by Zane Grey
“Snug an’ dry inside, Laramie. Stack of cut firewood big as a hill. I’ll lead the chuck-wagon in. Send after the lantern soon as I start a fire.”
“Give me yore light, an’ yu drive in,” replied Laramie, encouraged by Jud’s satisfaction.
When Laramie turned the corner of the wall he was surprised at the size of the gloomy enclosure. The brook ran under stone slabs through the gateway; a group of huge old cottonwoods stood up spectrally in the center. Wild animals of some species scurried out into the open. He halted for Jud to catch up. And as he lifted the lantern high above his head he discerned a huge courtyard, stone-flagged, with a mound of mossy boulders in the center, around which the gnarled old cottonwoods spread mighty branches. The spring evidently flowed from under these boulders. On this left side ran a long porch-like succession of rooms, resembling stalls, opening to the outside. Laramie surmised that this tier ran all around the inside of the walls. His instant impression was most favorable. Gloom and wet, dank odors and gaunt beasts, empty leaking rooms and rotting porch timbers, the feel of having walked into a huge old barn, long vacant—these could not keep Laramie from recognizing a haven with wonderful possibilities. He knew what high stone walls meant. He knew the rigors of summer and winter, and he had vision. He experienced an intense relief.
Jud drove his chuck-wagon clear to the far corner, where Laramie saw an enormous pile of firewood stacked under the roof.
“Darn place was full of varmints,” declared Jud. “But I ain’t smelled any skunks yet. Have you?”
“Not yet.”
“Nifty dug-out this,” went on Jud. “There’s a stone fireplace in heah thet was built by a mason who was a cook.” He leaped off the seat. “Come in heah with the lantern, Laramie…. Dry as punk. I call this nifty…. Cedar an’ piñon wood—oak, too, Laramie, dry as a bone. You can bet there are foothills somewheres near…. There. I got her started. You can show the other fellars in, Laramie. Room for a regiment.”
Laramie went out. “Heah, men. Follow me in an’ unhitch. Better grain the hawses, then turn ’em loose.” As he showed the way for the wagons and turned into the gateway, Jud’s fire, already blazing brightly, brought more than one word of satisfaction from the teamsters. Then Laramie started out to look for the eighth and remaining wagon. Lonesome followed him.
“Gosh, pard, the kid’s cryin’,” he whispered. “An’ Miss Hallie is plumb saggin’. I ain’t got the heart to stay there an’ see them wake up to thet hawg-pen…. Tell you what I’ll do, pard. I’ll yell up the Allen outfit. What say?”
“Good idee. I’ll look for Tracks. How fur was he behind?”
“Aw, he lagged along. Tracks can drive four hosses without battin’ an eye. It’s the gurl.”
“Ahuh. I savvied that. Wal, if he keeps her cheered up it’s somethin’.”
“Hope he has more luck than me. I talked myself black in the face about the bootiful country an’ this old Spanish ranch. What’d I get?”
While Laramie strode out to the main road Lonesome found a position below the ranch, from which he yelled in stentorian voice: “HEY, DOWN THERE! … HEY, YOU ALLEN OUTFIT…. WHERE’N HELL ARE YOU?”
Lonesome waited a couple of moments and then repeated his calls, with variations. This time there came a reply from far down in the black void.
“Go to hell an’ find out!”
There followed a moment’s silence. “Laramie, you hear that?”
“I shore did.”
“What you make of it?”
“No more’n I expected.”
“The low-down lousy—! … Pard, shall I call again?”
“Shore. An’ say somethin’ this time,” replied Laramie, and strode on.
“HEY, COW-PUNCHER!” bawled Lonesome.
“HEY YOURSELF!” came the reply.
“YOU’RE TOO WINDY.”
“Aw, shut up, you grub-line rider!”
“I’M THE RIGHT-HAND MAN OF YOUR BOSS, YOU COYOTE!”
“Haw! Haw! Haw!”
“YOU’LL GET THE WIND PUNCHED OUT OF YOU FOR THAT!”
“Who’ll do it?”
“I WILL. COME UP, YOU —— —— ——!”
“Heah’s rarin’ to meet ya!”
By this time Laramie heard grating wheels round a dark thicket. He stepped off the road to wait, as well as to listen. Lonesome was making the welkin ring. Laramie sensed a fight before his outfit even got unhitched, and he sighed. What was the use? Lonesome could no more avoid trouble than could he keep his mouth shut.
The last wagon came rolling round the bend. Laramie picked up his lantern, which he had set down in the grass, and as he lifted it the light flashed full on the wagon-seat. Laramie gasped. Either he was dreaming or else he saw Florence Lindsay’s beautiful face, white and rapt, pressed close to the dark one of Tracks. Swiftly he moved the lantern, throwing the wagon into shadow again.
“Thet yu, Ted?” he called.
“Whoa! … What’s this, a hold-up?” shouted Tracks, sharply.
“Nope. It’s only me. I was some worried. We’ve got heah. Follow the light down.”
So there was a reason why Tracks, usually the most prompt of riders, had been delayed along the road. What did he care for rain, cold, dark road, or worried partner? Laramie would not soon forget that girl’s white rapt face, her dark eyes staring out into the night. Not until he had reached the house did he halt to wait. Tracks was not long in arriving. A broad belt of light flared out of the gateway. Laramie went on. A big fire, halfway down the courtyard, lit up the interior of the stone structure, giving it giant proportions and a most weird and dismal aspect. Snow and rain were swirling down. Smoke floated aloft, to be blown away beyond the ramparts. The teamsters were bustling at their tasks; the horses were munching grain; Jud whistled over his cook-fire under the shed, and rattled his pans. Laramie surveyed the scene with satisfaction. He had brought the outfit through in four days without an accident, which was little short of marvelous. He saw Ted leap down off his seat to help Florence, and heard her call, “How perfectly wonderful!’
“Not so bad,” replied Tracks, with a queer little ring in his voice. “Go up by the fire. I’ll fetch your bags.”
Laramie wended a thoughtful way around on the right side of the courtyard, realizing that enthusiasm and happiness depended on the point of view. This right side presented a more dilapidated and forlorn aspect than the left. In places the wooden roof had caved in. Some of the rooms had been used for stalls. But all this in no wise detracted from Laramie’s picture of what might be made of the old fort. The spring itself was worth the money Lindsay had paid for the property, and the gnarled old cottonwoods were beyond price.
Laramie continued on around the square. The western wall was not so wide as the northern and southern. A black aperture opened through it and had evidently been a door. A blank space flanked it, from which on the north side led stone steps up to the ramparts. No doubt all around these ramparts, on the inside, ran a walk from which soldiers had once stood on guard.
Presently Laramie became aware of a pathetic and disturbing spectacle. He halted in the shadow.
“Oh—my—God! What—a hideous place!” sobbed Mrs. Lindsay. She sat upon the stone step in the flare of the courtyard fire. Her appearance was pitiful. Wet, cold, miserable, she sat there, bareheaded, her iron-gray hair straggling down, glistening with raindrops, her bonnet fallen to the ground, every line of her face and person indicative of abject disillusion, hopelessness, and panic.
Laramie looked from the mother to the son, Neale, who sprawled upon the porch, a lax, spent figure significant of despair. Florence sat somewhat apart, leaning elbows on her knees, also bareheaded, her fair locks shiny, wet, and disheveled, her white face expressive of extreme fatigue, her wonderful dark proud eyes fixed upon the fire with piercing intensity. But she did not see the blaze, nor the opalescent heart of the burning cedar sticks. She was not conscious of the weariness and havoc her looks and posture suggested. She gave no indica
tion of having heard her mother’s disheartening speech. Lenta stood out in the rain, a ludicrous little figure. She had been too tired to lift the yellow slicker off the ground, and she had dragged and trampled it into the mud. She held her red little hands and wet gloves out to the heat. Her hat was on awry and from under it strands of hair hung down. Her pale pretty face was woebegone, and she, too, was weeping unrestrainedly.
“I’m so tired—and cold—and sick. I—I want to die,” she faltered. “I just—don’t care.”
Harriet had thrown aside the burdening slicker, and she too was trying to warm benumbed hands. Raindrops dripped from the narrow brim of her hat. Her face was ghastly in its pallor and there were big dark circles under her eyes. She was biting her lips. It was not only raindrops that rolled down her cheeks. Her breast heaved as if laboring under an oppressive burden.
“Mother—don’t cry,” she said. “Don’t give up…. To be sure it’s a—a horrid place…. After all we—we dreamed! … And father is flat on his back. But the ride’s over. We’re here. For mercy’s sakes don’t let him see how—how terrible we feel!”
“But he—he’ll die out in this desolate frigid place,” moaned Mrs. Lindsay.
“Oh no, he won’t, mother…. Let’s not give up. It might not be so—so bad.”
The strain under which Harriet labored betrayed her struggle, as her face and speech made clear that she was the sanity and strength of this family. Suddenly Laramie saw the situation from their point of view, and he suffered a poignant pang. He had forgotten that they were Easterners unused to privation and loneliness. Harriet no doubt was appalled at what they had come to. But she fought to conceal her dismay, her fears. She probably saw the worst of it more clearly than any of them.
Whatever Laramie’s state of mind had been before, he felt staggered under a rushing tide of feeling for this girl. That was the moment when he fell in love with her. It affected him with a strange, fierce spirit to protect and help her, and through her these other unfortunate Lindsays.
“Wal, folks,” he drawled, genially, as he stepped out of the shadow, “I see yu’re all heah an’ enjoyin’ the fire. Shore’s nothin’ like a hot blazin’ bunch of cedar.”
Then stepping over to the wagon that contained Mr. Lindsay, he called out: “Hey, boss, we’re heah, an’ darned lucky. How’d yu ride it?”
“He’s very ill,” cried Mrs. Lindsay. “Please don’t excite him.”
“Not so good, Nelson,” replied Lindsay, in a weak voice.
“Wal, I’m shore glad yu’re not daid,” drawled Laramie. “Shows yu’re pretty husky yet, Lindsay. Thet was a hell of a cold, mean, rough ride. I’ll fix yu up a drink of hot whisky. Pile out an’ walk about a bit. This heah house shore hits me plumb center.”
“Oh no! No! John, you mustn’t get up,” cried Mrs. Lindsay, in affright, as she ran over. “This hor ——”
Laramie put a gentle yet firm hand over her lips, effectually stifling her speech.
“Shore he’ll get up, Lady,” said Laramie, with a different note in his voice. Harriet came running in alarm, but if she meant to expostulate, Laramie silenced her with a look.
“Yu’re out West now, Lindsay,” went on Laramie, as if that mere fact itself was a marvelous difference. “Colorado weather never hurt nobody. Shore it’s hard. But, man, in a week yu’ll be jumpin’ up an’ kickin’ yore heels together.”
“By gum!” muttered Lindsay. “Mom, where’d you hide my boots?”
Mrs. Lindsay clambered up into the wagon. “John, darling, you mustn’t think of going out in the wet. That terrible Nelson is crazy. You would catch your death.”
“Stop mollycoddling me!” declared Lindsay, testily. “Nelson may be terrible, but he’s not crazy. Strikes me…. Where’s my boots and heavy coat?”
Laramie turned to face Harriet. She seemed frightened and uncertain. Lenta came slushing her slicker over the wet stones to join them. Thereupon Laramie took their arms and drew them back to the fire.
“Girls, listen,” he said, without his usual drawl, and he still held to Lenta’s arm while he looked down into Harriet’s pale face. “I could almost laugh at yu. This heah ain’t nothin’ atall what yu reckon it is. Yu air seein’ it with an Easterner’s eyes. Yore feelin’s air those of a tenderfoot. But yu want to see this heah old house an’ this night with my eyes.”
“But—Mr. Nelson,” faltered Harriet, as Florence, finally aroused from her reverie, joined them. “Aren’t you asking the impossible?”
“Shore. But yu’re plumb extraordinary girls. The way yu stuck out that hard ride shows me. Why I’m so proud of yu-all thet I could bust. An’ Lonesome an’ Ted—they feel the same…. This place ain’t what it ’pears to yu. It’ll make the wonderfulest ranch-house in all the West. An’ the country round about is grand. Yu couldn’t ever get lonesome or tired, lookin’ up at the Rockies, all snowcapped an’ beautiful, or down across the Great Plains, thet Lone Prairie Lonesome sings about, all so purple an’ lovely. This heah Colorado will change yore hearts. Yu’ll never want to leave it. So much for yore surroundin’s. An’ as for makin’ this a home—why it’ll be the most satisfactory work of all yore lives. In a week or so we’ll have the wagons back with more lumber an’ whatever we’ll need. Just s’pose yu didn’t have any money atall or any of these wagon-loads. Then yu might feel blue. But yu’re the luckiest girls who ever rode out to make the West a better country. Cain’t yu see it? Close yore eyes.”
It was significant that Laramie’s suggestion acted so powerfully upon them that they did as bidden. Laramie stretched his imagination and invoked all the gods of fortune to sustain his claims.
“Cain’t yu see this ranch-house as I see it? Work makes a home, after yu find the place. There’s one of the wonderfulest springs this side the mountains. To drink that water is to become Western. An’ I’ll get a dipper from Jud an’ prove what I say. In the mawnin’ this storm will break. The sun will shine. Yu’l fall in love with these old cottonwoods under which Spanish padres have told their beads an’ trappers have traded with the Indians an’ soldiers have tramped on guard. Cattlemen before Allen have hanged rustlers from these wide-spreadin’ branches. This court will grow green an’ beautiful in yore hands. We’ll clear out this old corral of stone walls. Then we’ll repair an’ build an’ whitewash. We’ll cut windows…. It’ll be like as if the fairies of yore kid story-books had visited heah with their magic wands. An’ all yore own work! Yu’ll look back at that terrible ride an’ at this miserable night an’ be glad yu had them. Yu’ll be glad for all thet’s hard out heah…. Wal, then, cain’t yu see ahaid a little?”
Harriet gazed up at Laramie fascinated, unconscious of her surrender to something so splendid, so unexpected. But Lenta burst out impulsively: “Mr. Laramie, I’ll be dog-goned if I don’t see somethin’…. Oh, Hallie, he has made it endurable.”
At this juncture a trampling of many boots on the stone flags and a jingling of many spurs gave Laramie a start. Dark forms of men showed down the court.
“Whar’nhell is that loud-mouthed puncher?” called out a ringing, raucous voice.
Laramie spread wide his arms and forced the three startled girls back under the shadow of the porch. “Stay heah,” he said.
“Nels, who’s that yelpin’?” queried Jud, sharply.
“Don’t know, Jud,” replied Laramie, as he strode out and set the lantern down. “Throw on some more wood an’ keep folks back up heah.”
“Show yourself, puncher, if yore gall’s as strong as yore yellin’,” bawled the leader of the approaching squad.
Chapter Seven
NELSON’S iron arm across Harriet’s breast gave her a vague and unaccountable sensation dominant despite the sudden alarm occasioned by this leather-lunged intruder. Nelson, looking backward over his shoulder down the court, was not aware of any physical contact.
“What is it?” whispered Harriet. There seemed to be a menace about him, a transformation. His face in the fire-glow looked somber,
the brows knit, the eyes like sparks. Lenta grasped her convulsively as Nelson left them, and gasped: “Hallie, something’s—up!” Florence sat down on a box as if her legs had buckled under her. Neale struggled up to a sitting posture, muttering in concerned accents. And Mr. Lindsay put his head out between the canvas covers of his wagon to ejaculate: “What’s this? … Girls, who’s yelling?”
Meanwhile the group of visitors trooped up into the firelit circle, headed by a lanky red-faced youth of motley garb and most sinister aspect. He might have come farther but for Nelson’s significant move, which placed him just out of the bright light, away from the porch. Harriet did not miss the fact that Nelson stood erect, sidewise, like a statue.
“Heah, applejack, better be less noisy an’ more civil,” advised one of the teamsters, roughly.
“Whar’s thet brayin’ jackass?” demanded the red-faced individual, glaring all around. None of the Lindsays, except possibly Neale, could have been visible to him. Tawny hair stood up like a mane; his gimlet eyes roamed back to Nelson. Harriet felt her heart pound up out of normal position to hamper her breast.
“Air you alludin’ to me?” queried a cool voice. And Lonesome emerged from behind a wagon to confront the irate visitor.
“Shore am, if you’re the galoot who was hollerin’.”
“I’m that same gennelman.”
“Haw! Haw! You sure look it—you banty-legged little rooster,” declared the other, derisively, and he took a couple of long strides, which fetched him close to Lonesome. “What you mean bellarin’ like a bull, to wake riders up? You got outfit enough to take care of yourselves.”
“Say, if your outfit is all as hospitable as you we got it figgered,” retorted Lonesome.
Muttered ejaculations sounded back in the group of dark restless figures. An authoritative voice and ringing boot-thuds came from the entrance to the courtyard. Two more men were approaching. Meanwhile the teamsters had lined along in front of their wagons and Jud stepped down off the porch.
“Puncher, you’re talkin’ to Slim Red,” announced the instigator of this disturbance, and he was more than arrogant.
