The Zane Grey Megapack, page 558
“Nell!… Reckon it’s been harder—on you.” His voice was earnest and halting. She felt his searching gaze upon her face. “Mrs. Cass said you were here. An’ I know why.”
Roy led them all indoors.
“Milt, one of the neighbor boys will take care of thet hoss,” he said, as Dale turned toward the dusty and weary Ranger. “Where’d you leave the cougar?”
“I sent him home,” replied Date.
“Laws now, Milt, if this ain’t grand!” cackled Mrs. Cass. “We’ve worried some here. An’ Miss Helen near starved a-hopin’ fer you.”
“Mother, I reckon the girl an’ I are nearer starved than anybody you know,” replied Dale, with a grim laugh.
“Fer the land’s sake! I’ll be fixin’ supper this minit.”
“Nell, why are you here?” asked Bo, suspiciously.
For answer Helen led her sister into the spare room and closed the door. Bo saw the baggage. Her expression changed. The old blaze leaped to the telltale eyes.
“He’s done it!” she cried, hotly.
“Dearest—thank God. I’ve got you—back again!” murmured Helen, finding her voice. “Nothing else matters!… I’ve prayed only for that!”
“Good old Nell!” whispered Bo, and she kissed and embraced Helen. “You really mean that, I know. But nix for yours truly! I’m back alive and kicking, you bet.… Where’s my—where’s Tom?”
“Bo, not a word has been heard of him for five days. He’s searching for you, of course.”
“And you’ve been—been put off the ranch?”
“Well, rather,” replied Helen, and in a few trembling words she told the story of her eviction.
Bo uttered a wild word that had more force than elegance, but it became her passionate resentment of this outrage done her sister.
“Oh!… Does Tom Carmichael know this?” she added, breathlessly.
“How could he?”
“When he finds out, then—Oh, won’t there be hell? I’m glad I got here first.… Nell, my boots haven’t been off the whole blessed time. Help me. And oh, for some soap and hot water and some clean clothes! Nell, old girl, I wasn’t raised right for these Western deals. Too luxurious!”
And then Helen had her ears filled with a rapid-fire account of running horses and Riggs and outlaws and Beasley called boldly to his teeth, and a long ride and an outlaw who was a hero—a fight with Riggs—blood and death—another long ride—a wild camp in black woods—night—lonely, ghostly sounds—and day again—plot—a great actress lost to the world—Ophelia—Snakes and Ansons—hoodooed outlaws—mournful moans and terrible cries—cougar—stampede—fight and shots, more blood and death—Wilson hero—another Tom Carmichael—fallen in love with outlaw gun-fighter if—black night and Dale and horse and rides and starved and, “Oh, Nell, he was from Texas!”
Helen gathered that wonderful and dreadful events had hung over the bright head of this beloved little sister, but the bewilderment occasioned by Bo’s fluent and remarkable utterance left only that last sentence clear.
Presently Helen got a word in to inform Bo that Mrs. Cass had knocked twice for supper, and that welcome news checked Bo’s flow of speech when nothing else seemed adequate.
It was obvious to Helen that Roy and Dale had exchanged stories. Roy celebrated this reunion by sitting at table the first time since he had been shot; and despite Helen’s misfortune and the suspended waiting balance in the air the occasion was joyous. Old Mrs. Cass was in the height of her glory. She sensed a romance here, and, true to her sex, she radiated to it.
Daylight was still lingering when Roy got up and went out on the porch. His keen ears had heard something. Helen fancied she herself had heard rapid hoof-beats.
“Dale, come out!” called Roy, sharply.
The hunter moved with his swift, noiseless agility. Helen and Bo followed, halting in the door.
“Thet’s Las Vegas,” whispered Dale.
To Helen it seemed that the cowboy’s name changed the very atmosphere.
Voices were heard at the gate; one that, harsh and quick, sounded like Carmichael’s. And a spirited horse was pounding and scattering gravel. Then a lithe figure appeared, striding up the path. It was Carmichael—yet not the Carmichael Helen knew. She heard Bo’s strange little cry, a corroboration of her own impression.
Roy might never have been shot, judging from the way he stepped out, and Dale was almost as quick. Carmichael reached them—grasped them with swift, hard hands.
“Boys—I jest rode in. An’ they said you’d found her!”
“Shore, Las Vegas. Dale fetched her home safe an’ sound.… There she is.”
The cowboy thrust aside the two men, and with a long stride he faced the porch, his piercing eyes on the door. All that Helen could think of his look was that it seemed terrible. Bo stepped outside in front of Helen. Probably she would have run straight into Carmichael’s arms if some strange instinct had not withheld her. Helen judged it to be fear; she found her heart lifting painfully.
“Bo!” he yelled, like a savage, yet he did not in the least resemble one.
“Oh—Tom!” cried Bo, falteringly. She half held out her arms.
“You, girl?” That seemed to be his piercing query, like the quivering blade in his eyes. Two more long strides carried him close up to her, and his look chased the red out of Bo’s cheek. Then it was beautiful to see his face marvelously change until it was that of the well remembered Las Vegas magnified in all his old spirit.
“Aw!” The exclamation was a tremendous sigh. “I shore am glad!”
That beautiful flash left his face as he wheeled to the men. He wrung Dale’s hand long and hard, and his gaze confused the older man.
“Riggs!” he said, and in the jerk of his frame as he whipped out the word disappeared the strange, fleeting signs of his kindlier emotion.
“Wilson killed him,” replied Dale.
“Jim Wilson—that old Texas Ranger!… Reckon he lent you a hand?”
“My friend, he saved Bo,” replied Dale, with emotion. “My old cougar an’ me—we just hung ’round.”
“You made Wilson help you?” cut in the hard voice.
“Yes. But he killed Riggs before I come up an’ I reckon he’d done well by Bo if I’d never got there.”
“How about the gang?”
“All snuffed out, I reckon, except Wilson.”
“Somebody told me Beasley hed ran Miss Helen off the ranch. Thet so?”
“Yes. Four of his greasers packed her down the hill—most tore her clothes off, so Roy tells me.”
“Four greasers!… Shore it was Beasley’s deal clean through?”
“Yes. Riggs was led. He had an itch for a bad name, you know. But Beasley made the plan. It was Nell they wanted instead of Bo.”
Abruptly Carmichael stalked off down the darkening path, his silver heel-plates ringing, his spurs jingling.
“Hold on, Carmichael,” called Dale, taking a step.
“Oh, Tom!” cried Bo.
“Shore folks callin’ won’t be no use, if anythin would be,” said Roy. “Las Vegas has hed a look at red liquor.”
“He’s been drinking! Oh, that accounts!… He never—never even touched me!”
For once Helen was not ready to comfort Bo. A mighty tug at her heart had sent her with flying, uneven steps toward Dale. He took another stride down the path, and another.
“Dale—oh—please stop!” she called, very low.
He halted as if he had run sharply into a bar across the path. When he turned Helen had come close. Twilight was deep there in the shade of the peach-trees, but she could see his face, the hungry, flaring eyes.
“I—I haven’t thanked you—yet—for bringing Bo home,” she whispered.
“Nell, never mind that,” he said, in surprise. “If you must—why, wait. I’ve got to catch up with that cowboy.”
“No. Let me thank you now,” she whispered, and, stepping closer, she put her arms up, meaning to put them round his neck. That action must be her self-punishment for the other time she had done it. Yet it might also serve to thank him. But, strangely, her hands got no farther than his breast, and fluttered there to catch hold of the fringe of his buckskin jacket. She felt a heave of his deep chest.
“I—I do thank you—with all my heart,” she said, softly. “I owe you now—for myself and her—more than I can ever repay.”
“Nell, I’m your friend,” he replied, hurriedly. “Don’t talk of repayin’ me. Let me go now—after Las Vegas.”
“What for?” she queried, suddenly.
“I mean to line up beside him—at the bar—or wherever he goes,” returned Dale.
“Don’t tell me that. I know. You’re going straight to meet Beasley.”
“Nell, if you hold me up any longer I reckon I’ll have to run—or never get to Beasley before that cowboy.”
Helen locked her fingers in the fringe of his jacket—leaned closer to him, all her being responsive to a bursting gust of blood over her.
“I’ll not let you go,” she said.
He laughed, and put his great hands over hers. “What’re you sayin’, girl? You can’t stop me.”
“Yes, I can. Dale, I don’t want you to risk your life.”
He stared at her, and made as if to tear her hands from their hold.
“Listen—please—oh—please!” she implored. “If you go deliberately to kill Beasley—and do it—that will be murder.… It’s against my religion.… I would be unhappy all my life.”
“But, child, you’ll be ruined all your life if Beasley is not dealt with—as men of his breed are always dealt with in the West,” he remonstrated, and in one quick move he had freed himself from her clutching fingers.
Helen, with a move as swift, put her arms round his neck and clasped her hands tight.
“Milt, I’m finding myself,” she said. “The other day, when I did—this—you made an excuse for me.… I’m not two-faced now.”
She meant to keep him from killing Beasley if she sacrificed every last shred of her pride. And she stamped the look of his face on her heart of hearts to treasure always. The thrill, the beat of her pulses, almost obstructed her thought of purpose.
“Nell, just now—when you’re overcome—rash with feelin’s—don’t say to me—a word—a—”
He broke down huskily.
“My first friend—my—Oh Dale, I know you love me! she whispered. And she hid her face on his breast, there to feel a tremendous tumult.
“Oh, don’t you?” she cried, in low, smothered voice, as his silence drove her farther on this mad, yet glorious purpose.
“If you need to be told—yes—I reckon I do love you, Nell Rayner,” he replied.
It seemed to Helen that he spoke from far off. She lifted her face, her heart on her lips.
“If you kill Beasley I’ll never marry you,” she said.
“Who’s expectin’ you to?” he asked, with low, hoarse laugh. “Do you think you have to marry me to square accounts? This’s the only time you ever hurt me, Nell Rayner.… I’m ’shamed you could think I’d expect you—out of gratitude—”
“Oh—you—you are as dense as the forest where you live,” she cried. And then she shut her eyes again, the better to remember that transfiguration of his face, the better to betray herself.
“Man—I love you!” Full and deep, yet tremulous, the words burst from her heart that had been burdened with them for many a day.
Then it seemed, in the throbbing riot of her senses, that she was lifted and swung into his arms, and handled with a great and terrible tenderness, and hugged and kissed with the hunger and awkwardness of a bear, and held with her feet off the ground, and rendered blind, dizzy, rapturous, and frightened, and utterly torn asunder from her old calm, thinking self.
He put her down—released her.
“Nothin’ could have made me so happy as what you said.” He finished with a strong sigh of unutterable, wondering joy.
“Then you will not go to—to meet—”
Helen’s happy query froze on her lips.
“I’ve got to go!” he rejoined, with his old, quiet voice. “Hurry in to Bo.… An’ don’t worry. Try to think of things as I taught you up in the woods.”
Helen heard his soft, padded footfalls swiftly pass away. She was left there, alone in the darkening twilight, suddenly cold and stricken, as if turned to stone.
Thus she stood an age-long moment until the upflashing truth galvanized her into action. Then she flew in pursuit of Dale. The truth was that, in spite of Dale’s’ early training in the East and the long years of solitude which had made him wonderful in thought and feeling, he had also become a part of this raw, bold, and violent West.
It was quite dark now and she had run quite some distance before she saw Dale’s tall, dark form against the yellow light of Turner’s saloon.
Somehow, in that poignant moment, when her flying feet kept pace with her heart, Helen felt in herself a force opposing itself against this raw, primitive justice of the West. She was one of the first influences emanating from civilized life, from law and order. In that flash of truth she saw the West as it would be some future time, when through women and children these wild frontier days would be gone forever. Also, just as clearly she saw the present need of men like Roy Beeman and Dale and the fire-blooded Carmichael. Beasley and his kind must be killed. But Helen did not want her lover, her future husband, and the probable father of her children to commit what she held to be murder.
At the door of the saloon she caught up with Dale.
“Milt—oh—wait!’—wait!” she panted.
She heard him curse under his breath as he turned. They were alone in the yellow flare of light. Horses were champing bits and drooping before the rails.
“You go back!” ordered Dale, sternly. His face was pale, his eyes were gleaming.
“No! Not till—you take me—or carry me!” she replied, resolutely, with all a woman’s positive and inevitable assurance.
Then he laid hold of her with ungentle hands. His violence, especially the look on his face, terrified Helen, rendered her weak. But nothing could have shaken her resolve. She felt victory. Her sex, her love, and her presence would be too much for Dale.
As he swung Helen around, the low hum of voices inside the saloon suddenly rose to sharp, hoarse roars, accompanied by a scuffling of feet and crashing of violently sliding chairs or tables. Dale let go of Helen and leaped toward the door. But a silence inside, quicker and stranger than the roar, halted him. Helen’s heart contracted, then seemed to cease beating. There was absolutely not a perceptible sound. Even the horses appeared, like Dale, to have turned to statues.
Two thundering shots annihilated this silence. Then quickly came a lighter shot—the smash of glass. Dale ran into the saloon. The horses began to snort, to rear, to pound. A low, muffled murmur terrified Helen even as it drew her. Dashing at the door, she swung it in and entered.
The place was dim, blue-hazed, smelling of smoke. Dale stood just inside the door. On the floor lay two men. Chairs and tables were overturned. A motley, dark, shirt-sleeved, booted, and belted crowd of men appeared hunched against the opposite wall, with pale, set faces, turned to the bar. Turner, the proprietor, stood at one end, his face livid, his hands aloft and shaking. Carmichael leaned against the middle of the bar. He held a gun low down. It was smoking.
With a gasp Helen flashed her eyes back to Dale. He had seen her—was reaching an arm toward her. Then she saw the man lying almost at her feet. Jeff Mulvey—her uncle’s old foreman! His face was awful to behold. A smoking gun lay near his inert hand. The other man had fallen on his face. His garb proclaimed him a Mexican. He was not yet dead. Then Helen, as she felt Dale’s arm encircle her, looked farther, because she could not prevent it—looked on at that strange figure against the bar—this boy who had been such a friend in her hour of need—this naive and frank sweetheart of her sister’s.
She saw a man now—wild, white, intense as fire, with some terrible cool kind of deadliness in his mien. His left elbow rested upon the bar, and his hand held a glass of red liquor. The big gun, low down in his other hand, seemed as steady as if it were a fixture.
“Heah’s to thet—half-breed Beasley an’ his outfit!”
Carmichael drank, while his flaming eyes held the crowd; then with savage action of terrible passion he flung the glass at the quivering form of the still living Mexican on the floor.
Helen felt herself slipping. All seemed to darken around her. She could not see Dale, though she knew he held her. Then she fainted.
CHAPTER XXV
Las Vegas Carmichael was a product of his day.
The Pan Handle of Texas, the old Chisholm Trail along which were driven the great cattle herds northward, Fort Dodge, where the cowboys conflicted with the card-sharps—these hard places had left their marks on Carmichael. To come from Texas was to come from fighting stock. And a cowboy’s life was strenuous, wild, violent, and generally brief. The exceptions were the fortunate and the swiftest men with guns; and they drifted from south to north and west, taking with them the reckless, chivalrous, vitriolic spirit peculiar to their breed.
The pioneers and ranchers of the frontier would never have made the West habitable had it not been for these wild cowboys, these hard-drinking, hard-riding, hard-living rangers of the barrens, these easy, cool, laconic, simple young men whose blood was tinged with fire and who possessed a magnificent and terrible effrontery toward danger and death.
Las Vegas ran his horse from Widow Cass’s cottage to Turner’s saloon, and the hoofs of the goaded steed crashed in the door. Las Vegas’s entrance was a leap. Then he stood still with the door ajar and the horse pounding and snorting back. All the men in that saloon who saw the entrance of Las Vegas knew what it portended. No thunderbolt could have more quickly checked the drinking, gambling, talking crowd. They recognized with kindred senses the nature of the man and his arrival. For a second the blue-hazed room was perfectly quiet, then men breathed, moved, rose, and suddenly caused a quick, sliding crash of chairs and tables.
