Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 859
“Yes. Hettie says mother is — is failing, and I must come in to see her,” returned Ben, getting down his spurs and chaps. “It’d hurt like hell, Nevada, in any case, but to realise I’ve broken mother’s heart — it’s — it’s—”
With bowed head he slouched to the bed, dragging his chaps and dropping the clinking spurs, and sat down heavily.
“Ben, it’s tough news, but don’t look on the dark side,” said Nevada, with swift hand going to Ben’s shoulder. “Your mother’s not old. Seein’ you will cheer her. She’ll get well. Don’t be downcast, Ben. That’s been your disease as drink was mine. Let’s make an end to both of them.... Shake on it, pard!”
“By Heaven! Nevada, you’ve got something in your mind that you must drive into mine,” replied Ben, rising with violence, and jerking up his head he wrung Nevada’s hand. “I’ve got to get over not caring. Oh, it’s not that. It was that I cared too much.”
“Ben, you can’t care too much,” went on Nevada. “When you don’t care you’re no good. I never cared — till I rode into your camp on Forlorn River.... Let’s brace up an’ fool the whole country.”
“If I only had in — in me what Hettie believes — what you believe — muttered Ben, thickly, struggling for self-control.
He flung his chaps on and buckled them with shaking hands. There seemed to be a tight painful knot in his breast that must burst before he could feel relief.
“Ben, I felt this comin’ to us six months back,” said Nevada, soft-voiced, hovering around Ben like a woman. “Reckon I didn’t know what it was. But Hettie gave me the hunch. I tell you our luck has changed.... Mebbe I’ll have to kill Less Setter, but that’s neither here nor there....You ride in to see your mother an’ sister. Make them happy for havin’ faith in you. While you’re gone I’ll do a heap of thinkin’. But come back to-morrow night.”
“What’ll you think so hard about?” asked Ben, curiously. “Wal, most about California Red,” replied Nevada, with utmost seriousness. “Ben, that red-skinned mustang has wintered over here at Mule Deer Lake.”
“Nevada!” expostulated Ben, suddenly transfixed.
“It’s a fact unless all them cowmen was lyin’. An’ I don’t see why they should lie. Red is pretty darn smart. We thought he was rangin’ round the lava beds an’ Modoc caves, where there was so many wild hosses, or else over in that big country east of Wild Goose Lake. But the son-of-a-gun wasn’t ten miles from here all winter. Nobody chased him. Reckon those who knew didn’t think there was any chance. But I say winter’s the best time to ketch wild hosses. I’ll prove it to you yet.”
“Too late now. Here’s spring and summer coming fast. You and Modoc ride over to Mule Deer Lake to-morrow.”
“Shore will. I hate to tell you, Ben, there’ll likely be more’n one outfit after California Red from now on.”
“Why now, more than last winter or summer?” queried Ben, sharply.
“Wal, I heard a lot of talk in the saloons,” replied Nevada. “One of them new-rich lake ranchers, Blaine it was, has offered three thousand dollars for California Red, sound an’ well broke.”
“Blaine!” ejaculated Ben, in amaze. “That’s Hart Blaine. There’s only one. He’s a neighbour of my father’s.... Three thousand dollars! Why, that’s a fortune! He used to be so stingy he wouldn’t give a boy an apple out of his orchard. All that money!”
“You ought to be tickled to death,” declared Nevada. “For no one else but you will ever ketch Red.”
“I didn’t think of the money. But what could Blaine want that wild horse for? Sound and well broke!”
“Say, any rancher in northern California would go broke for Red,” rejoined Nevada. “Some cowboy said Less Setter offers more than three thousand. If he pays it I’m goin’ to think money’s comin’ easy, an’ you can bet I’ll look around on the ranges.... Yes, I mean just that, Ben Ide. But the fellows at Hammell reckon Blaine wants California Red for his daughter.”
The idea’ struck Ben so strangely that he uttered a loud laugh. California Red, that wild, fleet sorrel mustang, for sweet little Ina Blaine! It seemed so ridiculous. Yet Ina Blaine was the only person Ben could have allowed to possess the great stallion, even in thought. California Red was his, by right of discovery — for Ben had been the first to see the red-flashing colt on the sage — and by the years of watching and striving.
CHAPTER II
HONK! HONK! HONK! The coarse wild notes pierced Ina Blaine’s slumbers. She opened her eyes, and in the dim room with cool, grey dawn at the window she did not recognise where she was. Honk! honk! honk!
“Oh, wild geese!” she cried out suddenly, with rapturous recognition. “Oh, I’m home — home!”
All the time Ina had been away at school she had never heard the melodious cry of a wild goose. She had forgotten, perhaps, the most significant feature of the wild life about Tule Lake. But once the loved honk penetrated her mind, what hosts of sweet memories, stretching back to childhood! It was a welcome home. The sound offered some little compensation for the loss of the lake. Ina had been astounded and dismayed to see vast green and yellow and brown fields, crisscrossed by irrigation ditches, where once Tule Lake had rippled and smiled, a great shining oval of water lying between the grey sage hills and the black lava beds. Tule Lake was gone. It seemed to change even the towering white glory of Mount Shasta.
Ina lay there watching the dawn brighten through the casement. This large luxurious room was not the one in which she had spent her childhood and girlhood. That had been a tiny one, whitewashed, with a low slanted ceiling and one small window. “The days that are no more,” she whispered. That dear room, sacred to her dreams, was gone as Tule Lake was gone. The childhood days, so sweet and stinging now in memory, had passed away for ever. Her old home was not the same. Father, mother, sisters, and brothers had changed. She realised all this with sadness. While she had been away at school, growing up, nothing at home had stood still.
The sun rose red over the sage hills and streamed in at her window, gilding the new furniture. A cool breath of morning, with a hint of frost, made her snuggle down under the warm blankets. She had awakened happily, but there had come with memory and thought a check to her joy. She had not anticipated change. Yet all was changed. Even she? Yet the honk of wild geese had found her heart true to the old life, the old order.
Ina Blaine was the third child of a family of four boys and three girls, the favourite of a Kansas farmer who had emigrated to northern California and had taken up a great tract of marshland along Tule Lake. In wet seasons his land was under water. He had laboured there, along with several other farsighted pioneers. And when the government drained Tule Lake it was as if their fortunes had been touched by the magic of Aladdin.
But he had sent Ina to a Kansas college long before fortune had smiled upon him. He had a brother at Lawrence, in whose home Ina was welcome during the period of her schooling. It had not been his intention to leave Ina there all this time. But one thing and another, including lack of funds and illness’ in her uncle’s family, had prevented Ina from spending a vacation at home. So she had been away four years, during which wealth had come, as if overnight, to the Blaines.
To revel in being home, to delight in her freedom, to play a little after the long years of study, to put off the inevitable settling down to the serious things of life — these had been Ina’s cherished hopes.
“I must see the funny side of it,” she soliloquised, with a little laugh. “For it is funny. Dad so important and pompous — mother fussed over a multitude of new fandangles — Archie impressed with his destiny as the eldest son of a cattle king — Fred and Bob leaning away from farm work to white collars and city girls. Kate engaged to a Klamath lawyer! I really can’t savvy her. The kids, though, will make up for much. We’ll get along, when once they remember me.
“To begin, then,” said Ina, resolutely, and she got up on the right side of the bed. She was home. Whatever had been the changes in country and family, here was where she had longed to be and meant to live and serve. She had spent time in St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, San Francisco, the last of which she had found most interesting. But she would never be happy in the confines of a city. She loved northern California — the vastness of it, the great white mountains, the ranges of soft round sage hills, lakes and rivers and streams, and in the midst of them, the little villages here and there, not too close together, and the green flat ranches, still few in number.
“Last night, when I said I’d teach school some day, didn’t dad roar?” she mused. “And mother looked offended. What has happened to my dear parents? I fear they must suffer for my education. I wonder what they have in mind. Heigho!
I feel tremendously old and learned.... Back to the tomboy days for Ina! I’ll slide down the haymow with Dall. I’ll fish and ride and swim with Marvie. How keen he was to ask me that!... And Ben Ide?... Not a letter from him all these years. Dear old Ben! I seem to have forgotten much until now. How time flies! They wrote me Ben had gone to the bad. I never believed it — I think I didn’t. Ben was queer, not like the other boys, but he was good.... Has he forgotten me? Ben was a year younger than Archie. He’s twenty-four now. Quite a man! Five years didn’t make such difference when I was fifteen.”
Ina peeped out of her window. The east above the grey range blazed brightly gold, and the glow of the spring morning shone over the level waving plain where Tule Lake had once shimmered. Flocks of ducks dotted the rosy sky, and a triangle of wild geese headed toward the dim blue swamp land under the black lava mounds. Old Mount Shasta stood up majestically, snow-crowned and sunrise-flushed. The fresh, keen air vibrated with sounds — honk of geese, song of spring birds, bawl of calf and low of cow. The pasture was alive with horses, cattle, pigs. Cocks were crowing, and out by the jumble of barns a cowboy whistled merrily.
Ina went downstairs and through the wide new hallway that connected with what had been the old house. Her father had made the mistake of erecting a large frame structure as an addition to the old half-log, half-stone house. It was significant that despite his rise in the ranching world he could not quite forsake his humble abode. And indeed he had his room and office there still. A kitchen had been added to the living-room, which evidently, from the long tables and benches, was now a dining-room for her father’s horde of cowboys.
Ina peeped into this dining-room before she ventured farther. It was empty. Then she heard her mother in the kitchen. Ina ran through to surprise Mrs. Blaine helping the man-cook.
“Good morning, Mother. Where’s everybody?” cried Ina, gaily.
“Bless your heart, how you scared me!” ejaculated her mother, quite manifestly embarrassed. She was a large woman, grey-haired and somewhat hard-featured. “Nobody’s up yet, except me an’ your father.”
“Well! Why, Mother, Archie used to clean out the horse stalls, and Kate used to milk the cows!” retorted Ina, laughingly.
“They don’t any more,” replied Mrs. Blaine shortly.
“I shall try, at least, to milk the cows.”
“Ina, your father didn’t give you a college education for that,” protested her mother, in vague alarm.
“But you used to milk cows and I’d never be above what you did,” said Ina, sweetly, and embraced her mother.
“Father has some big hopes for you, Ina,” returned Mrs. Blaine, dubiously. She did not quite know this long-lost, grown-up daughter. She seemed bewildered by circumstances of monumental importance, but which were unnatural.
“The cow-hands will be comin’ in for breakfast any minute,” she said. “You’d better go.”
“Why? I’d like to see them.”
“Your father said he’d not have any cowboys gallivantin’ round after you.”
“Indeed! But suppose I liked it,” retorted Ina, merrily. “You married dad when he was a cowboy.”
“But that was different, Ina.”
“I’d like to know how.’
“My child, I was a milkmaid on the Kansas farm where Hart Blaine was a hand. You’re the daughter of a rancher who will be a millionaire some day.”
“Mother, that last is very high-sounding, but it doesn’t impress me,” returned Ina, with seriousness. “Dad and I are going to have some arguments.”
“Ina, you were our most obedient child,” said Mrs. Blaine, divided between conjecture and doubt.
“I’ll still be, Mother dear — with reservations. And I’ll begin now by running off so the interesting cowboys will not get to see me this time.”
Ina returned to the other part of the house, with a thoughtfulness edging into her happy mood. Her mother was plodding amid perplexities and complexities beyond her ken. The old simple hard-working farm life seemed to have been disrupted. Ina went to the sitting-room, which she had explored yesterday and had found attractive in spite of its newness. There were some sticks of burning wood in the open fire-place. Ina liked that. A familiar fragrance, not experienced for a long time, assailed her nostrils. How warm and stirring the emotions it roused! Her girlhood again, trails and ponies and camp fires!
Ina curled up in a big chair before the fire, as she had been wont to do as a dreamy child, and was about to give herself up to the pleasure of retrospection when Dali came bounding in, pursued by Marvie. Sight of Ina interrupted hostilities.; Dali was a gawky, growing girl of twelve and Marvie a handsome lad of fourteen, tow-headed and blue-eyed, as were all the Blaines except Ina. An animated conversation ensued, in which Dali reverted to her endless queries about college, Kansas, towns, and travel, while Marvie tried to tell about his horse and that on Saturday Ina must ride with him and go fishing.
In due time the oldest girl, Kate, came down wearing a dress rather unsuited to morning, Ina thought, and certainly not becoming. Kate Blaine was twenty-two, tall and spare, resembling her mother somewhat, but sharper of face and eye. She had not manifested any great delight in Ina’s return.
Yesterday Ina had become aware of Kate’s close observance, flattering, yet somehow vaguely disconcerting. Ina’s consciousness had never been crossed by a thought other than loving all her people. She had been compelled to thrust something away from her mind.
“Marvie, you an’ Dall needn’t eat Ina,” said Kate, with a sniff. “She’s home for good. An’ ma says you’re to hurry up with breakfast, or be late for school.”
Ina followed them into the dining-room, where Mrs. Blaine was waiting. It was a cheerful, sunny room, well appointed, though elaborate for a rancher’s home.
“Where are dad and the boys?” asked Ina, as she seated herself.
“Bob an’ Fred have early breakfast with the cow-hands,” replied Mrs. Blaine, then added, reluctantly, “an’ sometimes your father does, too.”
Dall and Marvie sat one on each side of Ina, and she felt that they would save any situation for her. They were still too young to be greatly affected by whatever it was that had changed the elder Blaines. Ina sensed happily that she could bring much to her younger sister and brother. As for her mother and Kate, they began to force Ina to face the establishing of ideas that would be far from humorous.
“Ina, we ride in a buggy to school,” announced Dall, with just a hint of the importance so obvious in the others.
“I used to have to walk,” declared Ina. “Oh, maybe I don’t remember that long muddy road in the winter — dusty in summer!”
“Aw, I like the ridin’, but I hate the hitchin’ up,” said Marvie. “Say, Ina, paw lets me have the horse and buggy on Saturdays. Day after to-morrow is Saturday.”
“I’ll go anywhere with you,” replied Ina. “I want to ride horseback, too, Marvie. Has dad any saddle horses?”
“Say, where have your eyes been?” demanded the boy. “Pasture’s full of horses. So’s the corral and barn. An’ the cowboys tell me paw has ranches full of horses. He’s gone in with a big horse dealer, Less Setter, who has outfits all over the country. I’ve got two horses. Dall has a pony. Bob an’ Fred have a whole string. Just you tell paw you want California Red an’ see what happens.”
“Who’s California Red?” asked Ina, with interest. “Is he a cowboy or a horse?”
“He’s a wild stallion, the swiftest an’ beautifullest ever heard of. Red as fire! Too smart for all the wild-horse hunters.... Aw, Ina, I’d sure like to see you get California Red.”
“Marvie, you thrill me, but I want a tame horse, one I can saddle myself and ride and pet.”
“Wild mustangs make wonderful pets, once they’re broke proper.”
“Well, then, just for fun I’ll tell dad I want California Red, to see what happens.”
It was Kate who broke up this conversation and hurried Marvie and Dall to get ready for school. Ina went out with them, and made them let her ride as far as the end of the lane, to their immense delight.
The long lane had not changed. She remembered it, and the trees and rocks and bushes that bordered it. Facing back, she saw the green grove half hiding the white house, and the cluster of barns, new and old, and all around and beyond the wonderful level ranch land that had once been under water. Spring was keen in the morning air. Flocks of blackbirds swooped low and high. From somewhere came the honk of wild geese. Far beyond the level expanse rose the brown lava mounds, rising to the dignity of hills, step by step, until they changed their hard bronze for the green of pine. Above them white Shasta gleamed like a sharp cloud, piercing the blue. To the south and east the soft, grey sage mountains barred the way to the wild country beyond. Ina breathed it all in, colour and fragrance and music, the sweet freedom of that ranch surrounded by wild mountains. It filled her heart to overflowing. Here she had been born. The dear, sad, happy memories of childhood flooded her mind. She realised now that she had never changed. All she had learned had only strengthened her hold upon the simple natural things that had come to her first.
Ina lingered long in the grove of pines and maples that, happily for her, had not been touched in the improvement of Tule Lake Ranch. The fork of a gnarled old maple seemed precisely the same as when she had perched there in her bare legs and feet. And the spreading pines gave no hint of the passing of years. It frightened her to realise the growth and change in herself while these beloved trees had remained the same as in her earliest remembrance. How incredible the power of a few years over human life! There was one pine, her favourite, a great old monarch that split just above the ground and rose in separate trunks, sending low branches spreading down, affording the shelter of a natural tent. Many a storm she had weathered there.
