Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 720
Sue hid her face against his breast while a long shudder went through her.
“How — terrible!” she whispered, hoarsely. “All so — so sudden!... Let me sit down. I’m weak and sick. But I won’t faint.”
“Sure you won’t. Just keep your eyes away — from over there,” replied Chane, and releasing her he ran to untie Chess’s bonds.
“My Gawd! what blew in here?” queried Chess, in decidedly weak voice.
“Kinda stormy and smoky, wasn’t it, boy,” replied Chane. “I’ve seen some of that sort of thing. Been in it, too.... You go to Sue and talk. Get her mind off it.”
Chane’s next move was to release Loughbridge, who sat up with popping eyes and incoherent speech. From him Chane ran to the dead men, who had fallen close to each other. He covered them with a canvas. After that Chane gazed up at the cliff whence had come the rifle shots. Thin clouds of blue smoke were floating on the still air, gradually thinning. The cliff was broken and ragged, green with brush, and marked by a wildness of ledge up to the rim. It was not far to the top. Full well Chane knew who had fired that shot fatal to Manerube. But he would never tell, and no one else would ever know. The depths of the canyons hid many mysteries.
He hurried back to Sue, finding her recovered, though she was leaning on Chess’s shoulder. Chane promptly relieved him of the burden.
“Humph! I thought she was in the family now,” protested Chess.
“Boy, you wander in mind,” returned Chane, softly.
“If only dad would come!” exclaimed Sue, in anxious dread.
“Well, he’s coming,” said Chane, gladly. “Look up the canyon. Did you ever see your dad run like that? He’s scared Sue, either for himself or us.”
Sue gave vent to a smothered sob of relief and then broke down.
CHAPTER XVII
MELBERNE AMUSED CHANE, and appeared to be a fascinating object to Chess. The leader of the outfit had returned out of breath, and if Chane was any judge of men, both frightened and furious. When he caught his breath he blurted out many queries, but vouchsafed no information about himself. Chane’s observant eye, however, noted Melberne’s skinned and bruised wrists, and how conscious he was of them, a circumstance undoubtedly due to pain.
Bud McPherson had lied to Chane. The outlaws had happened to run into Melberne and had tied him up. Chane grew more convinced of this as the moments passed. Besides Melberne’s telltale wrists, which he had probably skinned by working free of a tight rope, he had come back minus his gun. Moreover, his relief at sight of Sue safe and well, though pale, was so great as to approach collapse. Lastly, when Chane had pulled aside the canvas to expose Manerube and McPherson, lying so ghastly and suggestive, he had cursed them under his breath.
But the amusing part of this sequence was the argument between Melberne and Loughbridge, and Chess’s deep concern.
“I’m sorry, Jim, you shore have queered yourself with me,” declared Melberne for at least the tenth time. His demeanor, however, was not in harmony with his hard words. He strode to and fro nervously, as was his wont when perturbed.
“But, Mel, this here Manerube made a damn fool of you, same as me,” persisted Loughbridge.
“Shore I acknowledge that. But he didn’t make me double-cross you.”
“I didn’t. You ain’t fair. We couldn’t agree, about money mostly, an’ you fired me out of your outfit. I leave it to Chess, here. You ain’t jest fair.”
“Boss, if you’ll excuse me, I think it was more temper with you than justice,” replied Chess, with immense gravity.
“Huh! Wal, I’ll be darned!” quoth Melberne, surveying the boy in great disfavor. “I reckon you’d like to see Loughbridge homestead with us over there at Nightwatch Spring.”
“That’d be fair and square of you,” returned Chess, losing his dignity of a judge.
“An’ fetch Ora along to live with him, huh?” went on Melberne, ironically.
“I should smile,” answered Chess, with an anticlimax of weakness.
“See heah, young man, you’ve got good stuff, but you talk too much. I’ve a mind to fire you.”
“Aw now — boss,” appealed Chess, abjectly.
“Wal, if you don’t marry Ora before spring I will fire you,” growled Melberne.
Then he turned to his former partner. “Jim, I reckon I’ve no call to crow over you. I’ve had my lesson. An’ if you’ve had yours, mebbe we’ll both profit by it. My fault is temper, an’ yours is a little too much fondness for money.... Let’s begin over again, each for himself. It’s a new country. You’re welcome to homestead in my canyon. There’s room for another rancher. Some day before long there’ll be a settlement west of Wund. An’ that’ll make our problem easier.”
PANQUITCH startled Chane, and all the others, with one of his ringing neighs; and with head, ears, and mane erect he faced up the canyon.
Shrill whistles answered him. Chane espied a troop of wild horses coming out of the shadow.
“By golly! there’s Panquitch’s band,” said Chane, pointing. “They’re looking for him. They’ll pass us.... Everybody lie low.”
Chane crouched behind a rock with Sue, who whispered that Panquitch should be free to go with them. It did seem to Chane that the straining stallion would free himself from Manerube’s ropes. For some moments the wild horses could not be seen, owing to the fact that Chane and Sue were low down. At last, however, they came in sight, trotting cautiously, wary as always, but not yet having caught scent of the camp. Only a faint breeze stirred and that came down the canyon. The whistling of Panquitch must have been a factor in their cautious approach. At the junction of the canyons the space was fully a hundred yards wide, and owing to the stream-bed, somewhat lower on the side opposite the camp. The wild horse band worked down this side, trotting, with heads erect, until they caught scent of the camp, then burst into headlong flight, and in a dusty cloud, with a clattering roar they sped by, and down the canyon to disappear.
“Sue, wasn’t it great?” queried Chane, as he got up.
But Sue had not been looking at the fleet band of wild horses; her startled gaze was fixed on Panquitch.
“Oh, Chane, look! He’s broken one of the ropes!” cried Sue.
Chane wheeled in time to see the remnant of broken lasso fall off the superb tawny shoulder. The other lasso was round the noble arched neck of the stallion and had now become taut. Panquitch reared and lunged back with all his weight. As luck would have it, the rope broke at the noose. The stallion fell heavily, then raised on his forefeet, with mouth open. The broken noose hung loose. He was not yet sure of freedom.
CHESS broke the silence with a wailing: “Oh, the ropes were rotten. They broke. He’ll get away.... Gimme a rope. A rope! A rope!”
“Boy, keep still,” shouted Chane, sternly. “Can’t you see Panquitch was never born to be roped?”
The stallion painfully got to his feet. As the broken noose slipped from his neck he jumped as if stung. Then he walked through camp. He shied at the canvas covering the dead men, and breaking into a trot he headed down the canyon.
“Wal, I cain’t pretend to savvy you, Chane,” observed Melberne, scratching his head in his perplexity. “But shore I will say this. Somehow I’m glad you let him go.”
“Damn it! So’m I!” yelled Chess, suddenly red of face, as if he had been unjustly accused. “But I — I was so crazy to keep him!”
Chane turned to Sue with a smile.
“He’s gone, my dear. Suppose we ride down to the slope where he’ll climb up to the mesa. There’s work to do here that I’d rather you didn’t see.”
Melberne approved of that idea for Sue. “An’ when you come back we’ll be packed to change camp.”
NOT until Sue had ridden at quite a brisk trot, keeping up with Brutus, all the way down to the oval break in the canyon, did her blood warm and beat out the dark blot of horror in her mind.
But at the foot of the beautiful slope of wavy rock all that turgid emotion fell away from her, as if it had never been. She had grown weak, but now she was strong. The purple heights above, gold-rimmed under the sun, inspired her as before, only now with something added to the wild joy of freedom.
“Follow me close, sweetheart,” called Chane. “I see Panquitch far above. If we hurry we can reach the top and watch him climb the mesa.”
“Ah, Chane, you’ll never lose me now, on any kind of trails,” called Sue, in reply, and urged her horse close to Brutus.
To and fro, across and around, up and down, far to this side, and back to the other, onward and upward they rode over the smooth waves and hollows of red sandstone. As they climbed, the purple and amber lights grew brighter, and the shadows of the canyons below grew deeper. They reached the zone of cream and yellow rock, crumbling like baked clay under the hoofs of the horses. Out of the dark depths they rose to the sunset-flushed heights.
“Oh, where is Panquitch?” Sue kept calling. But he had always just gone over a wave of rock.
All above the corrugated world of wind-worn stone streamed fan-shaped bars and bands of light, centering toward and disappearing over the height of ridge they had almost attained. Broken massed clouds floated in the west, dark-purple, silver- rimmed, golden-edged, in a sea of azure blue. The lights of sunset were intensifying. Sue felt that she rode up the last curved wave of an opal sea. She saw Chane shade his eyes from the fires of the sun. Like a god of the riders he seemed to her, bareheaded, his face alight, his sharp profile against the background of gold. Then she mounted to Chane’s side, and it was as if in one step she had surmounted a peak.
All the forces of nature seemed to have united in one grand spectacle — the rugged canyon country of colored rock waved level with the setting sun, and above it, from west to north, loomed the cloud-piercing bulk of Wild Horse Mesa.
“Panquitch! I see him, Sue,” said Chane, his voice ringing deep. “He’s all alone. His band has gone up.... Look! the fold in the wall! It could never be seen except when the sun shines as now. What a trail! Even the Piutes do not know it. Hard smooth rock over the bench, and then the zigzag up that crack.... See, he shines gold and black in the sun!”
At last Sue’s straining gaze was rewarded by clear sight of Panquitch climbing, apparently the very wall of the mesa. With abated breath Sue watched him, conscious of more in the moment than just the climbing freedom of a wild horse. But it was beyond her. It led her thoughts beyond emotions, deep into the dim past of her inheritance. But she had loved Panquitch or some creature like him in a world before this.
The intense flare of gold changed as the sun began to sink behind cloud and rim. It yielded to the wondrous lilac haze. Sue cried out in a transport. Panquitch, too, seemed less a wild horse, more of an unreal creature, giving life to the grandeur and desolation of the naked rock-ribs of the earth.
“He’s almost on top,” said Chane, joyfully. He clung to the physical thing — to the flesh and blood Panquitch, to his pursuit and capture and release, to his recapture and escape, to the long winding mysterious and hidden trail in and out of the canyons, to the wonderful wall of Wild Horse Mesa.
Sue felt all these, deeply, poignantly, but beyond them, inexplicable and vague, was the spiritual thing Panquitch typified. She endowed him with soul. She had gazed at him, recognizing in him something within herself.
Panquitch came out on top of the rim, sharply silhouetted against the blue sky, and stood a moment looking down, with his long mane and tail streaming in the wind. The lilac haze lent him unreality, but the uplift of his head gave him life. Wild and grand he seemed to Sue, fitting that last stand of wild horses. He moved against the sky; he was gone.
“Oh, Panquitch, stay up there always!” called Sue.
Chane smiled upon her. “Sweetheart, I’d stake my life he’ll never feel another rope.”
“We alone know his trail to the heights. And we never will tell?”
“Never, Sue.”
“You will not show dad how to get on top of Wild Horse Mesa?” she begged. “So he could run sheep and cattle up there?”
“I promise, Sue. Why, do you imagine I could ever become that much of a rancher? It may be long before another rider, or an Indian, happens on this secret. Maybe never. Some distant day airships might land on Wild Horse Mesa. But what if they do? An hour of curiosity, an achievement to boast of — then gone! Wild Horse Mesa rises even above this world of rock. It was meant for eagles, wild horses — and for lonely souls like mine.”
Slowly the transformation of sunset worked its miracles of evanescent change and exquisite color. Gold and silver fire faded, died away. The sun sank below the verge. Then from out of the depths where it had gone rose the afterglow, deepening the lilac haze to purple.
“Chane, you have made Wild Horse Mesa yours,” said Sue. “Millions of men can never take it from you. As for me — Panquitch seems mine. He’s like my heart or something in my blood.”
“Yes, I think I understand you,” he replied, dreamily. “We must labor — we must live as people have lived before. But these thoughts are beautiful.... You are Panquitch and I am Wild Horse Mesa.”
Captives of the Desert
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I I
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER I
KATHARINE RESENTED FURTHER disruption of her enjoyment of the color and beauty and loneliness of the Arizona desert. But again she was dragged back to reality by the irritating presence of her friend’s husband.
Wilbur Newton kicked a swirl of sand toward the offending automobile and glowered from the disconsolate driver to the ladies in the party: “That carburetor again! ... Now we’ll miss the Snake Dance. Exactly what I expected, though.”
Obviously it was unspeakable impudence for anyone or anything to interrupt the even tenor of Wilbur’s lordly life. His face, his tone, his strutting gait, now all revealed his pettish anger as he swung away from the unpleasant scene and the car that had betrayed him.
Mary Newton sighed audibly.
Sighs could not always be stifled, thought Katharine, pressing her friend’s hand. “Personally,” she said aloud, “I think it’s a lark to break down on the desert. It’s the unexpected that’s fun. Surely other motorists will make the Snake Dance by this trail. They’ll help us.”
There was no response from Mary. Katharine’s gaze followed hers to the boulder some two hundred feet away, where the object of the sigh had halted. The balancing rock against which he stood shaded the tall, lean figure, but the sun, splitting its rays over and under the rock, threw pools of light on his sombrero and spurs, making them exceptionally evident.
“A big hat and a pair of spurs,” murmured Katharine with startling audacity.
“Yes, a big hat and a pair of spurs — and nothing between. That’s what I married,” Mary replied. Her voice was as light and dry as the desert breeze.
“It ain’t so bad, Miss,” the driver explained. “But it’s expert help I need. Now if we could make thet Indian school at Leupp. Still and all, it’s fifteen miles off.”
“Is it likely that a car will pass this way before nightfall?” Katharine asked.
“Might be days before a car’d come by this spot.”
The man’s reply stirred Katharine strangely. She wanted to learn more.
“Then we might be left here to starve or die of thirst?” she asked excitedly. “And our bones to be bleached by the desert sun?”
“No, Marm. Leupp’s too near. Walkin’s good at night if it comes to thet.”
But the driver’s reassurance could not destroy the romance of their situation for the Eastern girl. “Why, we’d enjoy being marooned,” laughed Katharine. “Mrs. Newton and I will be just as dramatic as we please. We’ll find some high place on these boulders where we can watch and pray for help. See, Mary, won’t that make a jolly lookout?”
Mary entered into the spirit of Katharine’s play, and raced with her toward the slope she had indicated.
“Now — what — did — we want to do that for?” panted Mary as they reached their objective. “Running in this sun — when we have a climb — ahead.”
“To put distance between the world and us,” Katharine replied, with a sidelong glance toward Wilbur’s remote figure. How still the man stood, like a painted thing! Was he thinking? If so, what was he thinking about? No, he could not be thinking, for all his usual profound appearance. Mary was right. There was nothing between his hat and his spurs.
The girls climbed the trailless slope, zigzagging between boulders toward the red-rimmed rock of the domineering mound that rose above them. The higher they climbed, the more difficult became their breathing, and they were forced to pause sooner than they had anticipated.
Katharine dropped to a seat on a flat rock. “I’m actually — puffing!” she said.
Then, lost in a transport of joy, she caught her breath. The desert drew and held her eye — leagues and leagues of sand, pink-toned, shimmering, like an opal ocean in dead calm, the dim distant purple cloud banks resting on the rim of the horizon. It seemed that any moment they might lift and disappear.
“Oh, Mary, you were such a dear to include me in this trip!” Katharine declared ecstatically.
“I hope we can inspire you with a love for Arizona, dear. It may happen that you will have to live here always — for Alice’s sake.”
Katharine had never pretended that it was anything but terrifying for her to face the decision to accompany her frail sister to live in Arizona. When the family doctor had declared that Alice might be able to combat the dread tubercular malady which had followed her siege of pneumonia out here, she was sure that she would never have capitulated if Mary’s letters had not been so full of optimism and her own example of courage so radiant. Katharine looked with admiration at the straight, slim figure by her side. There was something of Spartan strength in Mary’s fine features, in her gallant carriage, in the simple, severe way she wore her hair. And five years of a new life had developed Spartan qualities of soul as well. Neither disappointment nor defeat would ever make this brave woman bitter!
