Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 702
The canyon presented no difficulties of travel that Chane could see. The ascent was gradual, the floor for the most part covered with boulders. The walls were so high and so close that he could scarcely see the sky. The gloom down there was almost dark as night.
Gradually the canyon widened and lightened. Chane mounted Brutus and rode on at a trot wherever possible, impatient to see if he were trapped. But as he progressed, the nature of the canyon appeared to favor his ultimate escape from its confines. The hoofs of Brutus rang off the boulders and struck hollow on the black ledges. Some narrow places required slowing up, but for the most part Brutus had no difficulty. The walls began to shade from red to gray; water appeared running over gravelly beds; grass and vines and flowers made color on the ledges.
Chane rode on for what he considered several miles, always gradually up hill, and meeting with no insurmountable obstacles. This canyon ran north, which was the general direction favorable to him. If he had not been greatly concerned about the possibility of being trapped he would have enjoyed this changing canyon. It narrowed and widened by turns; its walls had an endless variety of blank spaces, caves, bulges, slopes. But, in vast contrast to San Juan Canyon, it had no jumbled heaps of rock. All the débris along that winding lane had been washed down with water at flood time.
Presently Chane rode round into a long wide stretch that permitted him to see afar, both north and south. And he was amazed and thrilled to discover far above and back of his position the unmistakable southern end of Wild Horse Mesa. He could not mistake that majestic fluted wall of gold and red, with the black line of timber fringing the level rim. Like a grand bold-faced mountain it towered above him. This canyon that had engulfed him apparently ran along the eastern base of the mesa. Chane, studying all he could see of the lofty cape, concluded that Wild Horse Mesa sheered down perpendicularly, then spread out great flanges of surrounding escarpment that in turn sheered down to lend its base to winding canyons.
Chane rode on. The hot sun soon dried his clothes. He began to feel the pangs of hunger, but desisted from breaking in upon his slender store of food. The farther up this strange canyon he traveled the more he became prey to apprehension. At any moment he might turn a bend and face an insurmountable wall. Chane could stand to go long on scant ration, but Brutus had to have grass. Therefore Chane lost no time working toward the head of this canyon.
The first sight of cottonwood trees, still beautifully green, cheered him to hopefulness. Brutus could browse on cottonwood leaves if no better offered. Other trees met his trail, and then a grassy bench, a strip of willow bank. It was still summer down here, dreamy, lulled to repose, free from frost and wind, the very heart of the deep canyons.
Again the walls converged and there followed a long stretch bare of green growth or glint of water. At the end of this lane, insulated by its gray walls, Chane saw a sunlit space, and he gave a sudden start, believing that the canyon headed out there into open country. But an instant’s thought scouted this idea. He was still in the depths of the rocky fastnesses. Nevertheless, he quickened to the beautiful vista ahead.
All at once Brutus halted. His long ears shot up. He had seen or scented something that was alive.
“What’s up, old boy?” queried Chane, patting him and peering keenly ahead. He had no fear of what lay before him in the shape of living creature. His enemies were behind. Still, he was intensely curious. Urging Brutus on, Chane kept a sharp outlook.
To his amaze, the canyon aisle led into the most wonderful place Chane had ever beheld. It was an enlargement of the canyon, green and gold and silvery, fragrant and sweet, walled on his right by a cliff that reached to the skies, and on the left by a strange slanting area, a falling of the wall, to a gradual slope of bare yellow stone, dotted by cedar trees growing out of niches in the rock.
Chane’s swift gaze had just time to take this all in when Brutus jumped to a halt and whistled an alarm.
Following that came the swift padding of hoofs on soft ground. Chane had heard that sound too often ever to mistake it.
“Wild horses, by gum!” he ejaculated, with the old thrill of his boyhood.
Then out of the cottonwoods trooped a band of wild horses, bays and blacks, sleek, shiny, with hanging manes and switching tails and keen wild heads erect. They faced Chane.
Brutus neighed now, more with welcome than affright. These were creatures of his kind. His neigh was answered by a piercing whistle that rang like a bugle down the canyon.
“Say, that’s a stallion!” exclaimed Chane.
Then out of the green pranced the most beautiful and wildest horse Chane had ever seen. He recognized him, though he had only sighted him once, and that afar.
“Panquitch!” gasped Chane, in bewildered ecstasy. His heart leaped to his throat and he shook in the saddle.
The king of wild stallions was the color of a lion except for black mane and tail. This quivering mane seemed to stand erect like an arched wave, and fall almost to the sand. He had the points of a racehorse, with the weight and muscle gained from wild life on the desert. But his symmetry and grace, his remarkable beauty, were dwarfed by his spirit. His black eyes shot fire. His nostrils dilated to send forth another piercing blast. Wild, proud, fierce, he was a creature to stop the heart of a wild-horse hunter.
Then with a backward spring, like that of a deer, he wheeled to race into the green. He disappeared, and his band of bays and blacks raced after him. Chane thought they would run up the canyon. No! The sharp click, click, click of bone hoofs on rock told him they had taken to the slope. Above the green of cottonwoods they appeared, Panquitch leading on a run uphill. What a torturing thrill the sight gave Chane! For his first instinct had been one to capture.
Panquitch slowed to a trot, and led his band up and down the waves of slope until Chane lost sight of them. He sat there astride Brutus and marveled. Then he galloped Brutus through the open, and the grove, to the slope. Here he dismounted and took to climbing. As he got up his range of vision widened. Climbing until he was breathless, he halted to look.
He could see north over the waving slope, to the far height where the spreading flange of Wild Horse Mesa met this rising plane of yellow rock. But there was no sign of the wild horses. Thereupon Chane climbed less violently, until he had passed the zone of straggling cedars growing out of the bare rock and mounted high enough to command the prospect. A canyon split the escarpment to the north. Panquitch could not cross there, nor climb to the towering rim of Wild Horse Mesa from that side.
Chane waited. At last, far above, he espied the tawny stallion now driving his band ahead of him. Manes and tails tossed wildly on the summit of a yellow ridge, and vanished. Then Panquitch stood silhouetted against the red of the mesa wall, far beyond. His mane waved in the wind. Every line of his magnificent frame seemed instinct with freedom. There was something about him that made Chane ache. Wild and grand he stood outlined there on the height. Then he vanished.
Chane looked long at the place where he had disappeared. Not easy was it to resist following. But as he was not equipped to chase wild horses, he gave up. Then he studied every line of the heights above, thrilling under the favorable position that had fallen to him through sheer luck.
“Toddy Nokin had it figured wrong,” decided Chane, at length. “Panquitch gets on top the mesa round this end and not to the north. He comes down this canyon to climb up here. Somewhere above he has found a trail to the rim. But — if he comes down this canyon, why hasn’t he been trailed? I’ll find out.”
Chane descended to Brutus and rode on out of the beautiful colored oval. As he had expected, he found fresh horse tracks in the sand, headed toward him. Keen on the trail, he kept on and did not look up until the perceptible darkening of the light demanded his attention.
The canyon had narrowed to a V-shaped cleft, with gleaming walls slanting almost straight up to the sky. How weird and strange! This pass of gleams narrowed and widened as Chane traveled on.
He came to pools of water over beds of gravel, then boulders almost blocking passage. But the trail of the wild horses led Chane on. He heard the gurgle of running water and saw where a stream disappeared under the cliff. He came to a pool that Brutus waded, clean, clear, beautiful green water. Beyond this was bare stone which showed no hoof marks. Then came sand again and the telltale tracks.
Looking ahead, Chane was utterly astounded to see the cliffs come closer and closer together. This cleft grew gloomy and somber. Chane kept on. He was sure of exit now. The wild horses had come down here, and his escape was certain. Besides, he would learn how Panquitch eluded his trailers.
Boulders had to be clambered over, and more pools traversed. The water now was running swift and deep in places. Brutus had trouble keeping his footing. The converging walls took on a darker, weirder gleam. Chane could touch both walls at the same time. The floor of this strange canyon was bare solid rock, with the stream covering most of it.
Chane came to a pool that was twenty feet deep. Brutus swam it. No horse tracks showed now on the granite floor. Even the iron hoofs of Brutus left no trace. The sand was gone.
Pool after pool of deep water Chane had to drive Brutus to swim. And the last was a hundred yards long. Chane could see the green depths under him. Beyond that the canyon widened and the stream rushed shallowly over a granite bed. No intersecting canyons broke these tremendous walls. The trail of the wild horses had come down that stone-floored stream.
Chane remembered the canyon he had marked bisecting the eastern flange of the mesa. Soon he must come to where that opened into this one, unless both were one and the same. He traveled a tortuous mile or more before he reached it. But one glance was sufficient to prove to him that Panquitch had never come down there. It was impassable. Chane kept to the winding lane of denuded rock until at last it opened out into bright space. A stone slope that dwarfed the one below greeted Chane’s expectant gaze. The canyon pierced it and ended in a cleft.
Brutus carried Chane up that long slope and out on a wide desert bench which fell away from the mesa and merged on the seamed and cracked canyon country below. The bench with its scant bits of green appeared rock as far as eye could see. Everywhere along its rim slanted rugged bare declivities of stone, any one of which might lead into a canyon. Chane had marked the place where he had climbed out. He meant to come back. Panquitch’s access to Wild Horse Mesa was no longer a mystery to Chane. He could trap that great stallion.
But what a baffling country was that eastern lower escarpment of the mesa. It appeared endless. To the right stretched the sea of carved rock, lined by its canyon rims, and ending only in the dim rise of purple upland. All on the other side of Chane the towering fluted wall of red wandered northward. Chane’s senses of appreciation had been overwhelmed, yet he gazed on and on with tired eyes.
Fifty miles and more Wild Horse Mesa stretched its level black-fringed horizon line toward the Henry Mountains. Chane rode until sunset without seeing another horse track or a living creature of any species.
Darkness overtook him and he decided to rest for the night.
“Brutus, there’s no grass for you, so I’ll go hungry myself,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll have better luck.”
He made his bed in the lee of a rock, and tying Brutus with his lasso he lay down. What amazing good fortune had been his! He thought of the horse thieves and of his miraculous escape. The cold night wind swept mournfully down this bench; the colossal black wall loomed back of him; white stars burned through the blue sky. Wild-horse hunter though he was, and with the secret of Panquitch revealed, Chane thought last of Brutus, and prayed he could get him safely across the barren land.
CHAPTER VII
SUE MELBERNE MISSED Chess so much that she was surprised, and compelled to admit appreciation of the lad’s many little acts of thoughtfulness and service, not to mention the interest aroused by his personality. She missed the pleasing sight of him, his cheery voice, his whistling, and the fun it created for her to watch him with Ora.
Chess and Jake had taken the big wagon, drawn by two teams, and had driven off to the railroad to fetch back a load of barbed-wire. Sue had overheard Manerube’s talk with her father about how easily a trap to catch wild horses could be constructed in the valley; and despite her own pleadings not to use so cruel a method, and Alonzo’s disapproval, and Utah’s silence, he had listened to Manerube, who was strongly backed by Loughbridge. Therefore he had dispatched Jake and Chess to fetch the wire.
This incident had marked in Sue a definite attitude of mind toward Manerube. Her first impressions had not been favorable, yet these had not kept her from feeling an inexplicable fascination when the man was in her presence. Sue had experienced it when near Mormons she had met in St. George, though not so powerfully. Moreover, she never felt it except when she could see or hear Manerube. But after he had successfully put through a plan to catch wild horses with barbed-wire, Sue thought she despised him. Nevertheless, she was inconsistent about it, for only when alone was she conscious of active dislike. The fact seemed that Manerube’s coming had precipitated a strange sort of crisis in Sue’s life, and she could not understand it any more than welcome it. But she grew convinced that it was owing to her loneliness and to the vague gathering forces of her heart. Once she found herself wishing she could love Chess. This not only amazed her, but made her angry. Moreover, it focused her mind on a bewildering possibility, and that was that her mental unrest had something to do with love.
Three days after Chess had left, Manerube had apparently ousted him from his place in Ora’s fickle affections. Ora certainly was not proof against the virile fascination Manerube seemed to exert. She babbled to Sue about Manerube, utterly forgetting that she had babbled almost as fervently about Chess.
“Ora, listen,” said Sue, finally driven to irritation. “I feel bound to tell you Benton Manerube has tried the same kind of talk on me.”
“Wha-at! Why, Sue?” faltered Ora, suddenly confronted with realities.
“Yes, I mean what I say. It’s not nice to tell things, but if you’re going to be a little fool... To be blunt about it, he has tried to make love to me.”
“What did he say?” asked Ora, with curiosity that approached jealousy.
“Oh, I — I don’t remember,” replied Sue, blushing. “But soft flattery, you know. About my pretty face — how sweet I am — that he never saw anyone like me. Then he makes eyes... and more than once he has got hold of my hand. Does that sound familiar, Ora?”
“Yes, it does,” she replied, solemnly and ashamed. “But, Sue — he has kissed me!”
“Ora!” cried Sue, aghast.
“I — I couldn’t help it,” hastily added Ora, greatly troubled. “We were out under the cottonwoods, last night. He just grabbed me.... He’s like a bear. I boxed his ears, but he just laughed. Then I ran off.”
“Ora, I’m surprised,” returned Sue, much concerned. “Chess is a boy — nice, you know, and maybe harmless. But Manerube is a man, and likely a Mormon who has power over women. I’ve heard of that. He is queer — sort of dominating. But I never felt he had any reverence for women. Ora, I think you had better keep away from him. At least don’t be alone with him.”
“Leave him all for you, I suppose?” queried Ora, sarcastically. “I’ll play hob doing that.”
Sue steadily regarded the girl for a long moment. “Ora, I believe Chess was right — you are catty. Now stop coming to me with your confidences — about Manerube or anybody.” With that Sue turned her back and went to her tent, tingling with anger. She resolved to pay no more attention to Ora and to avoid Manerube.
This latter decision was not easy to uphold. Melberne’s outfit ate and talked and worked as one big family. The geniality of the leader was reflected in all his party. Moreover, Manerube had evidently struck Melberne with unusual favor. During the early hours, and especially at supper time and afterward, Sue could not keep out of Manerube’s way. He watched her across the spread tarpaulin around which they ate, and across the camp fire, and when Sue slipped away to watch the sunset Manerube followed her and stood by the log where she sat. He did not ask for privileges, as was Chess’s way.
“Ora says you told her to keep away from me,” he began, quite pleasantly.
“Did she?” replied Sue.
“Yes. What made you say that?”
“Why don’t you ask her?”
“I will. Say, is Ora Chess’s girl?”
“She was.”
“Humph! Well, Miss Melberne, I’m sorry you think I ought to be avoided. I can’t see that Ora ran away from me.” He laughed, not exactly with conceit, but certainly with a pleasing assurance. “Girls are different. I’ve been weeks alone riding the desert — lonely, hungry for the look and voice of a woman. Would you expect me to avoid one? Ora is full of fun. She’s like a kitten. She’ll purr and scratch. And if I’m fond of being with her, teasing her, how do you think I feel about being with you?”
“I never thought about it,” replied Sue, shortly.
“All right. Think of it now. I’m settled in this horse deal with your father and am likely to go in the ranch business with him later. We’re talking of it. So you’re going to see a good deal of me. And I tell you it’s a different thing from seeing Ora. You’re a woman, a beautiful young woman. If you’d rather I stopped tormenting you, trying to make you like me — I’ll do it. But then I’ll get serious and when I’m serious I’m dangerous.”
“Mr. Manerube, you seem to take a good deal for granted — about yourself,” retorted Sue.
Manerube was not to be offended, rebuffed, or alienated. Sue let him talk and she listened. He grew rather more forceful in his arguments and statements, and as he waxed more eloquent and personal he drew closer to Sue until he sat beside her. His proximity seemed more compelling than his speech. Sue felt that. She knew she was level-headed and had contempt for this man’s estimate of himself. The more he talked the less she liked him, yet she was conscious of some singular attraction about him. When at last the sun sank and the purple shadows of twilight fell like a mantle over the valley, Sue decided it was time to return to camp. So she slipped down off the big log.
