Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 1201
“Yes, child.”
“Well?”
“I understand, Madge. You need not tell me anything. I went to college once. And all these years you’ve been away — these hard and changing years — I’ve tried to keep abreast of the times, even if it was only through newspapers and magazines and books. Most of all, your letters have told me. I know what has gone on, what has come to pass, even if I have trouble grasping it.”
“Mom, I knew you’d say that,” replied Madge, earnestly. “But I doubt, Mother darling, that with all your intelligence and wisdom you could realize what has actually happened to us, to my generation. Somehow I can’t get it. Yet they call me brainy, Mom. You’ll get some firsthand information soon. My crowd of sorority sisters and student friends will be here to spend the summer. They are normal, as young people go today. They are all radical. But I’ll let you judge them for yourself. ... My self, Mom, this contrite daughter returned to you, is an enigma to herself.... I hate restraint. I won’t be told what I should or should not do. I have no idea what I want, except that I want something terribly. I read trash where once I read poetry, history, fiction. I’ve read Freud and he’s all wet. My favorite authors at present are Cabell and the best detective writers, wide apart as the poles. Most grownups give me a pain in the neck. But you don’t, Mom! I am scared of Dad, though as a girl I worshiped him. He was my hero, my El Capitan, as he was yours. But will he get me — my crowd?... In my freshman year I went a little haywire — drinking, dancing, petting, smoking — all, Mom, except I didn’t go the limit. I tell you that, a little ashamed, as if I were an old-fashioned virgin. But college girls, except some who are fools, work out of that worst mess in their upper-classman years. Still the pace is swift, Mom, in education, achievement, in a social way, in the modern thing.... For young people that modern thing seems to be to break all the laws — speed laws, booze laws! There is no such thing as modesty, as I remember you taught it to me. Pagans, I fear! I haven’t opened a Bible since my religion course during my sophomore year. Lastly, Mom, don’t think that all co-eds fall under this category. There are loads and loads of girls besides. Only my crowd, and the other sorority crowds — they get by the college courses somehow, though a few like me gain class honors and high scholarships — only for these the aim and end of existence are cocktails, dances, clothes, cars and men.... There, Mom, darling, that’s all. Will I dare tell Dad — and will he understand?”
“My dear,” replied her mother, quietly, after a moment fraught with suspense for Madge, “I don’t think you should tell your father — all that.... And there — his step in the patio!”
Her father entered, sending Madge’s blood rushing back to her heart, still the stalking giant with the piercing eyes she remembered, yet somehow indefinably changed. Was it the white over his temples — the hollow cheeks and lean jaw? Then followed the greeting, the embrace, which made Madge mistress of that errant and incredible weakness, leaving only the resurgence of her girlish love for her ideal of all men. During the disposal of her luggage in her rooms, so thrillingly the same, and the luncheon afterward, Madge babbled on and on, listening but little, far removed from the honest girl she had been to her mother. She divined that she thirsted for something from her father — something she knew she had, beautifully and everlastingly, from her mother. But here was a Westerner, one of the old school, that daredevil El Capitan of the Revolution, the cowboy who had killed men! He had worshiped her mother, but would his love for his little girl survive all that the years and changes had made her?
* * * * *
After luncheon Madge leisurely unpacked her numerous bags and suitcases, stopping dreamily at intervals, or finding some excuse to go to her mother. During all this while the desire to see Nels and her horses grew stronger, until at length it was too demanding to resist. It need not have been anything to resist, if she had been able to put aside the strong desire to change to riding garb, and vault upon Cedar once more. Nels surely would not have liked her in these new English riding breeches, so tight and leggy, and that first day home she could not don overalls and boots. Wherefore at length she went down the old back road, now an overgrown trail, to gray ruin of ranch buildings and corrals.
Nels was her second father. He had taught her to ride, to shoot, to rope — all the tricks of the range. He had told her the terrible stories about her famous father, and that lovely and appalling romance of her mother and all about ranch and cowboy life, even before she was old enough to understand.
Meeting Nels proved to mean more, to be a deeper experience, than even her memories had anticipated. The change in him was not indefinable. Madge felt the warm blood recede from her cheeks. The years had told on Nels.
Not until she sat with him on the top bar of the corral fence to see her horses did the zest and stir of home-coming return. What a glossy, long-maned, plume-tailed, racy and thoroughbred troop of horses! Cedar, gray as the cedars for which he was named, pranced before her, soft-eyed, whinnying, high-stepping and sensitive, knowing her yet not sure. And Range, the long rangy sorrel, red as fire in the rays of the setting sun; and Bellefontaine, that dainty proud little mare, sure of Madge, poking her nose up for sugar; and Blackboy, like shining coal in his well-groomed hide, and Sultan, the roan, and Dervish and Arab, twin whites, as perfect as the movie horses, but not so tame, and Leatherstocking, a range cow horse, loved despite his plebeian blood, and Pinto, a mustang — all her own, and the corral full of shaggy jealous horses and colts, snorting and kicking — all of them brought home to Madge the stinging truth of her return.
But it was when she walked up the lane with Nels to encounter a Mexican lad leading a black horse that Madge’s emotion flooded to a bursting pitch. A strange horse, a grand horse, dusty and lame, bearing a cowboy’s accouterments, in one inconceivable flash, added a bitter drop to the sweet cup which she had just tasted. Screeching to Nels, importuning the lad, this got Madge nowhere. Full tilt then she ran around the corner of the store, straight into the arms of a clanking cowboy, gorgeously arrayed — a strangely familiar cowboy whose face went white and then a dusky red.
As if by magic Madge confronted her campus champion, and under this last straw her burdened feelings burst in glad amaze and gay delight, to a welcome she did not consider and a kiss she could not recall.
Could she have paid him a more flattering compliment for his cleverness in contriving to be there at her own home? In the following exchange of words, in this cowboy’s well-simulated protest and confusion, Madge experienced a reaction which inwardly she divined was something more, something deeply and inexplicably glad. And that, at his denial, submerged this sweet self. What was the matter with the fool? To be sure there stood her dad, his piercing eyes hard to meet, and his slight amused smile disconcerting. But even so, Madge argued to her ruffled vanity, her welcome, her kiss should have inspired him to confront half a dozen fathers and confess his duplicity.
It was the horse Umpqua that saved the embarrassing situation for the moment, and which precipitated a really serious one. Madge left them, furious with the cowboy. She spied upon the group below from the covert of pines, curious even in her anger to see what Sidway would do. There was no doubt about the sincerity of his purpose, when he went to his horse. He meant to ride away. And would have done so but for her father and Nels. “Can’t he take it, the big handsome stiff?” muttered Madge, in her angry surprise. “What’d he beat me here for if not to make a hit with me? It did!... And — I was hit before.... Oh, the dumbbell! To spoil it all!... Now I’ll have to jolly him along and play with him to get that horse — when I really liked him... how much? ... Am I burned up?”
By the time Madge had told the story, with reservations as to her own uncertain feelings, to her mother, her resentment had gone into eclipse. She could not bear ill will. And she had developed a merciless truth about herself.
“What is young Sidway like?” asked her mother, presently.
“Oh, swell!”
“That is rather an ambiguous term these days.”
“Mom, I’d hate to spoil a pleasant surprise for you. Also I’d like to get your reaction to Sidway before I tell you mine. I may be — I must have been all wet, if you get what I mean.”
“I don’t, my dearest,” replied her mother, with a bewildered smile. “But I’m sure you like him.”
“Not on your life! — I did, yes.... The dirty look he gave me — what he said!... Such things just aren’t done to me.”
Madge leisurely changed for dinner, and after catching herself approving of the white image in the long mirror, she had the grace to be ponderingly amused at that part of her thought which conceived a possibility of Sidway seeing her thus. No telling where that Hollywood extra might bob up! She arrived late in the dining room, yet in time to hear her father say: “He’d have gone, too, Madeline, if Nels and I hadn’t believed him when he swore he didn’t come here on account of Madge.”
“Well, Dad Stewart!” declared Madge, in mock solemnity. “So that cowboy put it over?”
“Daughter! You look like your mother — the first time I ever saw her in white!”
“Oh, thank you, Dad! Then I must look just stunning.”
“You do.... Madge, young Sidway didn’t put it over. He told the truth. Nels believed him. So did I. He hadn’t the remotest idea that my daughter, the girl Ren Starr told him about, was you — the girl he’d actually met and befriended.”
“Dad, he’s a liar. I wouldn’t believe that on a bet,” declared Madge.
“I’ll bet you find it out and you’ll be sorry.”
“Preposterous! So he put up a big bluff to you and Nels?... Dad, that cowboy is right up to date. He knows his stuff.... What I can’t get is why he was ashamed of his clever stunt?”
“Madge, it’s conceivable that he seemed ashamed because of his innocence when all of you believed in his deceit,” observed her mother.
“Oh, my adorable parents! What you must learn about us! Mr. Sidway’s ears must be burning. Let’s forget him.”
Nevertheless, despite her suggestion, Madge had no slight difficulty in conforming to it. She succeeded presently by launching into an account of what she wanted done to the road, and the patio, and the long-deserted rooms in the west wing, and about more servants from the Mexican village — all in the interest of her guests who were to arrive on the twentieth. She was indeed not disappointed in her anticipation that both of her parents seemed heartily interested in her summer party, with no wish but to contribute in every way to its success. If they appeared a little bewildered several times during the discussion, and at a loss for words, Madge put that down to her elaborate and extravagant plans.
They stayed up late, at least for them, and when Madge bade them good night, she went to her rooms thinking how perfectly splendid they were, and that she was happy, and the most fortunate girl in the world.
Next morning she satisfied a craving that had long beset her — that of getting into the saddle again. To find Range gone gave quick rise to her temper, which strangely did not greatly fall when her father explained that the cowboy had merely obeyed orders. She had resolutely to keep her eyes off Umpqua or she would have yielded to riding him again, which pride bade her forego.
That afternoon Madge found great enjoyment in driving her father high up the old road, to an elevation that permitted their gazing down upon the ranch and the house, and the flowing sage flats with their speckled knots of cattle. While her father puttered around the boxed-in spring and repaired the outlet, Madge sat at ease, lulled by the heights and the depths of this wide-spreading land.
“No wonder the lake and reservoir went almost dry,” said her father, when he came back to the car. “Two thirds of the water leaking away.”
“Oh, I forgot to look at the lake. Will it be full again by the time my friends arrive? We’ll want to go in bathing. Dad, is there any sand near enough to haul?”
“Sand. The wash down below is all sand. Fine and white, too.”
“Swell! I’ll want a nice sandy beach for us to lie around on in the sun.”
“That’s an easy one, Madge.”
The end of a perfect day just had to have a drawback. When Madge caught sight of Lance Sidway leaning over the gate, apparently deeply interested in Bonita Mains, she fell victim to a most disconcerting irritation. The cowboy, as she drove up to a halt, did not noticeably move, until Bonita blushingly drew back, to come out of the gate. Then he stared at Madge, rather satirically she thought. Was there not a single man in the whole vast earth who did not fall for every pretty girl he saw, regardless of her color? It had not taken Lance Sidway long to contact the little half-breed coquette of the range. Madge chalked up another mark against the cowboy.
The succeeding moments, outside of Danny Mains’ kindly welcome — Madge did not take Bonita’s to heart — should have bored Madge, if she had been running true to form. But she was off her stride and she knew the reason, and therefore looked at that reason with rather scornful eyes. Her mental alertness quickened, however, when Ren Starr’s car was sighted, and Bonita precipitately fled.
The stab Sidway had given Madge, along with the look he gave her, silenced Madge, and gave rein to whirling thoughts that refused to recognize her wrath. She nursed it, yet succumbed to curiosity, and got out of the car to listen to the short talk of the men. Rustlers! Verily her home-coming had not been dull. Then the men fell back from Starr’s car, Sidway to leap astride Range and gallop off, Mains to run into his house, and her father to get in with her, his fine face stern and dark, somehow recalling her fear of him when she was a little girl.
“Step on it, Madge.”
“Oh, Dad! What is it? I heard some of your talk. Trucks! Rustlers!”
“You bet you did.... Madge, these boys have made me feel like my old self. Sidway got a line on these cattle thieves. All in a day! Won’t Nels jump at that? Won’t he be pleased? And Starr ran out with news of a truck raid on our cattle tonight.”
“Truck raid! Who ever heard of such a thing?”
“Sidway got it, just like that. Keen as a whip, that cowboy. And Starr’s a running pard for him.... Madge, I have a hunch things will look up for us this summer.”
“Darling, are you telling me?... What will you do?”
“I must tell Nels first.”
“That old — ranger! Oh, Dad, he’ll be for guns! horses! ropes!”
“You bet. Madge, before the night is over we’ll hang some of these truck drivers and cattle-raiding greasers.”
“I want to go!”
“Nonsense, child. You might get hurt.... Let me out here. I won’t be up for supper. Tell Mother.”
Naturally Madge expected her mother to be greatly perturbed, but was agreeably surprised.
“This will wake up your father and Nels, too,” rejoined her mother, with satisfaction.
“But, Mom!... Dad swore they’d hang some of them. They will have to catch them first. Oh, wouldn’t I like to go?... It means a fight. Crooks these days use machine guns. Dad might be hurt.... And Sidway. He’s a reckless devil.”
“Madge, your father and Nels and Danny Mains will be a match for all the crooks in the Southwest. Don’t worry about them. Rustlers will give them just the impetus they need. And cattle raising will probably be the better for it.”
Nevertheless Madge did worry. She read and worried and waited until long after her mother had retired. Then when she did go to bed she could not sleep. She listened. But there were no sounds except the lonesome chirping of crickets and the murmuring of running water. This Lance Sidway had certainly injected some vim and vigor into the dead old ranch. His fine eyes, shadowed, troubled, and then blazing with scorn, haunted her as did that taunt about gangsters. She hated him, but she deserved it. Her conscience wrung that from her. Indeed he had kept the rendezvous that day, and bad luck have it! he had seen Uhl meet her, get into her car. And being Hollywood-wise he had caught the cut of that gentleman all in a few minutes. Not this fact, but his scorn was what galled Madge. Still if he had been so burned up by her friendship with an underworld character, why had he learned her name, where she lived, and conceived the brilliant idea of meeting her at her own home? The answer was that no matter whom she knew, what she had done, he must have conceived more than a mere interest in her. But was that the answer? Madge conceived the idea that there was a remote possibility it was not.
CHAPTER VI
LANCE STOOD BACK in the shadow of Nels’ cabin, a little abashed at his agitation, as he compared it to the coolness of these Arizonians. He did not want them to see that he was an unfledged cowboy, so far as rustlers were concerned.
“Wal, I reckon you fellers better have a smack of grub an’ a cup of coffee with me,” Nels drawled, as Stewart ended his brief story.
“Reckon I hed, at thet,” rejoined Mains. “My two Bonitas would be too interested in thet confab we hed by the house.”
“We’ll all sponge on you, Nels,” said Stewart. “Pitch in, fellows.”
“All set ‘cept fryin’ some more ham. You cut it, Danny. ... Whar’s Sidway? Come heah, cowboy.... Gene, this truck rustlin’ is shore two-bit stuff. Kinda oot of our experience. Let’s get the cowboy’s angle on it.”
“Suits me.”
“Sidway, you oughta be up on this automobile cattle stealin’. What’ll we do?”
“We’ll intercept this raid, of course,” replied Lance, realizing that he was on the spot and forcing a calm and serious front when inwardly he was quaking. It reassured him that his wide sombrero hid his face.
“Hev a slice of ham. I can cook, cowboy.... Wal, how’d you intercept it?”
“I’d like Starr in on this with me,” replied Sidway.
“By all means. You young bloods put your heads together,” said Stewart.
“I’m with you, pard, an’ I’ve got some ideas,” returned Starr, nonchalantly. “But I cain’t talk an’ eat.”
