Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 1035
“Nesta is my twin sister. I have not seen her for thirteen years. But when last I heahed from her — two years an’ more ago — she was well, happy an’ prosperous.”
“Your twin sister? Nesta! I’m glad. . . . Is there any — other?”
“No.”
“Then stay with us.”
“You ask me — that way — Miss Halstead?” he queried, and bent a little to study her face.
“Yes. I’ve only known you an hour. But what’s time? I just feel — and trust you.”
“See heah, child, I shore don’t deserve such — such — —”
“I’m no child,” interrupted Esther, and indeed she was realizing then something of the wonder and mystery of a woman.
“No, I reckon you’re not. I shore wish you were aboot Ronnie’s age. . . . What did this heah dog-gone Joe tell you aboot me?”
“Not much, though I coaxed him,” replied Esther, and she divined, if ever in her life she should tell the truth, it must be now. “He said you were shy of pretty girls and ran from them. So I made myself look as pretty as ever I could — which wasn’t very, I guess — and came out to see.”
“I reckon you’re wrong aboot how you made yourself look. Well, an’ what did you see?”
“You didn’t run from me, that’s certain. So I must be quite homely. And so far as your weakness is concerned you can risk staying.”
“The son-of-a-gun! To tell you that!” ejaculated Ames. “Reckon I haven’t one laig to stand on. . . . But there shore is a risk, Miss Halstead.”
“You mean of the cattle-thieves?” she queried, quickly.
“Shore I’d forgot aboot them.” He turned, releasing her from the blue enthrallment that had seemed to engulf and hold her, and he looked out over the Troublesome and the colorful hills. “Miss Halstead, if there’s any risk it’s not for you. That was just half fun. I used to play at words, like any other cowboy. But I reckon I meant to stay.”
“You — will!”
“Shore. An’ I’m the lucky one. Only I wish you didn’t have to know me as Arizona Ames.”
“Oh, you are —— I — I can’t thank you!” Esther felt overwhelmed by she knew not what commingling of emotions. She became aware, too, that she was clinging to his sleeve. Then her hand loosened, and she turned to her father, nodding, smiling through her tears.
* * * * *
Mid-September had come, ushering in the still, smoky, blazing days of Indian summer.
Esther had climbed higher up the slopes of Troublesome than ever before, a feat commensurate with the elevation of her spirit. It marked more than one change in the affairs of Halstead’s ranch; in the instance, particularly, the fact that she did not fear to ride or climb about alone.
From the crest of the last bench she had surmounted she gazed regretfully at her trail leading down to the next below. Her trail seemed cruelly vivid — a ragged zigzag dark lane through a solid blooming mass of asters, lilac in hue, and of breath-arresting beauty. Esther gazed as one in a dream. She had waded up through a deep snow of wild flowers. In one hand she held a bunch of asters, specimens especially exquisite and of four different shades — purple, lilac, heliotrope and lavender; and in the other hand she grasped five stalks of Indian paint-brush, scarlet, cerise, pink, magenta, and the fifth so varied, so lovely with its dominating white, that she could not give it an adequate name.
These flowers did not flourish so marvelously on the lower slopes, though indeed their normal colors prevailed along the creek.
Esther had long aimed at the aspen grove which she had now attained. From her window at the ranch she had watched it glow daily more golden, luring her to adventure to the heights. Close at hand it was a little spot of enchanted land, a level bench upon which grew a few dozen white-barked quaking asps now in the full glory of autumnal gold. They stood several feet apart, but mingled their foliage in a canopy that quivered and quaked, as if each leaf was shuddering because many of them were releasing their hold on life, and soon all must fall to add to the golden carpet on the grass. And from out this golden carpet, here and there and everywhere, stood up stately, lovely columbines, white and blue.
Esther found a grassy seat under an aspen on the verge, and here she laid aside her flowers and hat, and the field-glass that had been slung round her shoulders. She leaned back against the tree to gaze and gaze, at the columbines nodding to her, at the whispering canopy above which almost blotted out the blue sky, at the slope of lilac snow leading down to the next bench, at the hazed slumbering valley and the ranch far below, at the opposite slopes, waving in color, rising bench by bench, up to the region of thin black standing poles, desolate against the forest background, and at the magnificent mountain domes beyond.
There was no hurry; the afternoon hour seemed suspended, sweet, silent, infinitely momentous, so beautiful that it made her heart ache. She was alone. One such hour as this on the slopes above Troublesome not only made up for past pangs and doubts and worries, but also wedded her to Colorado for all her life. She could not explain why, but she felt it poignantly. She could now even love Troublesome in the dead of winter because of what it must always promise for summer, and this flowering season.
Esther had never underrated her capacity for love, but of late she could not but be astounded at its appalling development. Her father, the boys, Gertrude, and even Fred, had come in for a magnifying of her affections, yet strange and marvelous indeed was it that this seemed little compared with the might of another love. A lithe rider, lean of jaw, dark of face, piercing of eye, had won her worship.
She had never denied the varying degrees of this irresistible thing — that had multiplied hours into weeks — but she had not until lately realized its might. Her shame, her fear, her secret selfish hope had gone with its realization. She did not see why she should live in perpetual conflict with her unknown self just because she loved a man. She had always known she was going to love some one, desperately perhaps, but now that the time had come she wanted to be happy, instead of miserable, because of it. And she did realize an exalting happiness, at least up here, absorbing the bigness and freedom of this solitude. Yet could she hold that lofty emotion, keep it with her always, to down the instincts and longings seemingly damning within to cause her misery?
The cattle were lowing across the valley. She could see the numerous dots of red and white blurred against the hazy background. They had been herded down from up the Troublesome, out of the zone of the poison larkspur. Esther took up her field-glass and swept the slopes, a little guiltily conscious of what and whom she longed to see. But there were no riders with the cattle, which accounted for the fact that a herd of elk were grazing with them. Esther watched the lordly monarch of that herd. He kept somewhat aloof and often he stopped grazing to look about and down. His magnificent antlers resembled the roots of an upturned stump. He was shaggy, black and gray. How freely, how wildly he lifted his noble head! Once a whistling ringing bugle pealed across the valley.
And from watching and listening, reveling in this elemental wilderness, thinking and dreaming, and thinking again, Esther arrived at the bewildering question of how and why and when she had come to love Arizona Ames.
The how and the why resolved themselves into the joint deduction that she was merely a woman creature and could not help herself.
But the when — that was the mystery which fascinated her, made her at once humble and furious, impotent and grateful. What good would it do her to know, since the stark and staring fact was enough? But it was her unconscious way of eulogizing Ames, which she could not resist.
Perhaps when he appeared before her that day — could it be only three weeks past? — a spent and haggard rider, yet the picturesque figure of her dreams. Or possibly when she sat rigid and breathless in her room the next morning, her ears strained to catch Joe Cabel’s earnest words to her father, her heart shocked with the consciousness that this rider, Ames, was inevitable and wonderful to his old range friend, yet to her terrible. Or perhaps, almost surely, when she had had the temerity to look up into his eyes — those blue daggers that pierced her — and had asked him, appealed to him, importuned him to stay at Troublesome.
Something incalculable and far-reaching had happened then to her, but the naked searching of it did not leave her sure this was the moment when she had fallen in love with Ames. She remembered the stab she had encountered with the name of Nesta. That had been his sister. Jealousy! He had ruined his life for this Nesta, so Joe had said. Esther must hear that story some day before she could judge truly and vanquish ignoble jealousy. What a strange, hot, vicious incredible thing — this jealousy!
Or perhaps it had come insidiously, through the gradual brightening of her father, to the recovery of his cheerful spirits and his old energetic hopeful self. Realization of this truth had been a mark in Esther’s life. How she had wept, alone in the dark! Then there was the unforgettable day when Brown stalked into the living-room, carrying a trout as long as his arm — the most bedraggled and rapturously astounded lad in all the world, “Ess, look ahere,” he had cried, with eyes of light. “Arizona showed me how to ketch him. An’ I gotta quit cussin’.” The added wonder was that he had stopped.
Then Fred’s taking Mecklin’s place in the herding of the cattle — that had been an event. Esther recalled the very hour, on the morning her father, in few pointed words, had discharged Mecklin.
“See heah, Fred,” Ames had drawled, in his cool way that might mean humor or kindness or menace, “get your horse an’ gun. You’re shore goin’ to ride with me.”
Fred had showed the first gladness in many a day. And like a duck to water, according to Ames, he had taken to the cattle game. What Halstead had never been able to drive his son to do, Ames had accomplished with a few words. How to explain it? There was something compelling about Arizona Ames. Then the glamour of his name! Esther thought she hated that, but it never failed to thrill her. Again she had played eavesdropper, to hear Joe relate to her father and Fred the story of Ames killing the infamous rancher-hustler, Rankin.
Had that been the hour of her undoing? If so, what had the West done to her? She, who never had as a child been permitted to read novels and romances, who at fourteen had taught a Sunday-school class! But people never knew what hid deep in them.
She could not arrive at any definite conclusion. The catastrophe had to do with all these incidents and the moods they engendered. The overwhelming fact remained that she loved Ames more than she had dreamed of, and that had been quite enough.
Every moment in his presence she seemed to live a lie. She had to hide her feelings when she yearned to be honest. Any chance word or action might rise up like a traitor to betray her. And the worst of it was she wanted to be betrayed. She had no shame, she thought, with a most passionate shame. There were moments when she bewailed her state, and others, like these spent in the grassy slopes, that she gloried in her abasement.
But what to do? “Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” sighed Esther. Up here she seemed wonderously happy. But down at the ranch there were times — And suddenly with hot cheeks she recalled an incident of the other day. She had saddled and mounted her horse, for a little ride, and was about to be off when Fred and Ames appeared on foot.
“Whoopee! Isn’t she a handsome thing, Arizona?” Fred had called out, gayly.
Esther had taken the compliment gracefully when Ames had spoiled it.
“Tolerable. But that rig she’s wearin’ is shore ondecorous,” Ames had replied.
Then without noting Esther’s hot blush he had laid a strong hand over hers, that clutched the pommel. He gave the saddle a shake.
“Tenderfoot! Cain’t you remember what I told you aboot cinchin’ a saddle?”
“No, I can’t,” Esther had weakly though defiantly imitated. Then while he drew the cinch properly secure, Esther had to sit there, quivering at the slight contact of his swift hands, horrified at a sudden wild impulse to throw her arms round his neck. Surely that could not have been the illusive moment, for she must have loved him before she could have sunk to such ignominious mental aberration.
* * * * *
Late in the afternoon Esther wended a careful and loving way down through the asters, vowing, as she went, not to pull another single flower, but when she reached the creek she had her arms full. Her heart, too, seemed full, if not of flowers, then of their essence and beauty. More significant of this eventful walk was the fact that the noisy, quarrelsome Troublesome seemed now singing happily down the valley.
CHAPTER XVI
ESTHER MET JOE coming up the creek trail, some distance from the ranch house. In the afternoon he usually had some leisure hours, which he spent outdoors, mostly with the boys. Always, when Esther had been riding or walking, he would meet her. It occurred to her that of late his watchfulness had grown.
“Wal, I’d hate to have to say which was the prettiest — you or the flowers,” he remarked.
“You old flatterer!” exclaimed Esther, gayly. “I’ll bet you were a devil with the girls, once.”
“No, I was a very mild boy.”
“Catch me believing that. How many sweethearts, Joe?”
“Only one. I married her when she was eighteen, an’ me not much older. We never had no children, but we was happy — till she died. I never got over thet. But I’m the better for it all.”
“Oh, Joe! I’m sorry I was flippant,” returned Esther, regretfully.
“Wal, you must have had a dandy climb. Them paint-brushes don’t grow down low.”
“It was lovely. I went higher than ever before. Found such a lovely little grove where I could see everywhere and be unseen.”
“Unseen? Not from a couple of pairs of hawk eyes I know of.”
“Yours for one pair. And whose else?” she rejoined, knowing full well.
“Wal, you can guess.”
“Dad’s?”
“Nope.”
“Fred’s? — Gertie’s? — The boys’?”
“Nope.”
“Oh, well, I’m a poor guesser, anyhow.”
“Lass, them other hawk eyes belong to the locoedest, love-sickenest fellar I ever seen.”
“Indeed? Poor man!” exclaimed Esther, solicitously.
“Let’s set down on this big rock,” said Joe, serious where Esther had expected humor.
“But it’s late, Joe. And I’m all mussy and flower-stained. I’ll have to change for supper,” she protested, suddenly a little in fear of his gravity.
“Wal, you needn’t change tonight. For there’ll be only the children an’ your dad at table.”
“Fred said he’d be home today?” questioned Esther, quickly sensing something unusual.
“He didn’t come home. You know Fred left Saturday to spend a day or so at Wood’s. He’s getting sweet on Biny again. Wal, young Jim rode over today an’ he said Fred stayed only a little bit at Wood’s. But he was seen on the road with Hensler.”
“Oh, Joe, don’t tell me that!” implored Esther.
“Sorry, but I reckon you might better hear all this bad news from me.”
“Bad — news! More?” faltered Esther. The transition from her late dream to present reality hurt in proportion to its surprise and inevitability. Too good to last!
“More an’ then some. So grit your teeth, lass. Your dad took it fine. Why, a month ago he’d have sunk under this.”
“Tell me!”
“Wal, there was a cattle raid on us today. Up back of the ranch on High Ridge. Stevens got back shot — —”
“Shot!” cried Esther, wildly. “And Ames?”
“No. Arizona wasn’t there. Stevens was alone. He got shot up pretty bad, but he’ll pull through. Jed drove off with him in the wagon an’ Arizona followed on horseback. If they can fetch a doctor over from Craig or some place Stevens will be all right.”
“Poor fellow! Oh, I hope and pray he’s not in danger. . . . Cattle-thieves again! — Joe, that surely upset father?”
“Not so anyone would notice it,” responded Joe. “The old gent tickled me. I tell you, lass, havin’ Arizona around makes a he — aw — a shore lot of difference. I’m darned if I don’t believe your dad sort of welcomed this raid. We all knowed them two-bit thieves would sooner or later try Arizona out. Wal, they have, an’ d — dog-gone me! If it wasn’t for you, lass, I’d be tickled, too.”
“Never mind me,” whispered Esther, trying to brace herself for what she knew was coming.
“Stevens didn’t talk much,” went on Joe. “But we got enough out of him to piece up the deal. Mecklin an’ Barsh Hensler, with some fellars Stevens didn’t know, tackled — —”
“Barsh Hensler! — Oh, you say Fred was seen with him?” cried Esther, in distress.
“Yes, I’m d — darn sorry to say. But Ames said to your dad, ‘Wait, Halstead; wait till I find out.’ . . . An’ I say the same to you, lass. Don’t judge Fred in your heart till all the evidence is before you. Mebbe it ain’t so bad as it looks. . . . Wal, Mecklin told Stevens they was callin’ the bluff Arizona Ames made in Yampa. An’ they was drivin’ off this bunch of cattle, which luckily for us was smaller’n they had figgered on. Stevens showed fight, accordin’ to his story. He’s got a couple of bullet holes to back it up. He fell off his hoss back up the slope. But sharp-eyed Ronnie seen him an’ told us. Your dad an’ me packed him down an’ was dressin’ his wounds when Arizona came in.”
“Then — what?” asked Esther, trembling.
“Wal, then, Arizona took charge. He sent Jed off in the wagon with Stevens, an’ he cussed your dad, who was a-rarin’ to go along. An’ while he was saddlin’ up his hoss he talked fast. ‘Joe,’ he says, ‘go out an’ hunt up Esther. Suppose she had been up on this heah side of the valley!’ An’ he swore turrible. ‘Find her an’ tell her straight without any frills thet it looks bad. But if Fred isn’t really mixed up in it, why, it wouldn’t amount to as much as two duces in a jackpot, an’ — —’”
“Good heavens, Joe! How could he say that — and what did he mean?”
