The Zane Grey Megapack, page 283
In silence Madeline bent her gaze from her brother’s face to the letter:
Friend Al,—I’m sending my horse down to you because I’m going away and haven’t the nerve to take him where he’d get hurt or fall into strange hands.
If you think it’s all right, why, give him to your sister with my respects. But if you don’t like the idea, Al, or if she won’t have him, then he’s for you. I’m not forgetting your kindness to me, even if I never showed it. And, Al, my horse has never felt a quirt or a spur, and I’d like to think you’d never hurt him. I’m hoping your sister will take him. She’ll be good to him, and she can afford to take care of him. And, while I’m waiting to be plugged by a Greaser bullet, if I happen to have a picture in mind of how she’ll look upon my horse, why, man, it’s not going to make any difference to you. She needn’t ever know it. Between you and me, Al, don’t let her or Flo ride alone over Don Carlos’s way. If I had time I could tell you something about that slick Greaser. And tell your sister, if there’s ever any reason for her to run away from anybody when she’s up on that roan, just let her lean over and yell in his ear. She’ll find herself riding the wind. So long.
Gene Stewart.
Madeline thoughtfully folded the letter and murmured, “How he must love his horse!”
“Well, I should say so,” replied Alfred. “Flo will tell you. She’s the only person Gene ever let ride that horse, unless, as Bill thinks, the little Mexican girl, Bonita, rode him out of El Cajon the other night. Well, sister mine, how about it—will you accept the horse?”
“Assuredly. And very happy indeed am I to get him. Al, you said, I think, that Mr. Stewart named him after me—saw my nickname in the New York paper?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I will not change his name. But, Al, how shall I ever climb up on him? He’s taller than I am. What a giant of a horse! Oh, look at him—he’s nosing my hand. I really believe he understood what I said. Al, did you ever see such a splendid head and such beautiful eyes? They are so large and dark and soft—and human. Oh, I am a fickle woman, for I am forgetting White Stockings.”
“I’ll gamble he’ll make you forget any other horse,” said Alfred. “You’ll have to get on him from the porch.”
As Madeline was not dressed for the saddle, she did not attempt to mount.
“Come, Majesty—how strange that sounds!—we must get acquainted. You have now a new owner, a very severe young woman who will demand loyalty from you and obedience, and some day, after a decent period, she will expect love.”
Madeline led the horse to and fro, and was delighted with his gentleness. She discovered that he did not need to be led. He came at her call, followed her like a pet dog, rubbed his black muzzle against her. Sometimes, at the turns in their walk, he lifted his head and with ears forward looked up the trail by which he had come, and beyond the foothills. He was looking over the range. Some one was calling to him, perhaps, from beyond the mountains. Madeline liked him the better for that memory, and pitied the wayward cowboy who had parted with his only possession for very love of it.
That afternoon when Alfred lifted Madeline to the back of the big roan she felt high in the air.
“We’ll have a run out to the mesa,” said her brother, as he mounted. “Keep a tight rein on him and ease up when you want him to go faster. But don’t yell in his ear unless you want Florence and me to see you disappear on the horizon.”
He trotted out of the yard, down by the corrals, to come out on the edge of a gray, open flat that stretched several miles to the slope of a mesa. Florence led, and Madeline saw that she rode like a cowboy. Alfred drew on to her side, leaving Madeline in the rear. Then the leading horses broke into a gallop. They wanted to run, and Madeline felt with a thrill that she would hardly be able to keep Majesty from running, even if she wanted to. He sawed on the tight bridle as the others drew away and broke from pace to gallop. Then Florence put her horse into a run. Alfred turned and called to Madeline to come along.
“This will never do. They are running away from us,” said Madeline, and she eased up her hold on the bridle. Something happened beneath her just then; she did not know at first exactly what. As much as she had been on horseback she had never ridden at a running gait. In New York it was not decorous or safe. So when Majesty lowered and stretched and changed the stiff, jolting gallop for a wonderful, smooth, gliding run it required Madeline some moments to realize what was happening. It did not take long for her to see the distance diminishing between her and her companions. Still they had gotten a goodly start and were far advanced. She felt the steady, even rush of the wind. It amazed her to find how easily, comfortably she kept to the saddle. The experience was new. The one fault she had heretofore found with riding was the violent shaking-up. In this instance she experienced nothing of that kind, no strain, no necessity to hold on with a desperate awareness of work. She had never felt the wind in her face, the whip of a horse’s mane, the buoyant, level spring of a tanning gait. It thrilled her, exhilarated her, fired her blood. Suddenly she found herself alive, throbbing; and, inspired by she knew not what, she loosened the bridle and, leaning far forward, she cried, “Oh, you splendid fellow, run!”
She heard from under her a sudden quick clattering roar of hoofs, and she swayed back with the wonderfully swift increase in Majesty’s speed. The wind stung her face, howled in her ears, tore at her hair. The gray plain swept by on each side, and in front seemed to be waving toward her. In her blurred sight Florence and Alfred appeared to be coming back. But she saw presently, upon nearer view, that Majesty was overhauling the other horses, was going to pass them. Indeed, he did pass them, shooting by so as almost to make them appear standing still. And he ran on, not breaking his gait till he reached the steep side of the mesa, where he slowed down and stopped.
“Glorious!” exclaimed Madeline. She was all in a blaze, and every muscle and nerve of her body tingled and quivered. Her hands, as she endeavored to put up the loosened strands of hair, trembled and failed of their accustomed dexterity. Then she faced about and waited for her companions.
Alfred reached her first, laughing, delighted, yet also a little anxious.
“Holy smoke! But can’t he run? Did he bolt on you?”
“No, I called in his ear,” replied Madeline.
“So that was it. That’s the woman of you, and forbidden fruit. Flo said she’d do it the minute she was on him. Majesty, you can ride. See if Flo doesn’t say so.”
The Western girl came up then with her pleasure bright in her face.
“It was just great to see you. How your hair burned in the wind! Al, she sure can ride. Oh, I’m so glad! I was a little afraid. And that horse! Isn’t he grand? Can’t he run?”
Alfred led the way up the steep, zigzag trail to the top of the mesa. Madeline saw a beautiful flat surface of short grass, level as a floor. She uttered a little cry of wonder and enthusiasm.
“Al, what a place for golf! This would be the finest links in the world.”
“Well, I’ve thought of that myself,” he replied. “The only trouble would be—could anybody stop looking at the scenery long enough to hit a ball? Majesty, look!”
And then it seemed that Madeline was confronted by a spectacle too sublime and terrible for her gaze. The immensity of this red-ridged, deep-gulfed world descending incalculable distances refused to be grasped, and awed her, shocked her.
“Once, Majesty, when I first came out West, I was down and out—determined to end it all,” said Alfred. “And happened to climb up here looking for a lonely place to die. When I saw that I changed my mind.”
Madeline was silent. She remained so during the ride around the rim of the mesa and down the steep trail. This time Alfred and Florence failed to tempt her into a race. She had been awe-struck; she had been exalted she had been confounded; and she recovered slowly without divining exactly what had come to her.
She reached the ranch-house far behind her companions, and at supper-time was unusually thoughtful. Later, when they assembled on the porch to watch the sunset, Stillwell’s humorous complainings inspired the inception of an idea which flashed up in her mind swift as lightning. And then by listening sympathetically she encouraged him to recite the troubles of a poor cattleman. They were many and long and interesting, and rather numbing to the life of her inspired idea.
“Mr. Stillwell, could ranching here on a large scale, with up-to-date methods, be made—well, not profitable, exactly, but to pay—to run without loss?” she asked, determined to kill her new-born idea at birth or else give it breath and hope of life.
“Wal, I reckon it could,” he replied, with a short laugh. “It’d sure be a money-maker. Why, with all my bad luck an’ poor equipment I’ve lived pretty well an’ paid my debts an’ haven’t really lost any money except the original outlay. I reckon thet’s sunk fer good.”
“Would you sell—if someone would pay your price?”
“Miss Majesty, I’d jump at the chance. Yet somehow I’d hate to leave hyar. I’d jest be fool enough to go sink the money in another ranch.”
“Would Don Carlos and these other Mexicans sell?”
“They sure would. The Don has been after me fer years, wantin’ to sell thet old rancho of his; an’ these herders in the valley with their stray cattle, they’d fall daid at sight of a little money.”
“Please tell me, Mr. Stillwell, exactly what you would do here if you had unlimited means?” went on Madeline.
“Good Lud!” ejaculated the rancher, and started so he dropped his pipe. Then with his clumsy huge fingers he refilled it, relighted it, took a few long pulls, puffed great clouds of smoke, and, squaring round, hands on his knees, he looked at Madeline with piercing intentness. His hard face began to relax and soften and wrinkle into a smile.
“Wal, Miss Majesty, it jest makes my old heart warm up to think of sich a thing. I dreamed a lot when I first come hyar. What would I do if I hed unlimited money? Listen. I’d buy out Don Carlos an’ the Greasers. I’d give a job to every good cowman in this country. I’d make them prosper as I prospered myself. I’d buy all the good horses on the ranges. I’d fence twenty thousand acres of the best grazin’. I’d drill fer water in the valley. I’d pipe water down from the mountains. I’d dam up that draw out there. A mile-long dam from hill to hill would give me a big lake, an’ hevin’ an eye fer beauty, I’d plant cottonwoods around it. I’d fill that lake full of fish. I’d put in the biggest field of alfalfa in the South-west. I’d plant fruit-trees an’ garden. I’d tear down them old corrals an’ barns an’ bunk-houses to build new ones. I’d make this old rancho some comfortable an’ fine. I’d put in grass an’ flowers all around an’ bring young pine-trees down from the mountains. An’ when all thet was done I’d sit in my chair an’ smoke an’ watch the cattle stringin’ in fer water an’ stragglin’ back into the valley. An’ I see the cowboys ridin’ easy an’ heah them singin’ in their bunks. An’ thet red sun out there wouldn’t set on a happier man in the world than Bill Stillwell, last of the old cattlemen.”
Madeline thanked the rancher, and then rather abruptly retired to her room, where she felt no restraint to hide the force of that wonderful idea, now full-grown and tenacious and alluring.
Upon the next day, late in the afternoon, she asked Alfred if it would be safe for her to ride out to the mesa.
“I’ll go with you,” he said, gaily.
“Dear fellow, I want to go alone,” she replied.
“Ah!” Alfred exclaimed, suddenly serious. He gave her just a quick glance, then turned away. “Go ahead. I think it’s safe. I’ll make it safe by sitting here with my glass and keeping an eye on you. Be careful coming down the trail. Let the horse pick his way. That’s all.”
She rode Majesty across the wide flat, up the zigzag trail, across the beautiful grassy level to the far rim of the mesa, and not till then did she lift her eyes to face the southwest.
Madeline looked from the gray valley at her feet to the blue Sierra Madres, gold-tipped in the setting sun. Her vision embraced in that glance distance and depth and glory hitherto unrevealed to her. The gray valley sloped and widened to the black sentinel Chiricahuas, and beyond was lost in a vast corrugated sweep of earth, reddening down to the west, where a golden blaze lifted the dark, rugged mountains into bold relief. The scene had infinite beauty. But after Madeline’s first swift, all-embracing flash of enraptured eyes, thought of beauty passed away. In that darkening desert there was something illimitable. Madeline saw the hollow of a stupendous hand; she felt a mighty hold upon her heart. Out of the endless space, out of silence and desolation and mystery and age, came slow-changing colored shadows, phantoms of peace, and they whispered to Madeline. They whispered that it was a great, grim, immutable earth; that time was eternity; that life was fleeting. They whispered for her to be a woman; to love someone before it was too late; to love any one, every one; to realize the need of work, and in doing it to find happiness.
She rode back across the mesa and down the trail, and, once more upon the flat, she called to the horse and made him run. His spirit seemed to race with hers. The wind of his speed blew her hair from its fastenings. When he thundered to a halt at the porch steps Madeline, breathless and disheveled, alighted with the mass of her hair tumbling around her.
Alfred met her, and his exclamation, and Florence’s rapt eyes shining on her face, and Stillwell’s speechlessness made her self-conscious. Laughing, she tried to put up the mass of hair.
“I must—look a—fright,” she panted.
“Wal, you can say what you like,” replied the old cattleman, “but I know what I think.”
Madeline strove to attain calmness.
“My hat—and my combs—went on the wind. I thought my hair would go, too.… There is the evening star.… I think I am very hungry.”
And then she gave up trying to be calm, and likewise to fasten up her hair, which fell again in a golden mass.
“Mr. Stillwell,” she began, and paused, strangely aware of a hurried note, a deeper ring in her voice. “Mr. Stillwell, I want to buy your ranch—to engage you as my superintendent. I want to buy Don Carlos’s ranch and other property to the extent, say, of fifty thousand acres. I want you to buy horses and cattle—in short, to make all those improvements which you said you had so long dreamed of. Then I have ideas of my own, in the development of which I must have your advice and Alfred’s. I intend to better the condition of those poor Mexicans in the valley. I intend to make life a little more worth living for them and for the cowboys of this range. Tomorrow we shall talk it all over, plan all the business details.”
Madeline turned from the huge, ever-widening smile that beamed down upon her and held out her hands to her brother.
“Alfred, strange, is it not, my coming out to you? Nay, don’t smile. I hope I have found myself—my work—my happiness—here under the light of that western star.”
CHAPTER VII
Her Majesty’s Rancho
Five months brought all that Stillwell had dreamed of, and so many more changes and improvements and innovations that it was as if a magic touch had transformed the old ranch. Madeline and Alfred and Florence had talked over a fitting name, and had decided on one chosen by Madeline. But this instance was the only one in the course of developments in which Madeline’s wishes were not compiled with. The cowboys named the new ranch “Her Majesty’s Rancho.” Stillwell said the names cowboys bestowed were felicitous, and as unchangeable as the everlasting hills; Florence went over to the enemy; and Alfred, laughing at Madeline’s protest, declared the cowboys had elected her queen of the ranges, and that there was no help for it. So the name stood “Her Majesty’s Rancho.”
The April sun shone down upon a slow-rising green knoll that nestled in the lee of the foothills, and seemed to center bright rays upon the long ranch-house, which gleamed snow-white from the level summit. The grounds around the house bore no semblance to Eastern lawns or parks; there had been no landscape-gardening; Stillwell had just brought water and grass and flowers and plants to the knoll-top, and there had left them, as it were, to follow nature. His idea may have been crude, but the result was beautiful. Under that hot sun and balmy air, with cool water daily soaking into the rich soil, a green covering sprang into life, and everywhere upon it, as if by magic, many colored flowers rose in the sweet air. Pale wild flowers, lavender daisies, fragile bluebells, white four-petaled lilies like Eastern mayflowers, and golden poppies, deep sunset gold, color of the West, bloomed in happy confusion. California roses, crimson as blood, nodded heavy heads and trembled with the weight of bees. Low down in bare places, isolated, open to the full power of the sun, blazed the vermilion and magenta blossoms of cactus plants.
Green slopes led all the way down to where new adobe barns and sheds had been erected, and wide corrals stretched high-barred fences down to the great squares of alfalfa gently inclining to the gray of the valley. The bottom of a dammed-up hollow shone brightly with its slowly increasing acreage of water, upon which thousands of migratory wildfowl whirred and splashed and squawked, as if reluctant to leave this cool, wet surprise so new in the long desert journey to the northland. Quarters for the cowboys—comfortable, roomy adobe houses that not even the lamest cowboy dared describe as crampy bunks—stood in a row upon a long bench of ground above the lake. And down to the edge of the valley the cluster of Mexican habitations and the little church showed the touch of the same renewing hand.
