Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 93
“Lew looked and acted the same the morning he struck Miller’s trail,” Betty replied in a low voice. “I believe, despite his indifference to danger, he realizes that the chances are greatly against him, as they were when he began the trailing of Miller, certain it would lead him into Girty’s camp. Then I know Lew has an affection for us, though it is never shown in ordinary ways. I pray he and Jack will come home safe.”
“This is a bad trail they’re taking up; the worst, perhaps, in border warfare,” said Colonel Zane gloomily. “Did you notice how Jack’s face darkened when his comrade came? Much of this borderman-life of his is due to Wetzel’s influence.”
“Eb, I’ll tell you one thing,” returned Betty, with a flash of her old spirit. “This is Jack’s last trail.”
“Why do you think so?”
“If he doesn’t return he’ll be gone the way of all bordermen; but if he comes back once more he’ll never get away from Helen.”
“Ugh!” exclaimed Zane, venting his pleasure in characteristic Indian way.
“That night after Jack came home wounded,” continued Betty, “I saw him, as he lay on the couch, gaze at Helen. Such a look! Eb, she has won.”
“I hope so, but I fear, I fear,” replied her brother gloomily. “If only he returns, that’s the thing! Betts, be sure he sees Helen before he goes away.”
“I shall try. Here he comes now,” said Betty.
“Hello, Jack!” cried the colonel, as his brother came out in somewhat of a hurry. “What have you got? By George! It’s that blamed arrow the Shawnee shot into you. Where are you going with it? What the deuce — Say — Betts, eh?”
Betty had given him a sharp little kick.
The borderman looked embarrassed. He hesitated and flushed. Evidently he would have liked to avoid his brother’s question; but the inquiry came direct. Dissimulation with him was impossible.
“Helen wanted this, an’ I reckon that’s where I’m goin’ with it,” he said finally, and walked away.
“Eb, you’re a stupid!” exclaimed Betty.
“Hang it! Who’d have thought he was going to give her that blamed, bloody arrow?”
As Helen ushered Jonathan, for the first time, into her cosy little sitting-room, her heart began to thump so hard she could hear it.
She had not seen him since the night he whispered the words which gave such happiness. She had stayed at home, thankful beyond expression to learn every day of his rapid improvement, living in the sweetness of her joy, and waiting for him. And now as he had come, so dark, so grave, so unlike a lover to woo, that she felt a chill steal over her.
“I’m so glad you’ve brought the arrow,” she faltered, “for, of course, coming so far means that you’re well once more.”
“You asked me for it, an’ I’ve fetched it over. To-morrow I’m off on a trail I may never return from,” he answered simply, and his voice seemed cold.
An immeasurable distance stretched once more between them. Helen’s happiness slowly died.
“I thank you,” she said with a voice that was tremulous despite all her efforts.
“It’s not much of a keepsake.”
“I did not ask for it as a keepsake, but because — because I wanted it. I need nothing tangible to keep alive my memory. A few words whispered to me not many days ago will suffice for remembrance — or — or did I dream them?”
Bitter disappointment almost choked Helen. This was not the gentle, soft-voiced man who had said he loved her. It was the indifferent borderman. Again he was the embodiment of his strange, quiet woods. Once more he seemed the comrade of the cold, inscrutable Wetzel.
“No, lass, I reckon you didn’t dream,” he replied.
Helen swayed from sick bitterness and a suffocating sense of pain, back to her old, sweet, joyous, tumultuous heart-throbbing.
“Tell me, if I didn’t dream,” she said softly, her face flashing warm again. She came close to him and looked up with all her heart in her great dark eyes, and love trembling on her red lips.
Calmness deserted the borderman after one glance at her. He paced the floor; twisted and clasped his hands while his eyes gleamed.
“Lass, I’m only human,” he cried hoarsely, facing her again.
But only for a moment did he stand before her; but it was long enough for him to see her shrink a little, the gladness in her eyes giving way to uncertainty and a fugitive hope. Suddenly he began to pace the room again, and to talk incoherently. With the flow of words he gradually grew calmer, and, with something of his natural dignity, spoke more rationally.
“I said I loved you, an’ it’s true, but I didn’t mean to speak. I oughtn’t have done it. Somethin’ made it so easy, so natural like. I’d have died before letting you know, if any idea had come to me of what I was sayin’. I’ve fought this feelin’ for months. I allowed myself to think of you at first, an’ there’s the wrong. I went on the trail with your big eyes pictured in my mind, an’ before I’d dreamed of it you’d crept into my heart. Life has never been the same since — that kiss. Betty said as how you cared for me, an’ that made me worse, only I never really believed. Today I came over here to say good-bye, expectin’ to hold myself well in hand; but the first glance of your eyes unmans me. Nothin’ can come of it, lass, nothin’ but trouble. Even if you cared, an’ I don’t dare believe you do, nothin’ can come of it! I’ve my own life to live, an’ there’s no sweetheart in it. Mebbe, as Lew says, there’s one in Heaven. Oh! girl, this has been hard on me. I see you always on my lonely tramps; I see your glorious eyes in the sunny fields an’ in the woods, at gray twilight, an’ when the stars shine brightest. They haunt me. Ah! you’re the sweetest lass as ever tormented a man, an’ I love you, I love you!”
He turned to the window only to hear a soft, broken cry, and a flurry of skirts. A rush of wind seemed to envelop him. Then two soft, rounded arms encircled his neck, and a golden head lay on his breast.
“My borderman! My hero! My love!”
Jonathan clasped the beautiful, quivering girl to his heart.
“Lass, for God’s sake don’t say you love me,” he implored, thrilling with contact of her warm arms.
“Ah!” she breathed, and raised her head. Her radiant eyes darkly wonderful with unutterable love, burned into his.
He had almost pressed his lips to the sweet red ones so near his, when he drew back with a start, and his frame straightened.
“Am I a man, or only a coward?” he muttered. “Lass, let me think. Don’t believe I’m harsh, nor cold, nor nothin’ except that I want to do what’s right.”
He leaned out of the window while Helen stood near him with a hand on his quivering shoulder. When at last he turned, his face was colorless, white as marble, and sad, and set, and stern.
“Lass, it mustn’t be; I’ll not ruin your life.”
“But you will if you give me up.”
“No, no, lass.”
“I cannot live without you.”
“You must. My life is not mine to give.”
“But you love me.”
“I am a borderman.”
“I will not live without you.”
“Hush! lass, hush!”
“I love you.”
Jonathan breathed hard; once more the tremor, which seemed pitiful in such a strong man, came upon him. His face was gray.
“I love you,” she repeated, her rich voice indescribably deep and full. She opened wide her arms and stood before him with heaving bosom, with great eyes dark with woman’s sadness, passionate with woman’s promise, perfect in her beauty, glorious in her abandonment.
The borderman bowed and bent like a broken reed.
“Listen,” she whispered, coming closer to him, “go if you must leave me; but let this be your last trail. Come back to me, Jack, come back to me! You have had enough of this terrible life; you have won a name that will never be forgotten; you have done your duty to the border. The Indians and outlaws will be gone soon. Take the farm your brother wants you to have, and live for me. We will be happy. I shall learn to keep your home. Oh! my dear, I will recompense you for the loss of all this wild hunting and fighting. Let me persuade you, as much for your sake as for mine, for you are my heart, and soul, and life. Go out upon your last trail, Jack, and come back to me.”
“An’ let Wetzel go always alone?”
“He is different; he lives only for revenge. What are those poor savages to you? You have a better, nobler life opening.”
“Lass, I can’t give him up.”
“You need not; but give up this useless seeking of adventure. That, you know, is half a borderman’s life. Give it up, Jack, it not for your own, then for my sake.”
“No-no-never-I can’t-I won’t be a coward! After all these years I won’t desert him. No-no — —”
“Do not say more,” she pleaded, stealing closer to him until she was against his breast. She slipped her arms around his neck. For love and more than life she was fighting now. “Good-bye, my love.” She kissed him, a long, lingering pressure of her soft full lips on his. “Dearest, do not shame me further. Dearest Jack, come back to me, for I love you.”
She released him, and ran sobbing from the room.
Unsteady as a blind man, he groped for the door, found it, and went out.
CHAPTER XVI
THE LONGEST DAY in Jonathan Zane’s life, the oddest, the most terrible and complex with unintelligible emotions, was that one in which he learned that the wilderness no longer sufficed for him.
He wandered through the forest like a man lost, searching for, he knew not what. Rambling along the shady trails he looked for that contentment which had always been his, but found it not. He plunged into the depths of deep, gloomy ravines; into the fastnesses of heavy-timbered hollows where the trees hid the light of day; he sought the open, grassy hillsides, and roamed far over meadow and plain. Yet something always eluded him. The invisible and beautiful life of all inanimate things sang no more in his heart. The springy moss, the quivering leaf, the tell-tale bark of the trees, the limpid, misty, eddying pools under green banks, the myriads of natural objects from which he had learned so much, and the manifold joyous life around him, no longer spoke with soul-satisfying faithfulness. The environment of his boyish days, of his youth, and manhood, rendered not a sweetness as of old.
His intelligence, sharpened by the pain of new experience, told him he had been vain to imagine that he, because he was a borderman, could escape the universal destiny of human life. Dimly he could feel the broadening, the awakening into a fuller existence, but he did not welcome this new light. He realized that men had always turned, at some time in their lives, to women even as the cypress leans toward the sun. This weakening of the sterner stuff in him; this softening of his heart, and especially the inquietude, and lack of joy and harmony in his old pursuits of the forest trails bewildered him, and troubled him some. Thousands of times his borderman’s trail had been crossed, yet never to his sorrow until now when it had been crossed by a woman.
Sick at heart, hurt in his pride, darkly savage, sad, remorseful, and thrilling with awakened passion, all in turn, he roamed the woodland unconsciously visiting the scenes where he had formerly found contentment.
He paused by many a shady glen, and beautiful quiet glade; by gray cliffs and mossy banks, searching with moody eyes for the spirit which evaded him.
Here in the green and golden woods rose before him a rugged, giant rock, moss-stained, and gleaming with trickling water. Tangled ferns dressed in autumn’s russet hue lay at the base of the green-gray cliff, and circled a dark, deep pool dotted with yellow leaves. Half-way up, the perpendicular ascent was broken by a protruding ledge upon which waved broad-leaved plants and rusty ferns. Above, the cliff sheered out with many cracks and seams in its weather-beaten front.
The forest grew to the verge of the precipice. A full foliaged oak and a luxuriant maple, the former still fresh with its dark green leaves, the latter making a vivid contrast with its pale yellow, purple-red, and orange hues, leaned far out over the bluff. A mighty chestnut grasped with gnarled roots deep into the broken cliff. Dainty plumes of goldenrod swayed on the brink; red berries, amber moss, and green trailing vines peeped over the edge, and every little niche and cranny sported fragile ferns and pale-faced asters. A second cliff, higher than the first, and more heavily wooded, loomed above, and over it sprayed a transparent film of water, thin as smoke, and iridescent in the sunshine. Far above where the glancing rill caressed the mossy cliff and shone like gleaming gold against the dark branches with their green and red and purple leaves, lay the faint blue of the sky.
Jonathan pulled on down the stream with humbler heart. His favorite waterfall had denied him. The gold that had gleamed there was his sweetheart’s hair; the red was of her lips; the dark pool with its lights and shades, its unfathomable mystery, was like her eyes.
He came at length to another scene of milder aspect. An open glade where the dancing, dimpling brook raced under dark hemlocks, and where blood-red sumach leaves, and beech leaves like flashes of sunshine, lay against the green. Under a leaning birch he found a patch of purple asters, and a little apart from them, by a mossy stone, a lonely fringed gentian. Its deep color brought to him the dark blue eyes that haunted him, and once again, like one possessed of an evil spirit, he wandered along the merry water-course.
But finally pain and unrest left him. When he surrendered to his love, peace returned. Though he said in his heart that Helen was not for him, he felt he did not need to torture himself by fighting against resistless power. He could love her without being a coward. He would take up his life where it had been changed, and live it, carrying this bitter-sweet burden always.
Memory, now that he admitted himself conquered, made a toy of him, bringing the sweetness of fragrant hair, and eloquent eyes, and clinging arms, and dewy lips. A thousand-fold harder to fight than pain was the seductive thought that he had but to go back to Helen to feel again the charm of her presence, to see the grace of her person, to hear the music of her voice, to have again her lips on his.
Jonathan knew then that his trial had but begun; that the pain and suffering of a borderman’s broken pride and conquered spirit was nothing; that to steel his heart against the joy, the sweetness, the longing of love was everything.
So a tumult raged within his heart. No bitterness, nor wretchedness stabbed him as before, but a passionate yearning, born of memory, and unquenchable as the fires of the sun, burned there.
Helen’s reply to his pale excuses, to his duty, to his life, was that she loved him. The wonder of it made him weak. Was not her answer enough? “I love you!” Three words only; but they changed the world. A beautiful girl loved him, she had kissed him, and his life could never again be the same. She had held out her arms to him — and he, cold, churlish, unfeeling brute, had let her shame herself, fighting for her happiness, for the joy that is a woman’s divine right. He had been blind; he had not understood the significance of her gracious action; he had never realized until too late, what it must have cost her, what heartburning shame and scorn his refusal brought upon her. If she ever looked tenderly at him again with her great eyes; or leaned toward him with her beautiful arms outstretched, he would fall at her feet and throw his duty to the winds, swearing his love was hers always and his life forever.
So love stormed in the borderman’s heart.
Slowly the melancholy Indian-summer day waned as Jonathan strode out of the woods into a plain beyond, where he was to meet Wetzel at sunset. A smoky haze like a purple cloud lay upon the gently waving grass. He could not see across the stretch of prairie-land, though at this point he knew it was hardly a mile wide. With the trilling of the grasshoppers alone disturbing the serene quiet of this autumn afternoon, all nature seemed in harmony with the declining season. He stood a while, his thoughts becoming the calmer for the silence and loneliness of this breathing meadow.
When the shadows of the trees began to lengthen, and to steal far out over the yellow grass, he knew the time had come, and glided out upon the plain. He crossed it, and sat down upon a huge stone which lay with one shelving end overhanging the river.
Far in the west the gold-red sun, too fiery for his direct gaze, lost the brilliance of its under circle behind the fringe of the wooded hill. Slowly the red ball sank. When the last bright gleam had vanished in the dark horizon Jonathan turned to search wood and plain. Wetzel was to meet him at sunset. Even as his first glance swept around a light step sounded behind him. He did not move, for that step was familiar. In another moment the tall form of Wetzel stood beside him.
“I’m about as much behind as you was ahead of time,” said Wetzel. “We’ll stay here fer the night, an’ be off early in the mornin’.”
Under the shelving side of the rock, and in the shade of the thicket, the bordermen built a little fire and roasted strips of deer-meat. Then, puffing at their long pipes they sat for a long time in silence, while twilight let fall a dark, gray cloak over river and plain.
“Legget’s move up the river was a blind, as I suspected,” said Wetzel, presently. “He’s not far back in the woods from here, an’ seems to be waitin’ fer somethin’ or somebody. Brandt an’ seven redskins are with him. We’d hev a good chance at them in the mornin’; now we’ve got ’em a long ways from their camp, so we’ll wait, an’ see what deviltry they’re up to.”
“Mebbe he’s waitin’ for some Injun band,” suggested Jonathan.
“Thar’s redskins in the valley an’ close to him; but I reckon he’s barkin’ up another tree.”
“Suppose we run into some of these Injuns?”
“We’ll hev to take what comes,” replied Wetzel, lying down on a bed of leaves.
When darkness enveloped the spot Wetzel lay wrapped in deep slumber, while Jonathan sat against the rock, watching the last flickerings of the camp-fire.
CHAPTER XVII
WILL AND HELEN hurried back along the river road. Beguiled by the soft beauty of the autumn morning they ventured farther from the fort than ever before, and had been suddenly brought to a realization of the fact by a crackling in the underbrush. Instantly their minds reverted to bears and panthers, such as they had heard invested the thickets round the settlement.
