by Grey, Zane
"And / wanted to see--terribly--what you'd do," she went on, with a seriousness that surely must have been mockery.
"Rebecca, honey, I don't aim to donothin'," replied Monty almost mournfully. She got to her knees, and leaned over as if to see more clearly. Then she turned round to sit down and slide to the very edge. Her hands were clutched deep in the alfalfa.
"You won't spank me, Sam?" she asked, in impish glee.
"No. Much as I'd like to--an' as you shore need it--I cain't."
"Bluffer . . . Gentile cowpuncher . . . showing yellow . . . marble-hearted fiend!"
"Not thet last, Rebecca. For all my many faults, not that," he said sadly.
She seemed fighting to let go of something that the mound of alfalfa represented only in symbol. Surely the physical effort for Rebecca to hold her balance there could not account for the look of strain on her body and face. And, in addition, all the mystery of Canyon Walls and the beauty of the night hovered over her.
"Sam, dare me to slide," she taunted. "No," he retorted grimly.
"Coward!"
"Shore. You hit me on the haid there." Then ensued a short silence. He could see her quivering. She was moving, almost imperceptibly. Her eyes, magnified by the shadow and light, transfixed Monty. "Gentile, dare me to slide--into your arms," she cried a little quaveringly. "Mormon tease! Would you--"
"Dare me!"
"Wal, I dare--you, Rebecca . . . but so help me Gawd I won't answer for the consequences."
Her laugh, like the sweet, wild trill of a night bird, rang out, but this time it was full of joy, of certainty, of surrender. And she let go her hold, to spread wide her arms and come sliding on an avalanche of silver hay down upon him.
Chapter 6
NEXT MORNING MONTY FOUND WORK IN THE fields impossible. He roamed about like a man possessed, and at last went back to the cabin. It was just before the noonday meal. In the ranch house Rebecca hummed a tune while she set the table. Mrs. Keetch sat in her rocker, busy with work on her lap. There was no charged atmosphere. All seemed serene.
Monty responded to the girl's shy glance by taking her hand and leading her up to her mother.
"Ma'am," he began hoarsely, "you've knowed long how my feelin's are for Rebecca. But it seems she--she loves me, too. . . . How thet come about I cain't say. It's shore the wonderfullest thing. . . . Now I ask you--fer Rebecca's sake most--what can be done about this heah trouble?"
"Daughter, is it true?" asked Mrs. Keetch, looking up with serene and smiling face. "Yes, Mother," replied Rebecca simply. "You love Sam?"
"Oh, I do."
"Since when?"
"Always, I guess. But I never knew till this June."
"I am very glad, Rebecca," replied the mother, rising to embrace her. "Since you could not or would not love one of your own creed it is well that you love this man who came a stranger to our gates. He is strong, he is true, and what his religion is matters little."
Then she smiled upon Monty. "My son, no man can say what guided your steps to Canyon Walls. But I always felt God's intent in it. You and Rebecca shall marry."
"Oh, Mother," murmured the girl rapturously, and she hid her face.
"Wal, I'm willin' an' happy," stammered Monty. "But I ain't worthy of her, ma'am, an' you know thet old--"
She silenced him. "You must go to White Sage and be married at once."
"At once!-- When?" faltered Rebecca. "Aw, Mrs. Keetch, I--I wouldn't hurry the gurl. Let her have her own time."
"No, why wait? She has been a strange, starved creature. . . . Tomorrow you must take her to be wed, Sam."
"Wal an' good, if Rebecca says so," said Monty with wistful eagerness.
"Yes," she whispered. "Will you go with us, Ma?"
"Yes," suddenly cried Mrs. Keetch, as if inspired. "I will go. I will cross the Utah line once more before I am carried over. . . . But not White Sage. We will go to Kanab. You shall be married by the bishop."
In the excitement and agitation that possessed mother and daughter at that moment, Monty sensed a significance more than just the tremendous importance of impending marriage. Some deep, strong motive was urging Mrs. Keetch to go to Kanab, there to have the bishop marry Rebecca to a gentile. One way or another it did not matter to Monty. He rode in the clouds. He could not believe in his good luck. Never in his life, had he touched such happiness as he was expe- riencing now.
The womenfolk were an hour late in serving lunch, and during the meal the air of vast excitement permeated their every word and action. They could not have tasted the food on their plates.
"Wal, this heah seems like a Sunday," said Monty, after a hasty meal. "I've loafed a lot this mawnin'. But I reckon I'll go back to work now."
"Oh, Sam--don't--when--when we're leaving so soon," remonstrated Rebecca shyly.
"When are we leavin'?" "Tomorrow--early."
"Wal, I'll get thet alfalfa up anyhow. It might rain, you know.--Rebecca, do you reckon you could get up at daylight fer this heah ride?"
"I could stay up all night, Sam."
Mrs. Keetch laughed at them. "There's no rush. We'll start after breakfast, and get to Kanab early enough to make arrangements for the wedding next day. It will give Sam time to buy a respectable suit of clothes to be married in."
"Doggone! I hadn't thought of thet," replied Monty ruefully.
"Sam Hill, you don't marry me in a ten-gallon hat, a red shirt and blue overalls, and boots," declared Rebecca.
"How about wearin' my gun?" drawled Monty.
"Your gun!" exclaimed Rebecca.
"Shore. You've forgot how I used to pack it. I might need it there to fight off them Mormons who're so crazy about you."
"Heavens! You leave that gun home."
Next morning when Monty brought the buckboard around, Mrs. Keetch and Rebecca appeared radiant of face, gorgeous of apparel. But for the difference in age anyone might have mistaken the mother for the intended bride.
The drive to Kanab, with fresh horses and light load, took six hours. And the news of the wedding spread over Kanab like wildfire in dry prairie grass. For all Monty's keen eyes he never caught a jealous look, nor did he hear a critical word. That settled with him for all time the status of the Keetchs' Mormon friends. The Tyler brothers came into town and made much of the fact that Monty would soon be one of them. And they planned another fall hunt for wild mustangs and deer. This time Monty would surely bring in Rebecca's wild pony. Waking hours sped by and sleeping hours were few. Almost before Monty knew what was happening he was in the presence of the Mormon bishop.
"Will you come into the Mormon Church?" asked the bishop.
"Wal, sir, I cain't be a Mormon," replied Monty in perplexity. "But I shore have respect fer you people an' your Church. I reckon I never had no religion. I can say I'll never stand in Rebecca's way, in anythin' pertainin' to hers."
"In the event she bears you children you will not seek to raise them gentiles?"
"I'd leave thet to Rebecca," replied Monty quietly.
"And the name Sam Hill, by which you are known, is a middle name?"
"Shore, jist a cowboy middle name."
So they were married. Monty feared they would never escape from the many friends and the curious crowd. But at last they were safely in the buckboard, speeding homeward. Monty sat in the front seat alone. Mrs. Keetch and Rebecca occupied the rear seat. The girl's expression of pure happiness touched Monty and made him swear deep in his throat that he would try to deserve her love. Mrs. Keetch had evidently lived through one of the few great events of her life. What dominated her feelings Monty could not divine, but she had the look of a woman who asked no more of life. Somewhere, at some time, a monstrous injustice or wrong had been done the Widow Keetch. Recalling the bishop's strange look at Rebecca--a look of hunger--Monty pondered deeply.
The ride home, being downhill, with a pleasant breeze off the desert, and that wondrous panorama coloring and spreading in the setting sun, seemed all too short for Monty. He drawled to Rebec
ca, when they reached the portal of Canyon Walls and halted under the gold-leaved cottonwoods: "Wal, wife, heah we are home. But we shore ought to have made thet honeymoon drive a longer one."
That suppertime was the only one in which Monty ever saw the Widow Keetch bow her head and give thanks to the Lord for the salvation of these young people so strangely brought together, for the home overflowing with milk and honey, for the hopeful future.
* *
They had their fifth cutting of alfalfa in September, and it was in the nature of an event. The Tyler boys rode over to help, fetching Sue to visit Rebecca. And there was much merrymaking. Rebecca would climb every mound of alfalfa and slide down screaming her delight. And once she said to Monty, "Young man, you should pray under every haystack you build."
"Ahuh. An' what fer should I pray, Rebecca?" he drawled.
"To give thanks for all this sweet-smelling alfalfa has brought you."
The harvest god smiled on Canyon Walls that autumn. Three wagons plied between Kanab and the ranch for weeks, hauling the produce that could not be used. While Monty went off with the Tyler boys for their hunt in Buckskin Forest, the womenfolk and their guests, and the hired hands, applied themselves industriously to the happiest work of the year--preserving all they could of the luscious fruit yield of the season.
Monty came back to a home such as had never been his even in his happiest dreams. Rebecca was incalculably changed, and so happy that Monty trembled as he listened to her sing, as he watched her at work. The mystery never ended for him, not even when she whispered that they might expect a little visitor from the angels next spring. But Monty's last doubt faded, and he gave himself over to work, to his loving young wife, to walks in the dusk under the canyon walls, to a lonely pipe beside his little fireside.
The winter passed, and spring came, doubling all former activities. They had taken over the canyon three miles to the westward, which once cleared of brush and cactus and rock promised well. The problem had been water and Monty solved it by extending a new irrigation ditch from the same brook that watered the home ranch. Good fortune had attended his every venture.
Around the middle of April, when the cottonwoods began to be tinged with green and the peach trees with pink, Monty began to grow restless about the coming event. It uplifted him one moment, appalled him the next. In that past which seemed so remote to him now, he had snuffed out life. Young, fiery, grim Smoke Bellew! And by some incomprehensible working out of life he was now about to bring life into being.
On the seventeenth of May, some hours after breakfast, he was hurriedly summoned from the fields. His heart appeared to be choking him.
Mrs. Keetch met him at the porch. He scarcely knew her.
"My son, do you remember this date?" "No," replied Monty wonderingly.
"Two years ago today you came to us. . . . And Rebecca has just borne you a son."
"Aw--my Gawd!-- How--how is she, ma'am?" he gasped.
"Both well. We could ask no more. It has all been a visitation of God. . . . Come."
Some days later the important matter of christening the youngster came up.
"Ma wants one of those jaw-breaking Biblical names," said Rebecca pouting. "But I like just plain Sam."
"Wal, it ain't much of a handle fer sech a wonderful little feller."
"It's your name. I love it."
"Rebecca, you kinda forget Sam Hill was jist a--a sort of a middle name. It ain't my real name."
"Oh, yes, I remember now," replied Rebecca, her great eyes lighting. "At Kanabthe bishop asked about Sam Hill. Mother had told him that was your nickname."
"Darlin', I had another nickname once," he said sadly.
"So, my man with a mysterious past. And what was that?"
"They called me Smoke."
"How funny! . . . Well, I may be Mrs. Monty Smoke Bellew, according to the law and the Church, but you, my husband, will always be Sam Hill to me!"
"An' the boy?" asked Monty enraptured. "Is Sam Hill, too."
An 'anxious week passed and then all seemed surely well with the new mother and baby. Monty ceased to tiptoe around. He no longer awoke with a start in the dead of night.
Then one Saturday as he came out on the wide porch, he heard a hallo from someone, and saw four riders coming through the portal. A bolt shot back from a closed door of his memory. Arizona riders! How well he knew the lean faces, the lithe forms, the gun belts, the mettlesome horses!
"Nix, fellers," called the foremost rider, as Monty came slowly out.
An instinct followed by a muscular contraction that had the speed of lightning passed over Monty. Then he realized he packed no gun and was glad. Old habit might have been too strong. His hawk eye saw lean hands drop from hips. A sickening feeling of despair followed his first reaction.
"Howdy, Smoke," drawled the foremost rider.
"Wal, doggone! If it ain't Jim Sneed," returned Monty, as he recognized the sheriff, and he descended the steps to walk out and offer his hand, quick to see the swift, penetrating eyes run over him.
"Shore, it's Jim. I reckoned you'd know me. Hoped you would, as I wasn't too keen about raisin' your smoke."
"Ahuh. What you all doin' over heah, Jim?" asked Monty, with a glance at the three watchful riders.
"Main thing I come over fer was to buy stock fer Strickland. An' he said if it wasn't out of my way I might fetch you back. Word come thet you'd been seen in Kanab. An' when I made inquiry at White Sage I shore knowed who Sam Hill was."
"I see. Kinda tough it happened to be Strickland. Doggone! My luck jist couldn't last."
"Smoke, you look uncommon fine," said the sheriff with another appraising glance. "You shore haven't been drinkin'. An' I seen fust off you wasn't totin' no gun."
"Thet's all past fer me, Jim."
"Wal, I'll be damned!" exclaimed Sneed, and fumbled for a cigarette. "Bellew, I jist don't savvy."
"Reckon you wouldn't. . . . Jim, I'd like to ask if my name ever got linked up with thet Green Valley deal two years an' more ago?" "No, it didn't, Smoke, I'm glad to say. Your pards Slim an' Cuppy pulled thet. Slim was killed coverin' Cuppy's escape."
"Ahuh . . . So Slim--wal, wal--" sighed Monty, and paused a moment to gaze into space.
"Smoke, tell me your deal heah," said Sneed.
"Shore. But would you mind comin' indoors?"
"Reckon I wouldn't. But Smoke, I'm still figgerin' you the cowboy."
"Wal, you're way off. Get down an' come in."
Monty led the sheriff into Rebecca's bedroom. She was awake, playing with the baby by her side on the bed.
"Jim, this is my wife an' youngster," said Monty feelingly. "An' Rebecca, this heah is an old friend of mine, Jim Sneed, from Arizona."
That must have been a hard moment for the sheriff--the cordial welcome of the blushing wife, the smiling mite of a baby who was clinging to his finger, the atmosphere of unadulterated joy in the little home.
At any rate, when they went out again to the porch Sneed wiped his perspiring face and swore at Monty, "-- cowboy, have you gone an' double-crossed thet sweet gurl?"
Monty told him the few salient facts of his romance, and told it with trembling eagerness to be believed.
"So you've turned Mormon ?" said the sheriff.
"No, but I'll be true to these women. . . . An' one thing I ask, Sneed. Don't let it be known in White Sage or heah why I'm with you. . . . I can send word to my wife I've got to go to Arizona . . . then afterward I'll come back."
"Smoke, I wish I had a stiff drink," replied Sneed. "But I reckon you haven't anythin'?" "Only water an' milk."
"Good Lawd! For an Arizonian!" Sneed halted at the head of the porch steps and shot out a big hand. His cold eyes had warmed.
"Smoke, may I tell Strickland you'll send him some money now an' then--till thet debt is paid?"
Monty stared and faltered, "Jim--you shore can."
"Fine," returned the sheriff in a loud voice, and he strode down the steps to mount his horse. "Adios, co
wboy. Be good to thet little woman."
Monty could not speak. He watched the riders down the lane, out into the road, and through the wide canyon gates to the desert beyond. His heart was full. He thought of Slim and Cuppy, those young firebrand comrades of his range days. He could remember now without terror. He could live once more with his phantoms of the past. He could see lean, lithe Arizona riders come into Canyon Walls, if that event ever chanced again, and be glad of their coming.
