Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 654
Georgiana was not by any means through with Hatfield, but as she paused for breath, momentarily overcome, the sudden silence was broken by Tuck Merry.
“Aha! Mr. Bruiser,” he yelled as he bounced with remarkable agility off his horse, “the lady has got your number. She’s called you. Every man here knows you for a dirty low-down bum. And right now is when it’s coming to you.”
Hatfield had half turned to slink away when Merry opened up in his loud voice. Slowly the burly rider faced around, scowling, with rolling eyes fixing in surprise.
Tuck Merry just then commanded the intense attention of everybody there. His voice, his strange magnetism, his ludicrous jumping-jack form, riveted all eyes. Georgiana began to quake and thrill. She had forgotten any part but her own in this affair.
Tuck slammed down his sombrero, and slipping out of his coat he slammed that down. His gloves he kept on, and as he began to prance around Hatfield he fingered these gloves in a significant manner.
“Walk away from the ropes. Get out here in the ring,” called Tuck, with robust heartiness.
“Say, you goose-necked idiot — shut up, or I’ll wring off your big head,” harshly growled Hatfield. With a man to encounter he presented a different front.
“Now you’re talking, Bid. That’s music to my ears. Sing some more. You are the most beautiful hunk of flesh to pound I ever saw. You’re also a hunk of cheese. Bid, you look exactly like a fat stiff of a German I met in the Argonne. And would you believe it? I killed that Hun with one punch in the belly.”
Hatfield was as bewildered as enraged. He had to keep turning round and round to watch Tuck, who was walking with giant strides round and round, working his enormously long arms.
“Say, the fellar’s crazy,” he bawled out.
Enoch laughed a dry, cackling sort of laugh. “Wal, Bid, he drawled, “he may be crazy, but I shore wouldn’t be in your boots for a million.”
Hatfield crouched down like a mad bull, about to charge.
“Bid, have you any messages you want sent?” queried Tuck, as he walked faster and faster. “Tell them to somebody while I get exercise. I used to do this when I was boxing-master in the navy.... Bid, I’m a fighting marine and I’ve licked every Buddy who got inside the ropes with me.”
“Haw! Haw! Haw!” roared Bloom, from among the excited riders crowding forward. “Do you git that, Bid?”
“And say, before I forget, I want to tell you I was Jack Dempsey’s sparring partner,” shouted Tuck, cheerfully. “And take it from me, my lady-chasing Tonto bulldozer, Jack had a hell of a lot more trouble with me than he had in some of his ring fights.”
“You’re a bloomin’ lunatic,” blurted out Hatfield.
Suddenly, then, Tuck seemed to leap and strike in one incredibly swift action. Hatfield fell with a crash. And Georgiana screamed. Fascinated, gripped in a hot fury of delight that sickened as it thrilled, she listened and watched with senses intensely strung. She recorded Tuck’s cheerful sally as Hatfield went sprawling, and that picture was photographed on her memory. The rider rolled up and rushed, only to meet a cracking blow that staggered him. He reeled. Tuck danced round him, his arms working like pistons, and his blows raining upon Hatfield. And it seemed he had a strange name for everything. The riders bawled, and jumped around like Indians. Hatfield swung here and there, and then he would jolt stiff and start to fall, only to be held up from the other side by another blow. Tuck Merry was too swift to follow.
Suddenly he ceased these tactics, and drawing back, all about him changed.
“Damn your black heart!” he hissed. “You rough-housed Cal Thurman. Now I’ll give you worse than you gave him.”
Like a huge panther Merry leaped straight up to fall hard on Hatfield, carrying him down. A terrible wrestling, thudding, howling mêlée ensued. The men rolled in a cloud of dust. Then it seemed to Georgiana that it cleared to show Tuck Merry in terrific swinging action. Not so swift now, but heavy! His blows rang hard, then sounded sodden. They were terrible. Hatfield appeared like a sack. Every blow moved him limply. Georgiana shut her eyes, but still she heard the awful blows. Then they ceased. She opened her eyes. Tuck Merry rose to his feet and looked down upon the prone form of the rider, singularly motionless. Tuck took off one glove and slammed it down in Hatfield’s face; then likewise with the other.
“That’ll — do — you — for — the — rest — of your yellow life!” he panted, heavily.
Then he turned to the rancher.
“Mr. Saunders — he’s out — good and plenty,” he said, gasping for his breath. “And I’m here to tell you — he won’t be — much use to you — for a long time to come.”
“Hatfield will never be any use to me again,” returned Saunders, curtly.
The riders stirred, and moved forward to group round Hatfield. One of them knelt. Some of them whispered. Georgiana began to feel the weakening reaction of all this excitement.
Enoch strode over to gaze down upon Hatfield.
“My Gawd!” was his exclamation.
Then Saunders clapped a heavy hand down on his shoulder.
“Enoch, I never had much against you,” he said.
“Wal, I can say the same to you aboot that,” drawled Enoch.
“Listen. I’m letting Bloom go the end of this month. An’ Hatfield leaves this ranch tomorrow if he has to go on a pack-mule.... Suppose you an’ me shake hands with this plucky little girl an’ with each other, an’ be friends. The Four T’s an’ the Bar XX used to run the same range, an’ were the richer for it. What do you say?”
“Jim Saunders, I say, you bet,” returned Enoch, heartily.
They stalked over to where Georgiana sat on her horse, thrilling through and through at this amazing issue.
“Little lady,” said Saunders, with something of gallantry, “accept my respects. You’re a brave girl, an’ Cal Thurman is lucky. You can tell him you made friends with the boss of the Bar XX.”
“Georgie, I shore think heaps more of you,” said Enoch, and a handshake was not enough to express his feelings.
Georgiana would not let any of the riders, not even Tuck Merry, accompany her any farther than the forks of the trail. She wanted to ride home alone, to think, to plan, to gloat over her wonderful good fortune. She arrived at the homestead scarcely later than the middle of the afternoon, to find Cal pacing the porch.
“Georgie, where have you been?” he asked.
She dismounted before replying, and threw her bridle.
“Cal, what’d you say if I told you I’ve made friends of Enoch and Jim Saunders?”
Cal flopped down on the porch bench as if the strength had suddenly left his legs.
“You’ve been over to the Bar XX?” he ejaculated, wildly.
“Yep, and, dear boy, it’s a cinch you’ll never have to go there again.”
“What’ve you done?” he demanded, rising in mingled anger and wonder.
“Darling, I called Bid Hatfield to his face,” cried Georgiana, suddenly beside herself with the joy she could impart. “Made him a liar and a miserable low-down bum before his boss and all the Bar XX outfit, and Enoch, too, with Lock and Serge and Boyd, and the boys. Oh, it was sweet. — Damn him, I made him crawl! . . . Then, oh! oh! oh! — Cal, if you’d only been there to see Tuck Merry beat that boob into a jellyfish! — Crack! Take that nose jab, Bid.... And biff! There’s a jaw-breaker.... Wham! That’s the belly whopper.... Bing! How you like the lamp-closer, Bid? . . . Smash! That one gave me the name of Tuck, ‘cause a few of them will tuck you away cold! . . . Oh, Cal, he played with Hatfield, but it was awful play! Then he changed. He grew terrible. He said he’d rough-house Bid as Bid had done you.... Then it was almost too much for me. I screamed. Oh, such blows and thumps! But I was in a frenzy of glee and I wouldn’t have stopped Tuck to save Bid’s life. Nor would anybody else there. Tuck beat him into a pulp.... Then it was all over. Saunders had his say and he and Enoch made up. They shook hands with me — thanked me. Little Georgiana May did it. Now what have you to say?”
Cal could only stammer his wonder, his gratitude, his incredulous joy.
“Forget it!” she exclaimed. “I’ve something better than that to tell you.... Suppose we run out to the point — to your juniper tree on the mesa rim — where you told me you used to dream as a boy — of all the wonderful things that were going to happen to you.... Let me tell you there. — Come.”
She kept ahead of him, almost running, not listening to him, uttering gay wild laughter. She entered the belt of timber, glided under the cedars and piñons, over the brown fragrant aisles to the rim, where the gnarled old juniper stood. And there with her back to the tree she awaited Cal. He came, and never had she seen him like that. The light in his face seemed to have transformed the stains and discolorations that had been there. Georgiana toyed with her happiness — jealously holding back the rapture she could give.
“Did you know you had married an heiress?” she asked, archly.
“Georgie, are you crazy, or am I?” he cried.
“Fact. A good old aunt I always hated died and left Mary and me some money. Lots of money. But that’s not what I want to tell you. I’m a changed girl.... Are you sure you didn’t give me that knock on the head, the day you married me?”
“Oh, Georgie! I didn’t lie. It was an accident.”
“Well, you should have done it. For that’s what made me love you.”
“Girl! Don’t fool with me now,” he said, hoarsely.
Then she threw her arms round his neck. “Cal, I’m in dead earnest. I love you. I think I’ve always loved you. I was only wild.... Kiss me! — All’s well that ends well. Let me make up for my wrong to you. I’m happy. You saved me, Cal.... And I — I want to be worthy of a Thurman.... I want to be your real wife!”
Together they watched the gold and purple clouds mass over the western range and the purple shadows gather in the wild depths of the Tonto.
Tappan’s Burro
CONTENTS
I. — TAPPAN’S BURRO
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
II. — THE GREAT SLAVE
III. — YAQUI
IV. — TIGRE
V. — THE RUBBER HUNTER
I. — TAPPAN’S BURRO
CHAPTER I
TAPPAN GAZED DOWN upon the newly-born little burro with something of pity and consternation. It was not a vigorous offspring of the redoubtable Jennie, champion of all the numberless burros he had driven in his desert prospecting years. He could not leave it there to die. Surely it was not strong enough to follow its mother. And to kill it was beyond him.
“Poor little devil!” soliloquized Tappan. “Reckon neither Jennie nor I wanted it to be born...I’ll have to hold up in this camp a few days. You can never tell what a burro will do. It might fool us an’ grow strong all of a sudden.”
Whereupon Tappan left Jennie and her tiny, gray lopeared baby to themselves, and leisurely set about making permanent camp. The water at this oasis was not much to his liking, but it was drinkable, and he felt he must put up with it. For the rest the oasis was desirable enough as a camping site. Desert wanderers like Tappan favored the lonely water holes. This one was up under the bold brow of the Chocolate Mountains, where rocky wall met the desert sand, and a green patch of palo verdes and mesquites proved the presence of water. It had a magnificent view down a many-leagued slope of desert growths, across the dark belt of green and the shining strip of red that marked the Rio Colorado, and on to the upflung Arizona land, range lifting to range until the saw-toothed peaks notched the blue sky.
Locked in the iron fastnesses of these desert mountains was gold. Tappan, if he had any calling, was a prospector. But the lure of gold did not bind him to this wandering life any more than the freedom of it. He had never made a rich strike. About the best he could ever do was to dig enough gold to grubstake himself for another prospecting trip into some remote corner of the American Desert. Tappan knew the arid Southwest from San Diego to the Pecos River and from Picacho on the Colorado to the Tonto Basin. Few prospectors had the strength and endurance of Tappan. He was a giant in build, and at thirty-five had never yet reached the limit of his physical force.
With hammer and pick and magnifying glass Tappan scaled the bare ridges. He was not an expert in testing minerals. He knew he might easily pass by a rich vein of ore. But he did his best, sure at least that no prospector could get more than he out of the pursuit of gold. Tappan was more of a naturalist than a prospector, and more of a dreamer than either. Many were the idle moments that he sat staring down the vast reaches of the valleys, or watching some creature of the wasteland, or marveling at the vivid hues of desert flowers.
Tappan waited two weeks at this oasis for Jennie’s baby burro to grow strong enough to walk. And the very day that Tappan decided to break camp he found signs of gold at the head of a wash above the oasis. Quite by chance, as he was looking for his burros, he struck his pick into a place no different from a thousand others there, and hit into a pocket of gold. He cleaned out the pocket before sunset, the richer for several thousand dollars.
“You brought me luck,” said Tappan, to the little gray burro staggering round its mother. “Your name is Jenet. You’re Tappan’s burro, an’ I reckon he’ll stick to you.”
Jenet belied the promise of her birth. Like a weed in fertile ground she grew. Winter and summer Tappan patroled the sand beats from one trading post to another, and his burros traveled with him. Jenet had an especially good training. Her mother had happened to be a remarkably good burro before Tappan had bought her. And Tappan had patience; he found leisure to do things, and he had something of pride in Jenet. Whenever he happened to drop into Ehrenberg or Yuma, or any freighting station, some prospector always tried to buy Jenet. She grew as large as a medium-sized mule, and a three-hundred-pound pack was no load to discommode her.
Tappan, in common with most lonely wanderers of the desert, talked to his burro. As the years passed this habit grew, until Tappan would talk to Jenet just to hear the sound of his voice. Perhaps that was all which kept him human.
“Jenet, you’re worthy of a happier life,” Tappan would say, as he unpacked her after a long day’s march over the barren land. “You’re a ship of the desert. Here we are, with grub an’ water, a hundred miles from any camp. An’ what but you could have fetched me here? No horse! No mule! No man! Nothin’ but a camel, an’ so I call you ship of the desert. But for you an’ your kind, Jenet, there’d be no prospectors, and few gold mines. Reckon the desert would be still an unknown waste...You’re a great beast of burden, Jenet, an’ there’s no one to sing your praise.”
And of a golden sunrise, when Jenet was packed and ready to face the cool, sweet fragrance of the desert, Tappan was wont to say:
“Go along with you, Jenet. The mornin’s fine. Look at the mountains yonder callin’ us. It’s only a step down there. All purple an’ violet! It’s the life for us, my burro, an’ Tappan’s as rich as if all these sands were pearls.”
But sometimes, at sunset, when the way had been long and hot and rough, Tappan would bend his shaggy head over Jenet, and talk in different mood.
“Another day gone, Jenet, another journey ended — an’ Tappan is only older, wearier, sicker. There’s no reward for your faithfulness. I’m only a desert rat, livin’ from hole to hole. No home! No face to see...Some sunset, Jenet, we’ll reach the end of the trail. An’ Tappan’s bones will bleach in the sands. An’ no one will know or care!”
When Jenet was two years old she would have taken the blue ribbon in competition with all the burros of the Southwest. She was unusually large and strong, perfectly proportioned, sound in every particular, and practically tireless. But these were not the only characteristics that made prospectors envious of Tappan. Jenet had the common virtues of all good burros magnified to an unbelievable degree. Moreover, she had sense and instinct that to Tappan bordered on the supernatural.
During these years Tappan’s trail crisscrossed the mineral region of the Southwest. But, as always, the rich strike held aloof. It was like the pot of gold buried at the foot of the rainbow. Jenet knew the trails and the water holes better than Tappan. She could follow a trail obliterated by drifting sand or cut out by running water. She could scent at long distance a new spring on the desert or a strange water hole. She never wandered far from camp so that Tappan had to walk far in search of her. Wild burros, the bane of most prospectors, held no charm for Jenet. And she had never yet shown any especial liking for a tame burro. This was the strangest feature of Jenet’s complex character. Burros were noted for their habit of pairing off, and forming friendships for one or more comrades. These relations were permanent. But Jenet still remained fancy free.
Tappan scarcely realized how he relied upon this big, gray, serene beast of burden. Of course, when chance threw him among men of his calling he would brag about her. But he had never really appreciated Jenet. In his way Tappan was a brooding, plodding fellow, not conscious of sentiment. When he bragged about Jenet it was her good qualities upon which he dilated. But what he really liked best about her were the little things of every day.
During the earlier years of her training Jenet had been a thief. She would pretend to be asleep for hours just to get a chance to steal something out of camp. Tappan had broken this habit in its incipiency. But he never quite trusted her. Jenet was a burro.
Jenet ate anything offered her. She could fare for herself or go without. Whatever Tappan had left from his own meals was certain to be rich dessert for Jenet. Every meal time she would stand near the camp fire, with one great long ear drooping, and the other standing erect. Her expression was one of meekness, of unending patience. She would lick a tin can until it shone resplendent. On long, hard, barren trails Jenet’s deportment did not vary from that where the water holes and grassy patches were many. She did not need to have grass or grain. Brittle-bush and sage were good fare for her. She could eat greasewood, a desert plant that protected itself with a sap as sticky as varnish and far more dangerous to animals. She could eat cacti. Tappan had seen her break off leaves of the prickly pear cactus, and stamp upon them with her forefeet, mashing off the thorns, so that she could consume the succulent pulp. She liked mesquite beans, and leaves of willow, and all the trailing vines of the desert. And she could subsist in an arid waste land where a man would have died in short order.
