Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 658
An old native once warned Tappan: “See hyar, friend, I reckon you’d better not get caught up in the Rim Rock country in one of our big storms. Fer if you do you’ll never get out.”
It was a way of Tappan’s to follow his inclinations, regardless of advice. He had weathered the terrible midnight storm of hot wind in Death Valley. What were snow and cold to him? Late autumn on the Rim was the most perfect and beautiful of seasons. He had seen the forest land brown and darkly green one day, and the next burdened with white snow. What a transfiguration! Then when the sun loosened the white mantling on the pines, and they had shed their burdens in drifting dust of white, and rainbowed mists of melting snow, and avalanches sliding off the branches, there would be left only the wonderful white floor of the woodland. The great rugged brown tree trunks appeared mightier and statelier in the contrast; and the green of foliage, the russet of oak leaves, the gold of the aspens, turned the forest into a world enchanting to the desert-seared eyes of this wanderer.
With Tappan the years sped by. His mind grew old faster than his body. Every season saw him lonelier. He had a feeling, a vague illusive foreshadowing that his bones, instead of bleaching on the desert sands, would mingle with the pine mats and the soft fragrant moss of the forest. The idea was pleasant to Tappan.
One afternoon he was camped in Pine Canyon, a timber-sloped gorge far back from the Rim. November was well on. The fall had been singularly open and fair, with not a single storm. A few natives happening across Tappan had remarked casually that such autumns sometimes were not to be trusted.
This late afternoon was one of Indian summer beauty and warmth. The blue haze in the canyon was not all the blue smoke from Tappan’s campfire. In a narrow park of grass not far from camp Jenet grazed peacefully with elk and deer. Wild turkeys lingered there, loth to seek their winter quarters down in the basin. Gray squirrels and red squirrels barked and frisked, and dropped the pine and spruce cones, with thud and thump, on all the slopes.
Before dark a stranger strode into Tappan’s camp, a big man of middle age, whose magnificent physique impressed even Tappan. He was a rugged, bearded giant, wide-eyed and of pleasant face. He had no outfit, no horse, not even a gun.
“Lucky for me I smelled your smoke,” he said. “Two days for me without grub.”
“Howdy, stranger,” was Tappan’s greeting. “Are you lost?”
“Yes an’ no. I could find my way out down over the Rim, but it’s not healthy down there for me. So I’m hittin’ north.”
“Where’s your horse an’ pack?”
“I reckon they’re with the gang thet took more of a fancy to them than me.”
“Ahuh! You’re welcome here, stranger,” replied Tappan. “I’m Tappan.”
“Ha! Heard of you. I’m Jess Blade, of anywhere. An’ I’ll say, Tappan, I was an honest man till I hit the Tonto.”
His laugh was frank, for all its note of grimness. Tappan liked the man, and sensed one who would be a good friend and bad foe.
“Come an’ eat. My supplies are peterin’ out, but there’s plenty of meat.”
Blade ate, indeed, as a man starved, and did not seem to care if Tappan’s supplies were low. He did not talk. After the meal he craved a pipe and tobacco. Then he smoked in silence, in a slow realizing content. The morrow had no fears for him. The flickering ruddy light from the camp fire shone on his strong face. Tappan saw in him the drifter, the drinker, the brawler, a man with good in him, but over whom evil passion or temper dominated. Presently he smoked the pipe out, and with reluctant hand knocked out the ashes and returned it to Tappan.
“I reckon I’ve some news thet’d interest you,” he said.
“You have?” queried Tappan.
“Yes, if you’re the Tappan who tried to run off with Jake Beam’s wife.”
“Well, I’m that Tappan. But I’d like to say I didn’t know she was married.”
“Shore, I know thet. So does everybody in the Tonto. You were just meat for thet Beam gang. They had played the trick before. But accordin’ to what I hear thet trick was the last fer Madge Beam. She never came back to this country. An’ Jake Beam, when he was drunk, owned up thet she’d left him in California. Some hint at worse. Fer Jake Beam came back a harder man. Even his gang said thet.”
“Is he in the Tonto now?” queried Tappan, with a thrill of fire along his veins.
“Yep, thar fer keeps,” replied Blade, grimly. “Somebody shot him.”
“Ahuh!” exclaimed Tappan with a deep breath of relief. There came a sudden cooling of the heat of his blood.
After that there was a long silence. Tappan dreamed of the woman who had loved him. Blade brooded over the camp fire. The wind moaned fitfully in the lofty pines on the slope. A wolf mourned as if in hunger. The stars appeared to obscure their radiance in haze.
“Reckon thet wind sounds like storm,” observed Blade, presently.
“I’ve heard it for weeks now,” replied Tappan.
“Are you a woodsman?”
“No, I’m a desert man.”
“Wal, you take my hunch an’ hit the trail fer low country.”
This was well meant, and probably sound advice, but it alienated Tappan. He had really liked this hearty-voiced stranger. Tappan thought moodily of his slowly ingrowing mind, of the narrowness of his soul. He was past interest in his fellow men. He lived with a dream. The only living creature he loved was a lop-eared, lazy burro, growing old in contentment. Nevertheless that night Tappan shared one of his two blankets.
In the morning the gray dawn broke, and the sun rose without its brightness of gold. There was a haze over the blue sky. Thin, swift-moving clouds scudded up out of the southwest. The wind was chill, the forest shaggy and dark, the birds and squirrels were silent.
“Wal, you’ll break camp to-day,” asserted Blade.
“Nope. I’ll stick it out yet a while,” returned Tappan.
“But, man, you might get snowed in, an’ up hyar thet’s serious.”
“Ahuh! Well, it won’t bother me. An’ there’s nothin’ holdin’ you.”
“Tappan, it’s four days’ walk down out of this woods. If a big snow set in, how’d I make it?”
“Then you’d better go out over the Rim,” suggested Tappan.
“No. I’ll take my chance the other way. But are you meanin’ you’d rather not have me with you? Fer you can’t stay hyar.”
Tappan was in a quandary.
Some instinct bade him tell the man to go. Not empty handed, but to go. But this was selfish, and entirely unlike Tappan as he remembered himself of old. Finally he spoke:
“You’re welcome to half my outfit — go or stay.”
“Thet’s mighty square of you, Tappan,” responded the other, feelingly. “Have you a burro you’ll give me?”
“No, I’ve only one.”
“Ha! Then I’ll have to stick with you till you leave.”
No more was said. They had breakfast in a strange silence. The wind brooded its secret in the tree tops. Tappan’s burro strolled into camp, and caught the stranger’s eye.
“Wal, thet’s shore a fine burro,” he observed. “Never saw the like.”
Tappan performed his camp tasks. And then there was nothing to do but sit around the fire. Blade evidently waited for the increasing menace of storm to rouse Tappan to decision. But the graying over of sky and the increase of wind did not affect Tappan. What did he wait for? The truth of his thoughts was that he did not like the way Jenet remained in camp. She was waiting to be packed. She knew they ought to go. Tappan yielded to a perverse devil of stubbornness. The wind brought a cold mist, then a flurry of wet snow. Tappan gathered firewood, a large quantity. Blade saw this and gave voice to earnest fears. But Tappan paid no heed. By nightfall sleet and snow began to fall steadily. The men fashioned a rude shack of spruce boughs, ate their supper, and went to bed early.
It worried Tappan that Jenet stayed right in camp. He lay awake a long time. The wind rose, and moaned through the forest. The sleet failed, and a soft, steady downfall of snow gradually set in. Tappan fell asleep. When he awoke it was to see a forest of white. The trees were mantled with blankets of wet snow, the ground covered two feet on a level. But the clouds appeared to be gone, the sky was blue, the storm over. The sun came up warm and bright.
“It’ll all go in a day,” said Tappan.
“If this was early October I’d agree with you,” replied Blade. “But it’s only makin’ fer another storm. Can’t you hear thet wind?”
Tappan only heard the whispers of his dreams. By now the snow was melting off the pines, and rainbows shone everywhere. Little patches of snow began to drop off the south branches of the pines and spruces, and then larger patches, until by mid-afternoon white streams and avalanches were falling everywhere. All of the snow, except in shaded places on the north sides of trees, went that day, and half of that on the ground. Next day it thinned out more, until Jenet was finding the grass and moss again. That afternoon the telltale thin clouds raced up out of the southwest and the wind moaned its menace.
“Tappan, let’s pack an’ hit it out of hyar,” appealed Blade, anxiously. “I know this country. Mebbe I’m wrong, of course, but it feels like storm. Winter’s comin’ shore.”
“Let her come,” replied Tappan, imperturbably.
“Say, do you want to get snowed in?” demanded Blade, out of patience.
“I might like a little spell of it, seem’ it’d be new to me,” replied Tappan.
“But man, if you ever get snowed in hyar you can’t get out.”
“That burro of mine could get me out.”
“You’re crazy. Thet burro couldn’t go a hundred feet. What’s more, you’d have to kill her an’ eat her.”
Tappan bent a strange gaze upon his companion, but made no reply. Blade began to pace up and down the small bare patch of ground before the camp fire. Manifestly, he was in a serious predicament. That day he seemed subtly to change, as did Tappan. Both answered to their peculiar instincts, Blade to that of self-preservation, and Tappan, to something like indifference. Tappan held fate in defiance. What more could happen to him?
Blade broke out again, in eloquent persuasion, giving proof of their peril, and from that he passed to amaze and then to strident anger. He cursed Tappan for a nature loving idiot.
“An’ I’ll tell you what,” he ended. “When mornin’ comes I’ll take some of your grub an’ hit it out of hyar, storm or no storm.”
But long before dawn broke that resolution of Blade’s had become impracticable. Both men were awakened by a roar of storm through the forest, no longer a moan, but a marching roar, with now a crash and then a shriek of gale! By the light of the smouldering camp fire Tappan saw a whirling pall of snow, great flakes as large as feathers. Morning disclosed the setting in of a fierce mountain storm, with two feet of snow already on the ground, and the forest lost in a blur of white.
“I was wrong,” called Tappan to his companion. “What’s best to do now?”
“You damned fool!” yelled Blade. “We’ve got to keep from freezin’ an’ starvin’ till the storm ends an’ a crust comes on the snow.”
For three days and three nights the blizzard continued, unabated in its fury. It took the men hours to keep a space cleared for their camp site, which Jenet shared with them. On the fourth day the storm ceased, the clouds broke away, the sun came out. And the temperature dropped to zero. Snow on the level just topped Tappan’s lofty stature, and in drifts it was ten and fifteen feet deep. Winter had set in without compromise. The forest became a solemn, still, white world. But now Tappan had no time to dream. Dry firewood was hard to find under the snow. It was possible to cut down one of the dead trees on the slope, but impossible to pack sufficient wood to the camp. They had to burn green wood. Then the fashioning of snowshoes took much time. Tappan had no knowledge of such footgear. He could only help Blade. The men were encouraged by the piercing cold forming a crust on the snow. But just as they were about to pack and venture forth, the weather moderated, the crust refused to hold their weight, and another foot of snow fell.
“Why in hell didn’t you kill an elk?” demanded Blade, sullenly. He had become darkly sinister. He knew the peril and he loved life. “Now we’ll have to kill an’ eat your precious Jenet. An’ mebbe she won’t furnish meat enough to last till this snow weather stops an’ a good freeze’ll make travelin’ possible.”
“Blade, you shut up about killin’ an’ eatin’ my burro Jenet,” returned Tappan, in a voice that silenced the other.
Thus instinctively these men became enemies. Blade thought only of himself. Tappan had forced upon him a menace to the life of his burro. For himself Tappan had not one thought.
Tappan’s supplies ran low. All the bacon and coffee were gone. There was only a small haunch of venison, a bag of beans, a sack of flour, and a small quantity of salt loft.
“If a crust freezes on the snow an’ we can pack that flour, we’ll get out alive,” said Blade. “But we cant take the burro.”
Another day of bright sunshine softened the snow on the southern exposures, and a night of piercing cold froze a crust that would bear a quick step of man.
“It’s our only chance — an’ damn slim at thet,” declared Blade.
Tappan allowed Blade to choose the time and method, and supplies for the start to get out of the forest. They cooked all the beans and divided them in two sacks. Then they baked about five pounds of biscuits for each of them. Blade showed his cunning when he chose the small bag of salt for himself and let Tappan take the tobacco. This quantity of food and a blanket for each Blade declared to be all they could pack. They argued over the guns, and in the end Blade compromised on the rifle, agreeing to let Tappan carry that on a possible chance of killing a deer or elk. When this matter had been decided, Blade significantly began putting on his rude snowshoes, that had been constructed from pieces of Tappan’s boxes and straps and burlap sacks.
“Reckon they won’t last long,” muttered Blade.
Meanwhile Tappan fed Jenet some biscuits and then began to strap a tarpaulin on her back.
“What you doin’?” queried Blade, suddenly.
“Gettin’ Jenet ready,” replied Tappan.
“Ready! For what?”
“Why, to go with us.”
“Hell!” shouted Blade, and he threw up his hands in helpless rage.
Tappan felt a depth stirred within him. He lost his late taciturnity and silent aloofness fell away from him. Blade seemed on the moment no longer an enemy. He loomed as an aid to the saving of Jenet. Tappan burst into speech.
“I can’t go without her. It’d never enter my head. Jenet’s mother was a good faithful burro. I saw Jenet born way down there on the Rio Colorado. She wasn’t strong. An’ I had to wait for her to be able to walk. An’ she grew up. Her mother died, an’ Jenet an’ me packed it alone. She wasn’t no ordinary burro. She learned all I taught her. She was different. But I treated her same as any burro. An’ she grew with the years. Desert men said there never was such a burro as Jenet. Called her Tappan’s burro, an’ tried to borrow an’ buy an’ steal her...How many times in ten years Jenet has done me a good turn I can’t remember. But she saved my life. She dragged me out of Death Valley...An’ then I forgot my debt. I ran off with a woman an’ left Jenet to wait as she had been trained to wait...Well, I got back in time...An’ now I’ll not leave her here. It may be strange to you, Blade, me carin’ this way. Jenet’s only a burro. But I won’t leave her.”
“Man, you talk like thet lazy lop-eared burro was a woman,” declared Blade, in disgusted astonishment.
“I don’t know women, but I reckon Jenet’s more faithful than most of them.”
“Wal, of all the stark, starin’ fools I ever run into you’re the worst.”
“Fool or not, I know what I’ll do,” retorted Tappan. The softer mood left him swiftly.
“Haven’t you sense enough to see thet we can’t travel with your burro?” queried Blade, patiently controlling his temper. “She has little hoofs, sharp as knives. She’ll cut through the crust. She’ll break through in places. An’ we’ll have to stop to haul her out — mebbe break through ourselves. Thet would make us longer gettin’ out.”
“Long or short we’ll take her.”
Then Blade confronted Tappan as if suddenly unmasking his true meaning. His patient explanation meant nothing. Under no circumstances would he ever have consented to an attempt to take Jenet out of that snow-bound wilderness. His eyes gleamed.
“We’ve a hard pull to get out alive. An’ hard-workin’ men in winter must have meat to eat.”
Tappan slowly straightened up to look at the speaker.
“What do you mean?”
For answer Blade jerked his hand backward and downward, and when it swung into sight again it held Tappan’s worn and shining rifle. Then Blade, with deliberate force, that showed the nature of the man, worked the lever and threw a shell into the magazine. All the while his eyes were fastened on Tappan. His face seemed that of another man, evil, relentless, inevitable in his spirit to preserve his own life at any cost.
“I mean to kill your burro,” he said, in voice that suited his look and manner.
“No!” cried Tappan, shocked into an instant of appeal.
“Yes, I am, an’ I’ll bet, by God, before we get out of hyar you’ll be glad to eat some of her meat!”
That roused the slow-gathering might of Tappan’s wrath.
“I’d starve to death before I’d — I’d kill that burro, let alone eat her.”
“Starve an’ be damned!” shouted Blade, yielding to rage.
Jenet stood right behind Tappan, in her posture of contented repose, with one long ear hanging down over her gray meek face.
“You’ll have to kill me first,” answered Tappan, sharply.
