Collected Works of Zane Grey

by Zane Grey

  Yet in his heart he realized that he had not given the old life a fair break. The great modern city was all right, for young people who had kept pace with the times.

  Andrew was not speed-mad, drink-mad, pleasure-mad, money-mad, but there was something lacking. He had not been willing to give the old life what it took to make the grade.

  “But I can raise wheat,” he replied to his accusations, “or be a garage mechanic, or a forest ranger...or something, by golly!”

  What should be his first move? A definite, irrevocable one! First he’d telephone Constance. Sure of her reaction, and eager to have it over, he called her number. And while he waited he visualized her blonde head on her white pillow.

  “Hello,” came the answer presently, in the sleepy, rich, contented voice he knew so well.

  “Good morning, Connie. This is Andy,” he replied. “Oh, it’s you, big boy? What’s the idea — calling me at this ungodly hour?” she pouted.

  “News, Connie,” he plunged in. “Dad has shot the works. I’ve been disinherited — turned out — on my own!”

  “Andy! Don’t be so dramatic! Are you kidding me?”

  He assured her solemnly that it was only too true and that somehow he felt strangely glad. “You know, Connie, I’ve been a total loss in this burg.”

  Then followed a silence so long that Andrew had to restrain himself not to break it.

  “Oh, Andy — what a rotten break! I’m so sorry, dear,” she said finally, and that reply gave him the relief he sought.

  “Sure you’re sorry, Connie. But your heart isn’t going to break?”

  “My heart break? Andy, be yourself!”

  “Darling, I’m being myself...What I mean is that if you — if you considered our — our friendship...Oh, hang it, Connie, if you want to hold me—”

  “Dear old Andy! What a child you are!” came the answer accompanied by Constance’s mellow laugh. “Listen. I never would have married you, and I thought you knew it. We were just good pals.”

  “I think I remember you telling me that before. But I wanted to play the game straight.”

  “Andy, darling, you’re too fine, too simple, too square for this crazy town...What will you do?”

  “Beat it out West.”

  “Where?”

  “Wild and woolly Wyoming.”

  “Wyoming? For the love of Mike! Wouldn’t St. Louis be far enough?”

  “Nix on the madding crowd, Connie.”

  “Darling, you’re being a little mad yourself. That’s what I always liked about you.”

  “Me for the tall timbers and the open range!”

  “How you do rave!...At least you’ll get a kick out of it. I’m envious!”

  “Can that stuff, will you?” retorted Andrew. “And just get this straight. It’s something Gloria sprung on me a moment ago.” And Andrew told her exactly what Gloria had said. He heard Connie’s low lazy laugh. Then she added: “Tell Gloria it’s not so hot.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell her...Well, Connie, old dear, good-by.”

  “Good-by, Andy — and good luck!”

  Slowly Andrew hung up the receiver, conscious of immeasurable relief and at the same time a vague sadness. His thoughts turned back to the many gay times he and Connie and Gloria had had together. He was turning his back upon those irresponsible times, but there would be no feeling of irreparable loss.

  Andrew stood at the window for a moment, in a pensive mood. The street was empty, with that stillness which always meant the Sabbath. Beyond the corner house he could see Central Park, with the maples, the beeches and oaks beginning to show freshly green. Spring had come again. And suddenly the realization that soon he would be out where he could breathe, where he could see the sky and face the free wind, and feel the hot sun on his back and smell the earth, rushed over him with almost a suffocating necessity. By that fleeting sensation Andrew knew for almost the first time that what he was about to do was right for him.

  Packing was the last act of severance, difficult and a little sad because he had to choose little out of abundance. He packed two large grips and a traveling bag. Only his favorite possessions were included. And to his amazement, when all the selections had been made and the job finished, that Sabbath day had almost come to an end. He changed to a light traveling suit and, calling a taxi, left the house without seeing his father or Gloria again. He would have said farewell to her if she had not been out.

  Andrew went to the Manhattan Hotel, took a room, had dinner, and then crossed to Grand Central Station to engage a berth on the Twentieth-Century Limited for Monday morning. That done, he swung down Forty-second Street toward the theater district, conscious of a deep tranquil excitement in his breast. It was done. And he chose a Western movie as his swan song to life in New York.

  The picture was a thriller, full of color and action, raucous with sound, and melodramatic in plot. The hero turned his profile too often to the camera and the heroine heaved her obvious breast too consciously. Andrew could not piece together any thread of story. Yet he sat there in the dark, reveling in the sweep of rangeland, the white-tipped peaks, and the racing of horses, the gun-throwing cowboys, the lean Indian riders. He had always experienced a secret pleasure in such pictures, and had kept his habit of going to see them to himself. Now he reveled in it. It happened that the location of this motion picture was near the Tetons of Wyoming. Andrew remained for the second showing of it, and left the theater as keen as any boy who had ever read of Deadwood Dick and Calamity Jane. Such pictures were made for his kind. Strutting actors had to be endured and the pretty stars tolerated because they had youth and charm, but their great undeniable fascination was in the picture quality, the action of horses and the violence of man, thrown upon a wild and picturesque background.

  The next morning Andrew Bonning transferred his securities into cash, nine-tenths in bills of large denomination, which he placed in a little leather sack to wear under his shirt. That money had to go a long way. His ticket read second tourist to Omaha, Nebraska. He, who had never considered the value of a dollar before, now meant to make the most of a dime.

  “See here, bozo. Thirty-five bucks is highway robbery for this antediluvian Ford,” declared Bonning, as he shook the rattling old car with one powerful grasp of his hand.

  The scene was a vacant lot far from the business center of Omaha. Andrew Bonning felt that he had put on a new character with the outfit of blue jeans he had purchased. Certainly it must have had some powerful transforming power, for never before that he could remember had he haggled over the price of any commodity.

  “Cheapest Ford here, boss,” replied the open-lot car distributor. “What you lookin’ fer?”

  “I want an old car that nobody can run. Something to tinker with,” replied Andrew.

  “I’ll be doggoned!” ejaculated the garage man with a grin. “Reckon we ain’t comin’ to a deal. All my cars run slick as a whistle.”

  “Let’s hear this Ford purr.”

  The eager salesman jumped in with alacrity, turned on the ignition and tried to start the car. But nothing happened. He rasped and pumped and pulled to no purpose. Red in the face he looked down at Andrew somewhat sheepishly.

  “Stranger, did you jimmy the works?”

  “How could I? You haven’t turned your back on me...Can’t you start it?”

  “‘Pears not. Cold, I reckon. But I’ll make her shoot in a minute.”

  Several minutes elapsed and the salesman had lost much of his confidence. In the dealer’s chagrin Andrew recognized the psychological moment.

  “If you throw in that old lap robe there I’ll buy this pile of junk.”

  “How much?” queried the car owner, resignedly.

  “Fifteen dollars.”

  “Take it,” snorted the other, throwing up his hands. “But you’re worse than Jesse James.”

  Andrew found himself in possession of a car. Leisurely he set about determining what was wrong with the engine. He had a knack for machinery. In less
than ten minutes he discovered that the carburetor intake tube was choked with dirt.

  “Hey, I found out what ailed her,” he called to the car merchant.

  “Ahuh? An’ what was thet?”

  “The locomotive ingredient failed to coincide with the perihelion,” replied Andrew cheerfully.

  “Aw, go-wan, you can’t kid me,” returned the other. “Bet you don’t belong in them overalls.”

  “Nope. And you belong in Wall Street. Funny old world!...So long!”

  On the way to the lodginghouse where Andrew had left his bags he stopped at a grocery store to buy some fruit and provisions. Soon he was on his way out of Omaha, his last stop being at a filling station on the outskirts of the city. Here he procured gas, oil and road maps. Then driving north on the highway, he realized that his new life had begun at last.

  Something like a gray curtain had dropped in his consciousness to hide all of his past failures. He was alone, perfectly free, speeding along an open road into an unknown country. Fields, grazing cows, apple trees in bloom, flights of blackbirds, long strings of swallows on the telegraph wires were realities with which he came in close contact for the first time. Rush-lined ponds by the wayside where ducks paddled, wandering willow-bordered brooks, groves of oaks and elms, with other trees unfamiliar to him, met his eager eyes and brought back long-past summer visits in New England, and vague memories of an even remoter period.

  Andrew’s mood was one of quiet exultation. As he did not rush at the miles, neither did he inquire too avidly into this unfamiliar mood. He felt, however, as he visualized the ranges of the West, that he was undergoing a transformation. It was a transformation which he welcomed. He had pulled his stakes from the East and must transplant them somewhere in the West. But just how the change would take place did not concern Andrew greatly at this time: he was fascinated none the less by the initiation into the process through which he would be made over.

  Toward noon he passed through a village that boasted flaring signs of gas stations at both entrance and exit. Somewhere, Andrew promised himself with satisfaction, he would be traveling beyond the smell of gasoline.

  Andrew drove along at about twenty-five miles an hour. This snail’s pace caused him to be hooted to the side of the road by other cars impatient to pass. One big flashy touring car honked at him impatiently, and as it got by a florid-faced driver in shirt sleeves, evidently a tourist, yelled something about junking a tin can.

  “Drive on, mister,” said Andrew, aloud. “You represent what I have turned my back on — speed, luxury, restlessness, idleness, high blood pressure — fleshpots of Egypt.”

  The hours passed by all too quickly for Andrew Bonning. Sunset caught him at the top of a hill, where he stopped to admire the scene. He drove on, presently, coasting down a winding hilly road, and at the bottom turned a curve under a wooded bank that accentuated the twilight.

  Andrew caught sight of a camp fire, whose blaze disclosed two slouchy dark forms moving about it. His lights were not working so he moved slowly along the soft road. When about opposite the fire Andrew’s sharp ears heard a cry. Then against the evening sky he saw a man and a boy silhouetted in violent action. Andrew stopped the car. He had come upon his first adventure.

  “Let that boy go,” shouted Andrew and jumped out of his car. Advancing upon the two he asked what the idea was. The man retreated, with a reply about only having fun.

  “Oh — n-no sir,” cried the youngster, in a voice that startled Andrew. “He meant to rob — me — and I don’t know what — when he saw I was a girl!”

  Andrew’s exclamation of amazement was followed by a swift leap, a lunge and a blow, the power of which he had not calculated. Like a flung sack the man went over the bank out of sight. Andrew yelled for the tramp’s comrades to make themselves scarce.

  “Are you really a girl?” he queried, turning to the little figure in the middle of the road. Indeed, after peering down into a white oval face and great staring dark eyes he found that he need not have asked that question.

  The girl admitted it and said she sometimes wished she were not. Andrew asked her a couple of pertinent questions, to learn that she did not belong thereabouts, and that she was a hitchhiker. As she stood there, looking up at him, Andrew Bonning found himself divided between two impressions — one of admiration and solicitation for a pretty slip of a girl who had been caught in a perilous predicament; the other a sudden bitter reminder of modern woman’s wiles and the fact that even on a lovely Nebraska road at night he might expect to meet a girl who was only looking for a thrill. The second impression won out over the former. Andrew offered the girl a lift as far as Norfolk, and helping her in, resumed his seat at the wheel and went on.

  He could see her dimly in the paling afterglow without appearing to notice her, and it was not easy to subdue his curiosity. She had slim brown hands, beautifully shaped, that clung nervously to the pack she held on her lap. He could feel that she wanted to speak to him, and finally she did, hazarding a remark that he evidently did not live in this section. Then, in the short interchange of conversation that followed, which he did not encourage because he resented his interest in a girl hiker, he was led to reveal his name. But she did not give hers, an omission Andrew added to her discredit.

  At last they arrived at Norfolk. He called her attention to the fact and remarked her enthusiasm over the bright lights.

  “You’ll get another kick here,” he replied, slowing down preparatory to a stop.

  “Kick?” she echoed, turning those strange, luminous eyes upon him in doubt, not of the word, but of his intimation. Andrew could have sworn not only to her innocence, but to the fact that in the bright light he was gazing at the very prettiest girl he had ever seen in his life.

  “Yes, kick,” he replied curtly, annoyed with himself. Then he laughed. “Isn’t that what you’re after? Isn’t that about all girls think of nowadays?”

  She did not reply and seemed to have been affronted by his accusation.

  “Please let me out here,” she requested, pointing toward a modest looking hotel.

  They stopped, and he stepped out to assist her. Then she said, hesitatingly: “Thank you, Mr. Bonning, for — for everything.”

  He replied that she was welcome and that he hoped she would have better luck on the next lap of her hike...

  “You forgot to tell me your name.”

  “I didn’t forget. I was—”

  No doubt her faltering was due to Andrew’s exposure of the letters M A D on the pack he lifted from the car, and at which he stared.

  “Mad!” he spelled out, “Wyoming Mad?” with a laugh. “It suits you better than any name. And as you are an unforgettable kid I’ll remember you by that...I hope we don’t meet again. Good-by.”

  She stood there at the curb, holding her bag, her sweet face uplifted, puzzled, shy, slowly awakening to his rudeness. Andrew flung himself into the car and drove away, conscious of several conflicting feelings. He halted on the next corner at a gas station to fill up. Then he continued on to another hotel further down the street, where he put up for the night.

  Andrew ate a dinner less frugal than had been his intention. But he gave very little thought to his plan of travel. He was in a curious state of mind. After dinner he walked twice past the hotel where the hiking girl had stopped, and nearly succumbed to a desire to go in to inquire for her. Then he went to a motion picture theater and stood in front of it for a while hoping like a fool that she might come along. He went in but soon left. After that he walked to and fro in the town’s little park, and at length returned to his hotel and room.

  “Well, my first adventure is a puzzler,” soliloquized Andrew while he undressed. He had to own up to having received a thrill from his rescue of the little hiker with the big eyes. He had been shocked to meet a girl, hardly sixteen years old, he calculated, alone on a country road after dark, confessedly engaged upon what he considered to be a mad prank. He had been alienated by a recurrent bitterness which
fostered the thought that she could not be anything else but a wayward girl, on adventure bent. It was this thought that had accounted for his sudden rudeness.

  “Unforgettable kid? Nuts!” he concluded, turning out the light. “The world was full of alluring, seductive, irresistible females. What chance had a man? Wyoming Mad?...If this isn’t the queerest deal I ever had. Suppose I meet that girl again? It’ll be funny. Ha! Ha!...I don’t think!...That kid’s just no good!” Then Andrew was amazed to hear an inward voice damn him for a sophisticated, suspicious and embittered Easterner who could not recognize innocence when he met it.

  “My God!” muttered Andrew aghast. “What would Connie or Gloria say to that? That I’m ‘Wyoming Mad’ myself.” But his derision was not convincing. In this new voice there appeared to be the nucleus of a revolt.

  At daylight Andrew was behind the wheel of his Ford, and he started with a speed which indicated that he wanted to leave something far behind. Twenty-five or thirty miles an hour, however, was about the limit his old battered car could produce and soon cars began to pass him. To save his life he could not resist trying to get a look at their occupants. But that was seldom possible, unless he deliberately stared as the cars sped by. All day long, he reflected, a trim little figure, between lifts, was probably hiking along that road. Her eyes haunted him, not because of their size, he imagined, or their strange glow, or their color — because he had no idea of their color — but because of the wistful look they held. Had he misjudged her? Had he placed her in a class with all the neckers, flirts and thrill seekers, just because he had found her on a lonely road, waylaid by tramps? It did seem unjust, he had to admit. There was some unquenchable chivalry in Andrew Bonning which had often been the jest of his sportive acquaintances.

  Andrew made no stop that day, except at a crossroad refueling station. Toward evening he had dinner at a little wayside hamlet, and then he drove on a few miles to camp in his car. All the next day engine trouble occupied his attention, and gave him enough tinkering to satisfy a long-felt want. It halted him, too, at Sidonia for a minor repair.