . . Rich, and Sam Playford — and — and others — care for me, far beyond my deserts. But they boss and want and force me. . . . They don’t help. They can’t see my side. . . . Cappy, I’m in the most terrible fix any girl was ever in. I’m caught in a trap. Do you remember the day you took me on a round of your traps? And we came upon a poor little beaver caught by the foot? . . . Well, I’m like that.”
“Nesta, I’m awful interested, but I reckon not much scared,” replied Cappy, with a laugh that did not quite ring true.
They reached the three huge spruces overspreading the cabin, and Nesta turned to unsaddle her pony. Sam Playford, who evidently had been waiting, approached from the porch.
“I’ll tend to him, Nesta,” he said.
“Thank you, Mr. Playford,” she returned, with sarcasm. “I can manage as well here as I had to at Snells’.”
Mescal and Manzanita ran out to overwhelm Tanner, shouting gleefully, “Here comes Santa Claus!”
“Wal, mebbe, when Christmas comes, but not now,” retorted the trapper, resolutely. He had once before encountered a predicament similar to this.
“Uncle, when will you open the pack?” begged Manzi.
“Wal, some time after supper.”
“I can’t eat till you do open it,” declared Mescal, tragically.
“If I do open it before supper, then you won’t eat nothin’ but candy,” declared Tanner.
“Candy!” screamed Manzanita. “Who wants to eat deer meat and beans if there’s candy?”
“Ooooummm!” cried her sister, ecstatically.
“Wal, let’s have a vote on it,” said the trapper, as if inspired. “Mescal an’ Manzi have declared for openin’ the pack before supper. . . . What do you say, Mrs. Ames?”
“Supper ain’t ready yet,” she rejoined, significantly.
“How about you, Nesta?”
“Me! How about what?” she returned, as she deposited her saddle on the porch, apparently unaware of Sam Playford’s disapproval.
“Why, about openin’ my pack. I fetched you-all a lot of presents.”
“Cappy! — Open it now!” she flashed, suddenly radiant.
“An’ what do you say, Mr. Playford?”
“Cappy, if you don’t mind,” replied that worthy, “if you’re includin’ me, I’ll say if you got anythin’ to give anybody, do it quick.”
“Hey, Rich, you’re in on this,” went on the trapper.
“Cap, suppose you leave it to me?” responded Rich, with tantalizing coolness.
“Wal, I’m willin’. You ‘pear to be the only level-headed one hyar.”
“Open the pack after Nesta an’ the twins have gone to bed.”
The feminine triangle thus arraigned burst out with a vociferous, incoherent, yet unanimous decision that they never would go to bed.
“Wal, reckon I’ll compromise,” decided Tanner. “Right after supper, then, I’ll open the show.”
“Come in, Cap,” said Rich. “This November air gets cold once the sun goes down.”
The living-room extended the width of the cabin, and perhaps half the length. With a fire burning in the stone fireplace it presented a cheery, comfortable aspect. It also served as dining-room, and two beds, one in each corner, indicated that some of the family slept there. A door near the chimney opened into the kitchen, a small and recent addition. Two other rooms completed the cabin, neither of which opened into this large apartment. Rich Ames, like all the Tontonians, liked open fires, to which the three yellow stone chimneys rising above the cabin gave ample testimony.
“Manzi, you an’ Mescal wash up, an’ brush your hair,” observed Mrs. Ames from the kitchen. Nesta had vanished.
“How’s tracks, Rich?” queried Tanner, with interest.
“Cap, I never saw so much game sign since I can remember,” replied Ames, with reflective satisfaction. “Dad once told me aboot a fall like this. Reckon ten year ago, long before the Pleasant Valley war.”
“Wal, thet’s good news. What kind of tracks?”
“All kinds. Beaver, mink, marten, fox — why, old timer, if you catch all of the varmints in Doubtful you can buy out the fur companies. How are prices likely to be?”
“Top notch. An’ ain’t it lucky to come when fur is plentiful? Reckon it’s a late fall, too.”
“Shore is. Hardly any snow heah at all. An’ only lately on top. Bear, deer, turkey so thick up Tonto that you can kick them out of the trails. An’ lots of lions, too.”
“I reckon feed is plentiful, or all this game would be somewhere else?”
“Just wonderful, Cap. Acorns on the ground thick as hops. Berries aplenty, a good few wild grapes, an’ the first big crop of piñon nuts for years. The game is high up yet, an’ shore won’t work down till the weather gets bad. We had lots of rain at the right season, an’ the winter snows will be late. I’ll bet I know of a hundred bee trees. We been waitin’ for you, rememberin’ your weakness for honey.”
“Haw! Haw! As if you didn’t have the same? — How about you, Playford, on Tonto honey?”
“Me? I’ve as sweet a tooth as one of these Tonto bears.”
“Wal, thet’s all fine for me,” declared the trapper, with gratification. “I reckon you boys will throw in with me, this winter anyway?”
“We shore will, Cap,” replied Rich.
“I’m darn glad of the chance,” added Playford. “My place is all tidy for the winter, even to firewood cut.”
“Jest luck thet I fetched a sack of new traps,” said Tanner.
“Hey, Rich,” called his mother from the kitchen, “come pack in the supper before I throw it out.”
Rich responded with alacrity, and every time he emerged from the kitchen, laden with steaming pans he winked mysteriously at Cappy Tanner, subtly implicating Nesta, who had come in dressed in white, very sweet and aloof, and Sam Playford, who could not keep his humble worshipful eyes off her.
“Cappy, you set in your old seat,” directed Mrs. Ames, beaming upon him. Then the twins came rushing in like whirlwinds, and they fought over who should have the place next to Tanner. Nesta was the last to seat herself, with an air of faint disapproval at the close proximity to Playford.
This byplay amused the trapper, yet began to arouse curiosity and concern in him. Nesta had never before had an admirer who had been accepted by her family, if not by her. In the Tonto, girls of sixteen were usually married or about to be; and here was Nesta Ames, past eighteen, still single, and for all Cappy could tell, fancy free. He could be sure of little, except her charm and the change in her, the mystery of which only made her more attractive. Conversation lagged, and the interest of everybody, even the trapper, appeared to center on getting the meal over. The clearing off of the table was accomplished with miraculous brevity, and the kitchen lamp was brought in to add more light. Rich threw a couple of billets on the fire.
“Wal, you all set around the table an’ I’ll play Santa Claus,” directed Tanner, and to the twins’ screams of delight he repaired to the porch, leaving the door open.
This was an hour for which he had long planned. In order to make a magnificent impression he decided to carry all the bundles and parcels in at once, and thereby overwhelm the Ameses at one fell swoop. But he had not calculated on the difficulty of handling the mass when it was not snugly bound in a canvas. Not only did he stagger under the load, but he stumbled on the rude threshold and lost his balance.
“Whoopee!” roared Rich Ames, in enormous glee.
Cappy went down with his burdens, jarring the cabin.
CHAPTER II
A FEW MOMENTS later Cappy Tanner gazed around the living-room, utterly happy to contemplate the joy he had brought to the Ames family. Not for nothing had he, in the past, made note of what they needed and what they had longed for.
For once Mescal and Manzanita were confounded and mute. Mrs. Ames was not ashamed of her tears, if she were aware of them, and she regarded Tanner as if he were beyond comprehension. Nesta had been most blessed by the trapper’s generosity. As she opened parcel after parcel she gasped. The last was a large flat box, somewhat crushed from the many packings on the back of a burro, but the contents were uninjured. The old trapper had engaged the good offices of a clever girl in Prescott to help him make these particular purchases of finery, but he did not betray that. He had the smiling nonchalant air of a man to whom such remarkable knowledge was nothing unusual. At first Nesta seemed rapt and spellbound. Then she hugged him. Cappy felt rewarded beyond his deserts, for the radiance and eloquence of her face had more than repaid him. At last she wept, and fled with her possessions to her room.
Rich Ames sat on a bench, gazing down on the floor, where he had laid side by side, a new .44 Winchester, a Colt of the latest pattern, row after row of boxes of shells, a hunting-knife and a hand ax, a pair of wonderful silver-mounted Mexican spurs, a cartridge-belt of black carved leather with silver buckle and a gun-sheath ornamented by a large letter A in silver.
“You son-of-a-gun!” burst out Rich, gulping. “Spent all last winter’s catch on us!”
“No. I bought a new outfit for myself, two more burros, some pack saddles, an’ a lot of good grub,” replied Tanner, complacently.
“Cap, if you had to do this heah job, why didn’t you wait till Christmas?” asked Ames, spreading wide his hands.
Tanner bit his wayward tongue in time to keep secret the second pack which was full of Christmas presents.
“Wal, Rich, if I have anythin’ good to tell a fellar or give him, I do it quick.”
“You’ve ruined this Ames outfit. Sam, what do you say aboot it?”
“If I had a million I’d give it to see Nesta look like she did,” replied Playford, fervently.
“So would I. Wasn’t she wild? — Poor Nesta! . . . She’s a girl an’ she’s had so little.”
“Wal, folks, I’ll mosey back to my cabin,” said Tanner. “I’m pretty tired an’ now thet I’ve had my little party I’ll say good night.”
“You goin’ an’ we haven’t thanked you?” queried Ames, aghast at a fact that seemed irremedial.
