The Zane Grey Megapack, page 578
“Howdy, Columbine!” he said. “What are you doing up here? You might get run over.”
“Hello, Wils!” she replied, slowly. “Oh, I guess I can keep out of the way.”
“Some bad steers in that bunch. If any of them run over here Pronto will leave you to walk home. That mustang hates cattle. And he’s only half broke, you know.”
“I forgot you were driving today,” she replied, and looked away from him. There was a moment’s pause—long, it seemed to her.
“What’d you come for?” he asked, curiously.
“I wanted to gather columbines. See.” She held out the nodding flowers toward him. “Take one.… Do you like them?”
“Yes. I like columbine,” he replied, taking one of them. His keen hazel eyes, softened, darkened. “Colorado’s flower.”
“Columbine!… It is my name.”
“Well, could you have a better? It sure suits you.”
“Why?” she asked, and she looked at him again.
“You’re slender—graceful. You sort of hold your head high and proud. Your skin is white. Your eyes are blue. Not bluebell blue, but columbine blue—and they turn purple when you’re angry.”
“Compliments! Wilson, this is new kind of talk for you,” she said.
“You’re different today.”
“Yes, I am.” She looked across the valley toward the westering sun, and the slight flush faded from her cheeks. “I have no right to hold my head proud. No one knows who I am—where I came from.”
“As if that made any difference!” he exclaimed.
“Bellounds is not my dad. I have no dad. I was a waif. They found me in the woods—a baby—lost among the flowers. Columbine Bellounds I’ve always been. But that is not my name. No one can tell what my name really is.”
“I knew your story years ago, Columbine,” he replied, earnestly. “Everybody knows. Old Bill ought to have told you long before this. But he loves you. So does—everybody. You must not let this knowledge sadden you.… I’m sorry you’ve never known a mother or a sister. Why, I could tell you of many orphans who—whose stories were different.”
“You don’t understand. I’ve been happy. I’ve not longed for any—anyone except a mother. It’s only—”
“What don’t I understand?”
“I’ve not told you all.”
“No? Well, go on,” he said, slowly.
Meaning of the hesitation and the restraint that had obstructed her thought now flashed over Columbine. It lay in what Wilson Moore might think of her prospective marriage to Jack Bellounds. Still she could not guess why that should make her feel strangely uncertain of the ground she stood on or how it could cause a constraint she had to fight herself to hide. Moreover, to her annoyance, she found that she was evading his direct request for the news she had withheld.
“Jack Bellounds is coming home tonight or tomorrow,” she said. Then, waiting for her companion to reply, she kept an unseeing gaze upon the scanty pines fringing Old White Slides. But no reply appeared to be forthcoming from Moore. His silence compelled her to turn to him. The cowboy’s face had subtly altered; it was darker with a tinge of red under the bronze; and his lower lip was released from his teeth, even as she looked. He had his eyes intent upon the lasso he was coiling. Suddenly he faced her and the dark fire of his eyes gave her a shock.
I’ve been expecting that shorthorn back for months.” he said, bluntly.
“You—never—liked Jack?” queried Columbine, slowly. That was not what she wanted to say, but the thought spoke itself.
“I should smile I never did.”
“Ever since you and he fought—long ago—all over—”
His sharp gesture made the coiled lasso loosen.
“Ever since I licked him good—don’t forget that,” interrupted Wilson. The red had faded from the bronze.
“Yes, you licked him,” mused Columbine. “I remember that. And Jack’s hated you ever since.”
“There’s been no love lost.”
“But, Wils, you never before talked this way—spoke out so—against Jack,” she protested.
“Well, I’m not the kind to talk behind a fellow’s back. But I’m not mealy-mouthed, either, and—and—”
He did not complete the sentence and his meaning was enigmatic. Altogether Moore seemed not like himself. The fact disturbed Columbine. Always she had confided in him. Here was a most complex situation—she burned to tell him, yet somehow feared to—she felt an incomprehensible satisfaction in his bitter reference to Jack—she seemed to realize that she valued Wilson’s friendship more than she had known, and now for some strange reason it was slipping from her.
“We—we were such good friends—pards,” said Columbine, hurriedly and irrelevantly.
“Who?” He stared at her.
“Why, you—and me.”
“Oh!” His tone softened, but there was still disapproval in his glance. “What of that?”
“Something has happened to make me think I’ve missed you—lately—that’s all.”
“Ahuh!” His tone held finality and bitterness, but he would not commit himself. Columbine sensed a pride in him that seemed the cause of his aloofness.
“Wilson, why have you been different lately?” she asked, plaintively.
“What’s the good to tell you now?” he queried, in reply.
That gave her a blank sense of actual loss. She had lived in dreams and he in realities. Right now she could not dispel her dream—see and understand all that he seemed to. She felt like a child, then, growing old swiftly. The strange past longing for a mother surged up in her like a strong tide. Some one to lean on, someone who loved her, someone to help her in this hour when fatality knocked at the door of her youth—how she needed that!
“It might be bad for me—to tell me, but tell me, anyhow,” she said, finally, answering as someone older than she had been an hour ago—to something feminine that leaped up. She did not understand this impulse, but it was in her.
“No!” declared Moore, with dark red staining his face. He slapped the lasso against his saddle, and tied it with clumsy hands. He did not look at her. His tone expressed anger and amaze.
“Dad says I must marry Jack,” she said, with a sudden return to her natural simplicity.
“I heard him tell that months ago,” snapped Moore.
“You did! Was that—why?” she whispered.
“It was,” he answered, ringingly.
“But that was no reason for you to be—be—to stay away from me,” she declared, with rising spirit.
He laughed shortly.
“Wils, didn’t you like me any more after dad said that?” she queried.
“Columbine, a girl nineteen years and about to—to get married—ought not be a fool,” he replied, with sarcasm.
“I’m not a fool,” she rejoined, hotly.
“You ask fool questions.”
“Well, you didn’t like me afterward or you’d never have mistreated me.”
“If you say I mistreated you—you say what’s untrue,” he replied, just as hotly.
They had never been so near a quarrel before. Columbine experienced a sensation new to her—a commingling of fear, heat, and pang, it seemed, all in one throb. Wilson was hurting her. A quiver ran all over her, along her veins, swelling and tingling.
“You mean I lie?” she flashed.
“Yes, I do—if—”
But before he could conclude she slapped his face. It grew pale then, while she began to tremble.
“Oh—I didn’t intend that. Forgive me,” she faltered.
He rubbed his cheek. The hurt had not been great, so far as the blow was concerned. But his eyes were dark with pain and anger.
“Oh, don’t distress yourself,” he burst out. “You slapped me before—once, years ago—for kissing you. I—I apologize for saying you lied. You’re only out of your head. So am I.”
That poured oil upon the troubled waters. The cowboy appeared to be hesitating between sudden flight and the risk of staying longer.
“Maybe that’s it,” replied Columbine, with a half-laugh. She was not far from tears and fury with herself. “Let us make up—be friends again.”
Moore squared around aggressively. He seemed to fortify himself against something in her. She felt that. But his face grew harder and older than she had ever seen it.
“Columbine, do you know where Jack Bellounds has been for these three years?” he asked, deliberately, entirely ignoring her overtures of friendship.
“No. Somebody said Denver. Some one else said Kansas City. I never asked dad, because I knew Jack had been sent away. I’ve supposed he was working—making a man of himself.”
“Well, I hope to Heaven—for your sake—what you suppose comes true,” returned Moore, with exceeding bitterness.
“Do you know where he has been?” asked Columbine. Some strange feeling prompted that. There was a mystery here. Wilson’s agitation seemed strange and deep.
“Yes, I do.” The cowboy bit that out through closing teeth, as if locking them against an almost overmastering temptation.
Columbine lost her curiosity. She was woman enough to realize that there might well be facts which would only make her situation harder.
“Wilson,” she began, hurriedly, “I owe all I am to dad. He has cared for me—sent me to school. He has been so good to me. I’ve loved him always. It would be a shabby return for all his protection and love if—if I refused—”
“Old Bill is the best man ever,” interrupted Moore, as if to repudiate any hint of disloyalty to his employer. “Everybody in Middle Park and all over owes Bill something. He’s sure good. There never was anything wrong with him except his crazy blindness about his son. Buster Jack—the—the—”
Columbine put a hand over Moore’s lips.
“The man I must marry,” she said, solemnly.
“You must—you will?” he demanded.
“Of course. What else could I do? I never thought of refusing.”
“Columbine!” Wilson’s cry was so poignant, his gesture so violent, his dark eyes so piercing that Columbine sustained a shock that held her trembling and mute. “How can you love Jack Bellounds? You were twelve years old when you saw him last. How can you love him?”
“I don’t” replied Columbine.
“Then how could you marry him?”
“I owe dad obedience. It’s his hope that I can steady Jack.”
“Steady Jack!” exclaimed Moore, passionately. “Why, you girl—you white-faced flower! You with your innocence and sweetness steady that damned pup! My Heavens! He was a gambler and a drunkard. He—”
“Hush!” implored Columbine.
“He cheated at cards,” declared the cowboy, with a scorn that placed that vice as utterly base.
“But Jack was only a wild boy,” replied Columbine, trying with brave words to champion the son of the man she loved as her father. “He has been sent away to work. He’ll have outgrown that wildness. He’ll come home a man.”
“Bah!” cried Moore, harshly.
Columbine felt a sinking within her. Where was her strength? She, who could walk and ride so many miles, to become sick with an inward quaking! It was childish. She struggled to hide her weakness from him.
“It’s not like you to be this way,” she said. “You used to be generous. Am I to blame? Did I choose my life?”
Moore looked quickly away from her, and, standing with a hand on his horse, he was silent for a moment. The squaring of his shoulders bore testimony to his thought. Presently he swung up into the saddle. The mustang snorted and champed the bit and tossed his head, ready to bolt.
“Forget my temper,” begged the cowboy, looking down upon Columbine. “I take it all back. I’m sorry. Don’t let a word of mine worry you. I was only jealous.”
“Jealous!” exclaimed Columbine, wonderingly.
“Yes. That makes a fellow see red and green. Bad medicine! You never felt it.”
“What were you jealous of?” asked Columbine.
The cowboy had himself in hand now and he regarded her with a grim amusement.
“Well, Columbine, it’s like a story,” he replied. “I’m the fellow disowned by his family—a wanderer of the wilds—no good—and no prospects.… Now our friend Jack, he’s handsome and rich. He has a doting old dad. Cattle, horses—ranches! He wins the girl. See!”
Spurring his mustang, the cowboy rode away. At the edge of the slope he turned in the saddle. “I’ve got to drive in this bunch of cattle. It’s late. You hurry home.” Then he was gone. The stones cracked and rolled down under the side of the bluff.
Columbine stood where he had left her: dubious, yet with the blood still hot in her cheeks.
“Jealous?… He wins the girl?” she murmured in repetition to herself. “What ever could he have meant? He didn’t mean—he didn’t—”
The simple, logical interpretation of Wilson’s words opened Columbine’s mind to a disturbing possibility of which she had never dreamed. That he might love her! If he did, why had he not said so? Jealous, maybe, but he did not love her! The next throb of thought was like a knock at a door of her heart—a door never yet opened, inside which seemed a mystery of feeling, of hope, despair, unknown longing, and clamorous voices. The woman just born in her, instinctive and self-preservative, shut that door before she had more than a glimpse inside. But then she felt her heart swell with its nameless burdens.
Pronto was grazing near at hand. She caught him and mounted. It struck her then that her hands were numb with cold. The wind had ceased fluttering the aspens, but the yellow leaves were falling, rustling. Out on the brow of the slope she faced home and the west.
A glorious Colorado sunset had just reached the wonderful height of its color and transformation. The sage slopes below her seemed rosy velvet; the golden aspens on the farther reaches were on fire at the tips; the foothills rolled clear and mellow and rich in the light; the gulf of distance on to the great black range was veiled in mountain purple; and the dim peaks beyond the range stood up, sunset-flushed and grand. The narrow belt of blue sky between crags and clouds was like a river full of fleecy sails and wisps of silver. Above towered a pall of dark cloud, full of the shades of approaching night.
“Oh, beautiful!” breathed the girl, with all her worship of nature. That wild world of sunset grandeur and loneliness and beauty was hers. Over there, under a peak of the black range, was the place where she had been found, a baby, lost in the forest. She belonged to that, and so it belonged to her. Strength came to her from the glory of light on the hills.
Pronto shot up his ears and checked his trot.
“What is it, boy?” called Columbine. The trail was getting dark. Shadows were creeping up the slope as she rode down to meet them. The mustang had keen sight and scent. She reined him to a halt.
All was silent. The valley had begun to shade on the far side and the rose and gold seemed fading from the nearer. Below, on the level floor of the valley, lay the rambling old ranch-house, with the cabins nestling around, and the corrals leading out to the soft hay-fields, misty and gray in the twilight. A single light gleamed. It was like a beacon.
The air was cold with a nip of frost. From far on the other side of the ridge she had descended came the bawls of the last straggling cattle of the round-up. But surely Pronto had not shot up his ears for them. As if in answer a wild sound pealed down the slope, making the mustang jump. Columbine had heard it before.
“Pronto, it’s only a wolf,” she soothed him.
The peal was loud, rather harsh at first, then softened to a mourn, wild, lonely, haunting. A pack of coyotes barked in angry answer, a sharp, staccato, yelping chorus, the more piercing notes biting on the cold night air. These mountain mourns and yelps were music to Columbine. She rode on down the trail in the gathering darkness, less afraid of the night and its wild denizens than of what awaited her at White Slides Ranch.
CHAPTER II
Darkness settled down like a black mantle over the valley. Columbine rather hoped to find Wilson waiting to take care of her horse, as used to be his habit, but she was disappointed. No light showed from the cabin in which the cowboys lived; he had not yet come in from the round-up. She unsaddled, and turned Pronto loose in the pasture.
The windows of the long, low ranch-house were bright squares in the blackness, sending cheerful rays afar. Columbine wondered in trepidation if Jack Bellounds had come home. It required effort of will to approach the house. Yet since she must meet him, the sooner the ordeal was over the better. Nevertheless she tiptoed past the bright windows, and went all the length of the long porch, and turned around and went back, and then hesitated, fighting a slow drag of her spirit, an oppression upon her heart. The door was crude and heavy. It opened hard.
Columbine entered a big room lighted by a lamp on the upper table and by blazing logs in a huge stone fireplace. This was the living-room, rather gloomy in the corners, and bare, but comfortable, for all simple needs. The logs were new and the chinks between them filled with clay, still white, showing that the house was of recent build.
The rancher, Bellounds, sat in his easy-chair before the fire, his big, horny hands extended to the warmth. He was in his shirt-sleeves, a gray, bold-faced man, of over sixty years, still muscular and rugged.
At Columbine’s entrance he raised his drooping head, and so removed the suggestion of sadness in his posture.
“Wal, lass, hyar you are,” was his greeting. “Jake has been hollerin’ thet chuck was ready. Now we can eat.”
“Dad—did—did your son come?” asked Columbine.
“No. I got word jest at sundown. One of Baker’s cowpunchers from up the valley. He rode up from Kremmlin’ an’ stopped to say Jack was celebratin’ his arrival by too much red liquor. Reckon he won’t be home tonight. Mebbe tomorrow.”
Bellounds spoke in an even, heavy tone, without any apparent feeling. Always he was mercilessly frank and never spared the truth. But Columbine, who knew him well, felt how this news flayed him. Resentment stirred in her toward the wayward son, but she knew better than to voice it.
