West of the Pecos

by Zane Grey

  Terrill sat up. She was quite pale, but her eyes were dancing darkly.

  “Pecos, couldn’t they ride?—Oh, it was wonderful!—I guess I was too—too fascinated to shoot.”

  “Wal!—Say, young woman, just suppose they’d rode right up heah an’ one of them was aboot to lift my hair! … What then?”

  “You shore have beautiful hair, Pecos, and I wouldn’t want you bald-haided. … Oh, my legs are weak!”

  “Fellers, Johnson is yellin’ fer us. An’ there go the Slaughter boys down into the gully,” said Texas Jack.

  Pecos stood up to survey the scene.

  “Yes, an’ he means for us to rustle. Pile down to the wagons, men. … Terrill, give me yore hand. We’ll make a run down for our horses.”

  In quick time Pecos and Terrill were in the saddle again. The horses were hard to hold. And the extra saddle horses, once unhaltered, broke and ran down the road. But the other men were appearing down there.

  Presently the two factions of Pecos’ party were reunited. Johnson, sweaty and dust-begrimed, talked while he tightened his saddle cinch.

  “It worked jest as I’d planned. Must have been aboot twenty of them. We ain’t hangin’ around to see. Now drive the wagons right across. Tie them three saddle hosses behind the wagons. Leave the wagons over there an’ come back to help us cross the stock. … Let’s all work fast while our luck holds. I don’t never feel good on this side of the river.”

  The wagons rolled downhill at a brisk trot. Pecos saw that the cattle had spread up and down the river, but none appeared to have strayed more than a quarter of a mile. They had drunk their fill and were now grazing. Watching the wagons splash into the water, Johnson said the river might be a little high, but would not give them any trouble. This was a wide, shallow, gravelly ford. The wheels scarcely sank over their hubs. In short order the wagons were across and up on the bank off the road.

  “Come on, Texas Terrill; we gotta ride now,” shouted Pecos, gayly, though anxiety vied with his hope. They joined the riders rounding up the herd. It proved to be far less trouble than Pecos had anticipated. They crowded the cattle gradually to the ford, then with ten riders in a half circle the wedge-shaped start was at last effected. Once the leaders had been forced into the water the greatest difficulty was passed. The river ran a little high and swift, with water slightly roiled.

  “Look, Terrill, thet’s the color of the water the day we got trapped. Remember?” called Pecos, as they splashed along in the rear of the herd.

  “I reckon I’ve cause to remember, Pecos Smith,” declared Terrill, dark meaning eyes on his.

  Pecos had the satisfaction of crossing his herd in less than half an hour from the start.

  “Say, Smith, do you know we picked up a couple hundred haid of stock over there?” queried Johnson, with a broad smile.

  “No!”

  “Wal, we shore did. There was a bunch on the downriver side. All wearin’ an XS brand. I reckon some trail driver had a stampede here an’ mebbe got wiped out. I seen burned wagons an’ not so old.”

  Soon the long caravan was strung out on the west side of the river. From the highest point Pecos gazed back. The scene appeared the same as from the other side. Horsehead Crossing gleamed pale and steely under the wintry sun. There was no evidence of life. The white skulls of steers stood out distinctly, striking the deadly note of the place. It brooded there in its loneliness. Nature was inhospitable. It had allowed Pecos’ caravan to pass; perhaps the next would be added to the tragedy of the past.

  Chapter XVII

  ALL the way from Independence Creek to the head of the Gulch Trail that led down to the ranch Pecos distributed his stock. When the last batch of weary cattle were turned loose Pecos and his cowhands rode back towards the river to join the wagons.

  Eight days’ drive from Horsehead Crossing! Pecos had to recall the camps to make sure of the number. How the days had flown! The long, long drive was over. Before sunset the wagons would be on the rim above Lambeth Ranch.

  “It shore makes one think—all this good luck,” soliloquized Pecos, solemnly. “Ever since I met thet boy Terrill—who was a girl. … Gawd bless her an’ make me keep her safe an’ happy. … No more of some things for me, an’ one of them is Hosshaid Crossin’!”

  From a high point on a ridge Pecos came out where he could see down the river. The scene gave him both shock and thrill. He seemed to have been long absent, and all at once to be plunged into the old, wild atmosphere of the brakes. The wide, bone-dry jaws of the canyon yawned beneath him, and stretched away with the green river showing. There was a white rapid close enough for Pecos to hear its low roar. The river bottom held wide green bands of mesquite, salt cedar and arrow-weed, and from these the gray brush-spotted slopes rose gradually to the ragged cliffs. Above spread the land for leagues and leagues, with grass and stone prevailing far as the eye could see.

  As always, Pecos tried to find a way to climb out of the brake. It was a habit which operated instinctively. On either slope there was no place to which he would have put Cinco. Trapped there, he would have to go up or down the river. He gazed again at the boundless rolling range, with its gray monotony, its endless physical manifestations of solitude. West of the Pecos for him! It filled every need of his adventurous soul. And down there, ahead of the wagons, rode the little woman who had taught him self-reverence, self-control. Life loomed so sweet, so great that it stung him to humility.

  The sun was still above the range when the wagons reached the rim above Lambeth Ranch. But it was sunset down in the canyon.

  Terrill had dismounted to run wildly to the rim, where suddenly she stood entranced. Pecos followed. He hoped to look down upon the old tranquil place unchanged. How his gaze swept the opposite rim, the golden cliff, the purple caves and thickets, and finally the green meadows dotted with cattle and horses, the brook that was a ruddy streak of sunset: fire, and lastly the old green-roofed cabin with its column of blue smoke winding upward.

  “Looks like all was well, Terrill,” said Pecos, feelingly.

  Terrill squeezed his arm, but she was mute. One by one the other members of Pecos’ caravan lined up on the rim. And just at that moment a flare of gold deepened on the bold face of wall across the river, to reflect its wondrous warmth back into the canyon. Low down the purple veils appeared to intensify and show caverns and gilded foliage through their magic transparency. From the cracked and cragged rim of the opposite canyon wall down over the seamed face and the green-choked crevices shone the mystic light, down the grassy, boulder-strewn slope to the second wall, and then sheer down this cracked and creviced form to the shining foliage, and the gold-fired flags and rushes that fringed the blazing brook.

  This ephemeral moment held the watchers entranced. Then the glory and the beauty began to fade. And with that the practical Texans turned to necessary tasks.

  “Smith, you never could have convinced me there was such a pretty brake along this gray old Pecos,” observed Johnson.

  “More’n pretty. It’s a gold mine,” vowed Slinger.

  “Skins the brakes of the Rio Grande all holler, boss,” added Texas Jack. “We’ll shore stay with you heah till the old mossyhorns come home.”

  “Thanks, boys,” replied Pecos, finding speech difficult. “Unhitch an’ spread around. We’ll camp on top heah tonight.”

  “How’n hell are we ever goin’ to git the wagons down?” asked Lovelace.

  “We’ll take the old one apart an’ let it down piece by piece,” replied Pecos. “The others we’ll leave up heah. Reckon we’ll build a shed for them. … Cut a long pole, somebody, a good strong one thet we can fasten the pulley an’ rope to. I fetched them along so we can lower our outfit easy.”

  “Mauree-ee! Sambo-oo!” Terrill was screaming in wild sweet peal down into the canyon.

  Pecos ran to the rim. The echoes pealed back, magnified in all their sweet wildness, to mourn away in the distance.

  “Sambo!” yelled Pecos, with all his might. Samm-
mbooo! cracked back the echo, wonderful and stirring, to bang across to the great wall, and roll on, on, on down the river.

  “Mauree-ee!” cried Terrill, in ecstasy.

  “There they are!” exclaimed Pecos, in great satisfaction.

  “Oh! Oh! Oh!” screamed Terrill, beside herself.

  “Boss, dat yo come back?” rolled up Sambo’s deep bass.

  “Yes, Sambo, we’re heah.”

  “Ah, Missy Rill, is yo all right?” called Mauree.

  “All safe and well, Mauree.”

  “Is yo done married to dat Pecos man?”

  “No-o! Not yet, Mauree!”

  “How’s everythin, Sambo?” shouted Pecos, gladly.

  “Boss, I’se done hab trubble. New calves an’ colts an’ pickaninnies ——”

  Pecos let out a roar, but it did not drown Terrill’s shrill cry of surprise and delight.

  “What yo sayin’, Sambo?”

  Mauree had disappeared around the corner of her little cabin, and when she hove in sight again with a black mite of humanity in each arm Sambo awoke the slumbering echoes once more:

  “Dar yo is, boss. Two mo’ black cowhands!”

  “Whoopee!” bawled Pecos, giving vent to all that was dammed up in him.

  Louisiana, like the other cowhands, had come to the rim again, drawn by curiosity. When the echoes of Pecos’ stentorian climax had died away the vaquero yelled down:

  “Hey dar, niggah.”

  “Hey yo’self,” replied Sambo, belligerently.

  “Seems lak I know yo. Is yo’ name Sambo Jackson?”

  “Yas, it am.”

  “I sho yo how glad I is when I come down dar.”

  In the dusk Pecos and Terrill sat on the rim above the canyon. Lano was singing a Spanish love song, the men were joking around the camp fire, a cow was lowing in the dark meadow.

  Terrill had her head on Pecos’ shoulder and at last she was weeping.

  “Wal, darlin’, what yu cryin’ for now?” he asked, softly, stroking her hair. “We’re home.”

  “Oh—Pecos—I’m—so—so happy. … If only—Dad knows!”

  The last gleam of the afterglow faded off the river. Shadowy rifts of blackness marked the brakes of the Pecos, in their successive and disappearing notches. Night fell upon the lonely land. A low murmur of running water soared upward. The air grew chill. Wind rustled the brush. And a crescent moon peeped over the dark bold canyon rim. The Pecos flowed on, melancholy and austere, true to its task, unmindful of the little lives and loves of men.

  Chapter XVIII

  PECOS moved the supplies down into the canyon the next day, a strenuous job that left no time for the sentiment that might have overcome him upon returning to the ranch. Another day dawned with him in the saddle, guiding this merry and bold outfit into the brakes of the river. And that evening, finding Terrill rested, he yielded to his yearning and faced the tremendous issue at hand. But he did not tell her then.

  After Terrill had gone to bed, Pecos strolled up and down, listening to the wild night sounds, watching the moon slide down to the opposite wall, peering into the river gap, slowly surrendering to the emotion that had dammed up within him. He marveled why God had been so good to him. Forgotten prayers learned at his mother’s knee came back to him. His happiness and his responsibility, realized so stupendously now in these lonely moon-blanched hours, magnified all the forces of his mind. On his lips still lingered the sweet fire of Terrill’s kisses, and he gazed up at the watching stars with a breathless sense of his ecstasy, while all the time he had the eye and the ear of a hunted wolf. He had been trained in the open. He did not trust the dreaming solitude. If some raw wild spirit had spurred him to a tenacious grip on his life, when he had nothing but the bold, reckless pride of the vaquero, what now must transport him, make him invulnerable, to protect the beautiful and innocent life dependent upon him? He felt a mighty passion that swept him up and up, like a great storm wind, and rent asunder the veil of the mystery of love. He seemed to be illumined by the meaning of love, home, children, life, and death. He who had dealt death so ruthlessly!

  In the gray dawn Pecos had met and solved his problem. He was a Texan. He was one of the moving atoms of the great empire he envisaged. He realized the chances; he knew the cost of success on that frontier. All could be met and vanquished, but only through an eternal vigilance, a lion heart and iron hand.

  “Queer idees for a vaquero,” he soliloquized, possessed with a sense of power.

  The day broke beautifully to the melody of a mockingbird in the mesquite. The river slid on like a ribbon of red and gold. Pecos called the negroes and his riders to their tasks, while he went for the horses. Cinco came at a whistle, but the little buckskin mustang, as always, obeyed only a rope. It was when Pecos was on the back of one of these bewhiskered little beasts that his respect was roused. The mustang never tired, he lived on little grass and water, and he could climb or go down where even Cinco balked.

  Pecos turned the horses in at the corral and strode on to the cabin. He smelled wood smoke and savory meat. Was Terrill really a girl? Had she been spirited away in the night? What queer pranks his imagination played him? He went in eagerly. After all, his eyes never deceived him.

  “Terrill up?” he queried of Mauree.

  “I done call her. Breakfast on de table.”

  There came a thumping of little hard boot-heels on the floor. Pecos wheeled from the fire. All was well with his world! Here was the glorious embodiment of all the night had brought in dreams, hopes, plans, beliefs.

  “Mawnin’ Pecos.” The rich sweet voice had been the magic almost of a day.

  “Sleepy-haid!” was all he said.

  “Oh, I slept a thousand hours away.”

  “Thet’s good. It takes yu a long way from yesterday. … Let’s eat. We’ve shore got lots to do.” And he placed a chair for her.

  “Do?—I cain’t do anything but run after you—all the livelong day.”

  “Thet’ll be enough.”

  Where was the havoc wrought by the long trip? His keen eyes had to search for a little pallor, a little thinness in her cheeks. But youth had returned triumphant. Happiness shone in opal glow of skin and luminous eyes. She was hungry, she was gay, she was inquisitive. But Pecos gave her no satisfaction until the meal was finished, when with a serious air he led her out of the cabin, across the open grassy plot to his favorite seat under a tree. Here, surrendering momentarily to her charm, he drew her close.

  “Pe-cos, some one might—see,” she said, with what little breath he left her.

  “See us? Heah?” He laughed and released her.

  “Not that I object,” she laughed. “But, you know, Comanches ride out on that rim sometimes. … If you want to—to hug me, let’s go in.”

  “Terrill, we must rope an’ tie up our problem,” he said, earnestly.

  “Problem? Why, we settled that all, didn’t we?”

  “It seems long ago an’ I’m glad,” agreed Pecos. “I stayed up all night. An’ I thought, Terrill, I thought as never before in my life. … Come, sit heah by me, an’ we’ll talk aboot everythin’.”

  “Pecos dear—you’re very—serious,” she replied, almost faltering.

  “Wal, don’t yu reckon I’ve enough to be serious over? … When will yu marry me?”

  She gave a sudden guilty start and red blushes waved from neck to cheek and brow. But he struck fire from her.

  “Soon as we can ride to Eagle’s Nest. Three hours if we push the horses, Pecos Smith,” she flashed.

  “Darlin’, thet sounds like yu were callin’ my bluff. But I’m in daid earnest. Yu will be my wife?”

  “Si, Señor! … Oh, Pecos. … Yes—yes—yes.”

  “Wal, we won’t run the hosses haids off, but we’ll go today.”

  “Today!” she whispered, awed.

  “Shore. Thet’s the first step on our problem. Accordin’ to thet—to what we heahed, this Judge Roy Bean can marry us. … By the way, Terrill, just h
ow old air yu?”

  “Guess.”

  “Wal, I said fifteen when I met yu an’ I reckon I stick to thet yet.”

  “Way wrong, Pecos. I’m nineteen.”

  “No!”

  “I am. Ask Mauree. I’m certainly my own boss, if that worries you.”

  “I’m yore boss, child. … So you’re a grown-up girl, after all. Dog-gone! Thet accounts. I’m shore glad. Wal, thet’s the second step on our problem. We’re shore gettin’ along fine. But the next’s a sticker.”

  “Pooh!”

  “Thet damned money. We’ve got a lot left. I’ve had a notion to burn it up. But thet’s nonsense. Now Terrill Lambeth, use yore woman’s haid an’ decide for me. … I held it honest then an’ I hold it honest now to brand mavericks. What brandin’ I did with Williams an’ Adams was straight. I never knew till it was all over thet they’d been burnin’ brands. Then all the money fell to me. What could I do with thet any better than buildin’ up a ranch for us? It all came from Sawtell. He was crookeder than Williams an’ Adams. Made rustlers out of them. Led them on, meanin’ to track them down, hang them, an’ get his money back.”

  “Pecos, we shall keep what’s left of that money and forget where it came from,” replied Terrill, deliberately, almost without pause. “I know Dad would have done so.”

  “Honey, yu shore are a comfort,” replied Pecos, huskily. “My conscience is clear on the moral side. There ain’t any other. … So thet third step on our problem wasn’t such a sticker, after all.”

  “Go on. We’ll build a whole stairway, right to the sky.”

  “Terrill, we’ll spend some of thet money.”

  “Spend it!” gasped Terrill.

  “Shore. Squander a lot of it, if yu like,” he drawled, watching her closely.

  “Where?”

  “Wal, say San Antonio.”

  She squealed in a frenzy of glee, mauled him with strong brown little fists, kissed him in a transport, all the while babbling wildly. Pecos could not keep track of the breathless enumeration of things to buy and do, but he gained a startling idea of what she had been used to back on the old plantation home. That gave him more insight into the family she had sprung from. He realized it had been one of blood and wealth.