Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 1135
CHAPTER NINETEEN
JED STONE AWOKE with the first pink streak of dawn flushing the sky. The old sombre distrust of the new day had departed. He seemed young again.
Going to the door of the cabin, he called: “Hey, babes in the woods! Roll out an’ rustle.”
He heard a gasp, and then a low moan, but he did not look in. He went out to fetch the horses. There had been nine in the canyon the night before; now he could see but six, including his own. One was a pretty pinto mare which he selected for Gloriana, with a chuckle at the thought of how all her life she would remember this ride. He drove four horses in, haltered them, and chose the best saddles for the girls, the stirrups of which he shortened to fit them. It tickled him to see the blue smoke curling up from the cabin, and a little later his keen nostrils took note of the fragrance of coffee.
Presently he repaired to the cabin.
“Mawnin’, gurls,” he bawled, stalking in.
Gloriana had been listlessly brushing her lustrous hair, while Molly attended to the breakfast chores.
“Ha, makin’ yourself look pretty,” remarked Stone. “Wal, we can’t bamboozle the boss of the Hash-Knife. An’ you ought to be ashamed — lettin’ Molly do all the work.”
“I started the fire and made the biscuits,” she retorted. Stone had grasped before that she seemed peculiarly susceptible to criticism, and decided he would work on her sensitiveness to the limit.
“Wal, you can’t pack much of this outfit,” observed Stone. “You gurls pick out what belongs to you.”
Molly designated two duffle-bags and one small grip. Stone carried them outside. Then returning, he rolled some blankets. He remembered that he had some hard bread and dried meat in his saddle-bags, which supply he would add to without letting the girls know. His plan precluded an insufficiency of food on this three-day ride down to Yellow Jacket. When he had packed the horse Molly called from the cabin, “Come an’ get it!”
“You come hyar yourself an’ get some-thin’,” he replied.
Molly came runnin’, anxious and big-eyed. “What — Jed?”
“Pitch in now, an’ show this Eastern gull what a Western lass is made of. Savvy?”
“I reckon.”
“I’m givin’ you the chance, Molly. Don’t fall down. Take everythin’ as a matter of course. Help her, shore, but give her a little dig now an’ then.”
“Jed, you’re a devil,” returned Molly, slowly, and turned away.
The breakfast was even more tasteful than had been the supper the night before. Stone ate with the appetite of an Indian, and the wisdom of a range-rider who had to go far.
“Gulls, I’ve gotta hurry, so can’t pack much grub,” said. Stone, rising to gather up a few utensils, some coffee and meat, and what biscuits had been left.
Presently the girls appeared. Molly had taken the precaution to don a riding-skirt and boots, but Gloriana wore the thin dress which Malloy had torn considerably.
“Where’s your hat?” asked Stone.
“It blew off, yesterday...I — I forgot to look in my bag — and change. If you’ll give me time—”
“Nope. Sorry, Gloriana. Didn’t I tell you I was a hunted man? You’ll have to ride as you are. Strikes me the Lord made you wonderful to look at, but left out any brains. You’ll do fine in Arizona...Here, wear Croak’s sombrero...Haw haw! If your ma could see you now!”
She had to be helped up on the pinto, which promptly bucked her off upon the soft sward. What injury she suffered was to her vanity. She threw off the sombrero, but Stone jammed it back on her head.
“Can’t you ride?” inquired Stone, gazing down upon her.
“Do you think I was born in a stable?” she asked, bitterly.
“Wal, it’d be a darn sight better if you was. An’ far as thet is concerned the Lord was born in a stall, so I’ve heerd. So it ain’t no disgrace...I’m curious to know why you ever come to Arizona?”
“I was a fool.”
“Wal, get up an’ try again. This little mare isn’t bad. She was jest playin’. But don’t let her see you’re afraid. An’ don’t kick her in the ribs, like you did when you got up fust.”
“I — I can’t ride this way,” she said, scarlet of face.
“Wal, you are a holy show, by golly!” observed Stone. “I never seen so much of a pretty gurl. You shore wouldn’t win no rodeo prizes fer modesty.”
“Molly, I can’t go on,” cried Gloriana, almost weeping. “My skirt’s up round my neck!”
“Glory, I don’t see what else you can do. You’ll have to ride,” replied Molly.
“Thet’s talkin’. Glory, you’ll get some idee of the difference between a no-good tenderfoot from the East an’ a healthy Western cowgurl...Now, you follow me, an’ keep up, or there’ll be hell to pay.”
The ease with which Molly mounted her horse, a wicked, black animal, was not lost upon Gloriana, nor the way she controlled him.
“Molly, you better lead this pack-horse. I’ll have to keep my eye on our cultured lady-friend hyar,” drawled Stone, and he started off. At the gateway of the canyon, where a rough trail headed up toward the rim, he turned to caution Gloriana, “Hang on to her mane.”
When they reached the top he had satisfaction in the expression of that young woman’s face. Stone then struck out along the rim, and he did not need to pick out a rough way. The trail was one seldom used, and then only by riders who preferred to keep to the wilder going. It led through thickets of scrub oak, manzanita and dwarf pine, with a generous sprinkling of cactus. To drag Gloriana Traft through them was nothing short of cruelty. Stone kept an eye on her, though he appeared never to turn his head, never to hear her gasps and cries. Molly, who came last, often extricated her from some tangle.
Stone, from long habit, was a silent and swift traveller, and did not vary his custom now. But he had to stop more often to let the girls catch up. The condition of Gloriana’s dress — what was left of it — seemed satisfactory to the outlaw. Before Gloriana Traft got through this ride she would give all her possessions for a pair of blue jeans.
About the middle of the morning Jed came out on the high point of the Diamond Mesa. And he halted. The girls came up, to gaze out and down.
“Oh-h!” cried Miss Traft, her voice broken, yet deep and rich with feeling. She did not disappoint Stone here.
“The Tonto!” screamed Molly, suddenly beside herself. “Jed, why didn’t you tell me you were comin’ heah?...Oh, Glory, look — look! It’s my home.”
“Home!” echoed Gloriana, incredulously.
“Yes, Home!...An’, oh, how I love it! See thet thin line, with the white? Thet’s the Cibeque windin’ away down through the valley. See the big turn. Now look, Glory. There’s a bare spot in the green. An’ a grey dot in the middle. Thet’s my home. Thet’s my cabin. Where I was born.”
“I see. But I can hardly believe,” replied Gloriana. “That tiny pin-point in all the endless green?”
“Shore is, Glory. You’re standin’ on the high rim of the Diamond, a mile above the valley. But it looks close. You should see from down there. All my life I’ve looked up at this point. It was the Rim. But I was never heah before...Oh, look, look, Glory, so you will never forget!”
The Eastern girl gazed silently, with eyes that seemed to reflect something of the grandeur of the scene. Stone turned away from her, glad in his heart that somehow she had satisfied him. Then he had a moment for himself — to gaze once more and the last time over the Tonto.
“Molly, don’t forget to show Gloriana some other places,” said Stone, with a laugh. “There’s West Fork, a village I used to ride through an’ see you at Summer’s store. An’ buy you a stick of candy...Not for years now...An’ never again...There’s Bear Flat an’ Green Valley. An’ Haverly’s Ranch, an’ Gordon Canyon. An’ see, far to the east, thet bare yellow patch. Thet’s Pleasant Valley, where they had the sheep an’ cattle war which ruined your dad, though he was only a sympathiser, Molly. I reckon you never knew. Wal, it’s true...Miss Traft, you’re shore the furst Eastern gurl ever to see the Tonto.”
Though they wanted to linger, Stone ordered them on. Momentarily he had forgotten his role of slave-driver. But Gloriana had been too engrossed in her own sensations to notice his lapse.
When Stone crossed the drift fence, which along here had been cut by the Hash-Knife, he halted to show the girls.
“Traft’s drift fence. Gloriana, this is what the old man saddled on your brother Jim. There’s nine miles of fence down, which Jim an’ his uncle can thank Croak Malloy fer. But I will say the buildin’ of this fence was a big thing. Old Jim has vision. Shore I’m a cattle thief, an’ the fence didn’t make no difference to me. I reckon it was a help to rustlers. But Malloy hated fences...Wal, it’ll be a comfort to Traft an’ all honest ranchers to learn he’s dead.”
“Jed Stone, you — you seem to be two men!” exclaimed Gloriana.
“Shore. I’m more’n thet. An’ I reckon one of them is some kin to human. But don’t gamble on him, my lovely tenderfoot. He’s got no say in my make-up.”
Molly Dunn lagged behind, most intensely interested in that drift fence, the building of which had made her lover, young Traft, a marked man on the range, and which had already caused a good deal of blood-spilling. Stone had to halloa to her, and wait.
“What’s ailin’ you, gurl?” he queried, derisively. “Thet fence make you lovesick fer Jim? Wal, I reckon you won’t see him again very soon, if ever...Get off an’ straighten thet pack.”
While Molly heaved and pulled to get the pack level on the pack-saddle again, Stone rolled a cigarette and watched Gloriana. Her amaze at Molly Dunn amused him.
“Wal, Glory, she used to pack grub an’ grain from West Fork on a burro, when both of them wasn’t any bigger’n jack-rabbits.”
“There’s a lot I don’t know,” observed Gloriana, thoughtfully, as for the hundredth time she tried to pull her torn skirt down to hide her bare legs.
“Shore,” agreed the outlaw. “An’ when a fellar finds thet out there’s hope fer him.”
The rest of that day he rode through a maze of wild country, at sunset ending up on a weathered slope where he had to get off and walk.
“Hey, there!” he called back. “Fall off an’ walk. If your hoss slides, get out of his way. An’ step lively so you won’t go down in one of these avalanches.”
All of which would have given a cowboy something to do. Molly had to stop often to rescue her friend, and more than once a scream rent the air. But at length they got across and down this long slant of loose shale, and entered a grassy wooded flat where water ran. Here Stone halted to make camp.
“Wat-er!” choked Gloriana, huskily, as she sank down on the sward.
“Aha! Spittin’ cotton, my proud beauty?” ejaculated the outlaw.
“Reckon you’d better have a drink out of my bottle.” But she waved the suggestion aside with a gesture of abhorrence. And when Molly came carrying a dipper of water, Gloriana’s great tragic eyes lit up. She drank the entire contents of the rather large vessel.
“Wal, Glory, you have to go through a good deal before you find the real value of things,” remarked Stone, thoughtfully. “You see, most folks have life too easy. Take the matter of this drink of cold pure spring water. Sweet, wasn’t it? You never knowed before how turrible sweet water could be, did you? It’s the difference between life an’ death.”
“Thanks, Molly,” said Gloriana, gratefully. “Aren’t you — thirsty?”
“Not very. You see, out heah we train ourselves to do without water an’ food. Like Indians, you know, Glory,” replied Molly.
Plain indeed was it that Gloriana did not know; and that she was divided in emotion between her pangs and the surprise of this adventure.
“Hey, Molly, stop gabbin’ an’ get to work,” ordered Stone, dryly. “Our St. Louis darlin’ here will croak on us, if we ain’t careful.”
He slipped the axe out from under a rope on the pack, and proceeded to a nearby spruce, from which he cut armloads of the thick fragrant boughs. These he spread under an oak tree, and went back for more, watching the girls out of the tail of his eye. Once he caught Gloriana’s voice in furious protest— “the lazy brute! Look at the size of him — and he makes you lift those packs!” And Molly’s reply: “Aw, this heah’s easy, Glory. An’ I’m tellin’ you again — don’t make this desperado mad.”
Then Stone slipped behind the spruce and peered through the branches. Molly did lift off those heavy packs, and unsaddled the animal. Next she turned to remove the saddle from her horse. At this Gloriana arose with difficulty, and limping to the horse she had ridden she tugged at the cinches, and laboured until she got them loose. Then she slid the big saddle off. It was a man’s saddle and heavy, which of course she had not calculated upon, and down she went with it, buried almost out of sight. Molly ran to lift it off. Stone saw the Eastern girl wring her helpless hands. “Dog-gone tough on her,” he soliloquised, and proceeded to get another load of spruce boughs, which he carried over to the oak tree.
“Hey, Gloriana, fetch over thet bed roll,” he called.
She paid no attention to him. Then he bellowed the order in the voice of a bull. He heard Molly advise her to rustle. Whereupon Gloriana lifted the roll in both arms and came wagging across the grass.
“Untie the rope,” he said, not looking at her, and went on spreading the boughs evenly. Presently, as she was so slow, he looked up. She was wearily toiling at the knot.
“I — I can’t untie it,” she said.
“Wal, you shore are a helpless ninny,” he returned, in disgust. “What in Gawd’s name can you do, Miss Traft? Play the concertina huh? An’ fix your hair pretty, huh? It’s shore thunderin’ good luck for some fine cowboy thet I happened along an’ saved him from marryin’ you.”
The marvel of that speech lay in its effect upon Gloriana, whose piteous mute appeal to Molly showed she had been driven to believe it was true.
“See heah, Jed Stone,” demanded Molly, loyally, “how could Glory help the way she was brought up? Everybody cain’t be born in Arizona.”
“Misfortune, I call thet...But see heah, yourself, Molly Dunn. The more you stick up fer this wishy-washy tenderfoot the wuss I’ll be. Savvy?”
“You bet I savvy,” rejoined Molly, resignedly.
“Wal then, rustle supper. I’m tired after thet ride. My neck’s stiff from turnin’ round to watch Miss Traft. It was a circus, though...Gather some wood, start a fire, put on the water to boil, mix biscuits, an’ so forth.”
No one could ever have guessed that Molly Dunn had packed a horse and led him, and had ridden over thirty miles of rough wilderness during the hours of daylight. She was quick, deft, thorough in all camp tasks; and it gave the outlaw pleasure to watch her, outside of his diabolical plot to subjugate the Eastern girl.
“Say, if this heah’s all the grub you fetched we’ll eat it tonight,” said Molly.
“Go light on grub, I tell you. Mebbe I didn’t pack enough. But I was a-rarin’ to get away from Tobe’s Well.”
“Molly, I’ll help you or die trying,” offered Gloriana. “But if that queer pain comes to my side again — farewell.”
“What pain, honey?”
“Reckon she’s got appendicitis,” drawled Stone, who allowed no word to get by him unheard.
“It was in my left side — and, oh, it was awful!”
“Thet comes from ridin’ a hoss when you’re not used to it. But it’ll not kill you.”
“Yes, it will, if I live long enough to mount that wild mustang again,” avowed Gloriana. Then in a lower tone she added, “Molly, I thought Ed Darnell was a villain. But, my, oh! — he’s a saint compared with this desperado.”
“Oh, no, Glory. Jed Stone is an honest-to-Gawd desperado,” expostulated Molly.
“What’s she sayin’ aboot thet fellar Darnell an’ me?” demanded Stone, going to the fire.
“Jed, she saw Darnell back in Missouri,” explained Molly.
“You don’t say. Wal, thet’s interestin’. Hope she didn’t compare me to him. Two-bit caird-sharp before he hit the West. An’ then, like a puff of smoke, he lit into crooked cattle-dealin’...An’ did he last longer than any of them dude Easterners who reckon they can learn us Westerners tricks? He did not.”
“What do you mean, Jed?” queried Molly, who divined when he was lying and when he was not.
“Croak Malloy was in thet outfit Traft’s cowboys rounded up in a cabin down below Yellow Jacket. They’d been rustlin’ the new Diamond stock an’ had to ride fer their lives. Wal, they didn’t ride fer, not with your redskin brother an’ Curly Prentiss an’ thet rodeo-ridin’ bunch after them. Croak said they set fire to the cabin, an’ burned them out, an’ he got shot in the laig. But he escaped, an’ it was when he was hidin’ in the brush thet he saw the cowboys string up Darnell along with two rustlers. Croak said he never see a man kick like thet white-cuff, caird-slicker, Darnell.”
Gloriana’s eyes were great black gulfs. “Mr. Stone, among other things you’re a liar,” she said, deliberately.
“Wal, I’ll be dog-goned!” ejaculated the outlaw, genuinely surprised and not a little hurt. “I am, am I? Wal, you’ll see, Miss Traft.”
“You’re trying to — to frighten me,” she faltered, weakening. “Have you no heart — no mercy?...I was once engaged to — to marry Darnell, or thought I was. He followed me out here.”
“Ahuh. What’d he foller you out heah for?”
“He swindled my father out of money, and I suppose he thought he could do the same with Uncle Jim.”
“Not old Jim Traft. Nix come the weasel! Old Jim cain’t be swindled...Wal, Miss Gloriana, I must say you was lucky to have Darnell stack up against Curly Prentiss. I remember now thet Madden was in Snell’s gamblin’-den when Curly ketched Darnell cheatin’ an’ drove him out of Flag. Funny he didn’t bore thet caird-sharp. Reckon he savvied how soon Darnell would come to the end of his rope. He did come soon — an’ it was a lasso.”
