by Zane Grey
“I have thought again and again, Jack. There could be no end to the thinking, so I gave it up!”
Kut-le’s eyes were on the girl, inscrutable and calm as the desert itself, but still he did not speak.
Billy Porter wiped his forehead again and again on a cloth that bore no resemblance to a handkerchief.
“I can’t put up any kind of an argument. All I can say is I don’t see how any one like you could do it, Miss Rhoda! Just think! His folks is Injuns, dirty, blanket Injuns! They scratch themselves from one day’s end to the other. They will be your relatives, too! They’ll be hanging round you all the time. I’m not a married man but I’ve noticed when you marry a man you generally marry his whole darn family. I—I—oh, there’s no use talking to her! Let’s take her away by force, Jack!”
Rhoda caught her breath and instinctively moved toward Kut-le. But Jack did not stir.
“No,” he answered; “I’ve done all the chasing and trying to kidnap that I care about. But, Rhoda, once and for all I tell you that I think you are doing you and yours a deadly wrong!”
“Perhaps I am,” replied Rhoda steadily. “I make no pretense of knowing. At any rate, I’m going to stay with Kut-le.”
“For heaven’s sake, Rhoda,” cried Jack, “at least come back to the ranch and let Katherine give you a wedding. She’ll never forgive me for leaving you this way!”
Porter turned on Jack savagely.
“Look here!” he shouted. “Are you crazy too! You’re talking about her marrying this Apache!”
Jack spoke through his teeth obstinately.
“I’ve sweated blood over this thing as long as I propose to. If Rhoda wants to marry Kut-le, that’s her business. I always did like Kut-le and I always shall. I’ve done my full duty in trying to get Rhoda back. Now that she says that she cares for him, it’s neither your nor my business—nor DeWitt’s. But I want them to come back to the ranch with me and let Katherine give them a nice wedding.”
“But—but—” spluttered Porter. Then he stopped as the good sense of Jack’s attitude suddenly came home to him. “All right,” he said sullenly. “I’m like DeWitt. I pass. Only—if you try to take this Injun back to the ranch, he’ll never get there alive. He’ll be lynched by the first bunch of cowboys or miners we strike. Miss Rhoda nor you can’t stop ’em. You want to remember how the whole country is worked up over this!”
Rhoda whitened.
“Do you think that too, Jack and Kut-le?”
For the first time, Jack spoke to Kut-le.
“What do you think, Kut-le?” he said.
“Porter’s right, of course,” answered Kut-le. “My plan always has been to slip down into Mexico and then go to Paris for a year or two. I’ve got enough money for that. I’ve always wanted to do some work in the Sorbonne. By the end of two years I think the Southwest will be willing to welcome us back.”
Nothing could have so simplified the situation as Kut-le’s calm reference to his plans for carrying on his profession. He stood in his well-cut clothes, not an Indian, but a well-bred, clean-cut man of the world. Even Porter recognized this, and with a sigh he resigned himself to the inevitable.
“You folks better come down to the monastery and be married,” he said. “There’s a padre down there.”
“Gee! What’ll I say to Katherine!” groaned Jack.
“Katherine will understand,” said Rhoda. “Katherine always loved Kut-le. Even now I can’t believe that she has altogether turned against him.”
Jack Newman heaved a sigh.
“Well,” he said, “Kut-le, will you and Rhoda come down to the monastery with us and be married?” His young niece was solemn.
“Yes,” answered Kut-le, “if Rhoda is agreed.”
Rhoda’s face still wore the look of exaltation.
“I will come!” she said.
Kut-le did not let his glance rest on her, but turned to Billy.
“Mr. Porter,” he said courteously, “will you come to my wedding?”
Billy looked dazed. He stared from Kut-le to Rhoda, and Rhoda smiled at him. His last defense was down.
“I’ll be there, thanks!” he said.
“There is a side trail that we can take my horses down,” said Kut-le.
They all were silent as Kut-le led the way down the side trail and by a circuitous path to the monastery. He made his way up through a rude, grass-grown path to a cloistered front that was in fairly good repair. Here they dismounted and waited while Kut-le pulled a long bell-rope that hung beside a battered door. There was not long to wait before the door opened and a white-faced old padre stood staring in amazement at the little group.
Kut-le talked rapidly, now in Spanish and now in English, and at last the padre turned to Rhoda with a smile.
“And you?” he asked. “You are quite willing?”
“Yes,” said Rhoda, though her voice trembled in spite of her.
“And you?” asked the padre, turning to Jack and Billy.
The two men nodded.
“Then enter!” said the padre.
And with Cesca and Molly bringing up the rear, the wedding party followed the padre down a long adobe hallway across a courtyard where palms still shaded a trickling fountain, into a dim chapel, with grim adobe walls and pews hacked and worn by centuries of use.
The padre was excited and pleased.
“If,” he said, “you all will sit, I will call my two choir-boys who are at work in the olive orchard. They are not far away. We are always ready to hold service for such as may wish to attend.”
He disappeared through the door of the choir loft and returned shortly, followed by two tall Mexican half-breeds, clad in priceless surplices that had been wrought in Spain two centuries before. They lighted some meager candles before the altar and began their chant in soft, well-trained voices.
The padre turned and waited. Kut-le rose and, taking Rhoda’s hand, he led her before the aged priest.
To the two white men the scene was unforgetable. The dim old chapel, scene of who could tell what heart-burnings of desert history; the priest of the ancient religion; standing before him the two young people, one of a vanishing and one of a conquering race, both startlingly vivid in the perfection of their beauty; and, looking on, the two wide-eyed squaws with aboriginal wonder in their eyes.
It was but a moment before Kut-le had slipped a ring on Rhoda’s finger; but a moment before the priest had pronounced them man and wife.
As the two left the priest, Jack kissed Rhoda solemnly twice.
“Once for Katherine,” he said, “and once for me. I don’t understand much how it all has come about, but I know Kut-le, and I’m willing to trust you to him.”
Kut-le gave Jack a clear look.
“Jack, I’ll never forget that speech. If I live long enough, I’ll repay you for it.”
“And an Indian keeps his promises,” said Rhoda softly.
Billy Porter was not to be outdone.
“Now that it’s all over with, I’ll say that Kut-le is a good fighter and that you are the handsomest couple I ever saw.”
Kut-le chuckled.
“Cesca, am I such a heap fool?”
Cesca sniffed.
“White squaws no good! They—”
But Molly elbowed Cesca aside.
“You no listen to her!” she said.
“O Molly! Molly!” cried Rhoda. “You are a woman! I’m glad you were here!” And the men’s eyes blurred a little as the Indian woman hugged the white girl to her and crooned over her.
“You no cry! You no cry! When you come back, Molly come to your house, take care of you!”
After a moment Rhoda wiped her eyes, and Kut-le, who had been giving the old padre something that the old fellow eyed with joy, t
ook the girl’s hand gently.
“Come!” he said.
At the door the others watched them mount and ride away. The two sat their horses with the grace that comes of long, hard trails.
“Maybe I’ve done wrong,” said Jack. “But I don’t feel so. I’m awful sorry for DeWitt.”
“I’m awful sorry for DeWitt,” agreed Porter, “but I’m sorrier for myself. I’m older than DeWitt a whole lot. He’s young enough to get over anything.”
When they had ridden out of sight of the monastery, Kut-le pulled in his horse and dismounted. Then he stood looking up into Rhoda’s face. In his eyes was the same look of exaltation that made hers wonderful. He put his hand on her knee.
“We’ve a long ride ahead of us,” he said softly. “I want something that I can’t have on horseback.”
Rhoda laid her hand on his.
“You meant it all, Rhoda? It was not only to save my life?”
“Do you have to ask that?” said Rhoda.
“No!” answered Kut-le simply. “You see I waited for you. I knew that they would bring you back. And if you had not spoken, I would rather have died. I had made up my mind to that. O my love! It has come to us greatly!”
Then, as if the flood, controlled all these months, had burst its bonds, Kut-le lifted Rhoda from her saddle to his arms and laid his lips to hers. For a long moment the two clung to each other as if they knew that life could hold no moment for them so sweet as this. Then they mounted and, side by side, they rode off into the desert sunset.
A TEXAS RANGER, by William MacLeod Raine
FOREWORD TO YE GENTLE READER.
Within the memory of those of us still on the sunny side of forty the more remote West has passed from rollicking boyhood to its responsible majority. The frontier has gone to join the good Indian. In place of the ranger who patrolled the border for “bad men” has come the forest ranger, type of the forward lapping tide of civilization. The place where I write this—Tucson, Arizona—is now essentially more civilized than New York. Only at the moving picture shows can the old West, melodramatically overpainted, be shown to the manicured sons and daughters of those, still living, who brought law and order to the mesquite.
As Arthur Chapman, the Western poet, has written:
No loopholes now are framing
Lean faces, grim and brown;
No more keen eyes are aiming
To bring the redskin down.
The plough team’s trappings jingle
Across the furrowed field,
And sounds domestic mingle
Where valor hung its shield.
But every wind careering
Seems here to breathe a song—
A song of brave frontiering—
A saga of the strong.
PART I — THE MAN FROM THE PANHANDLE
(In Which Steve Plays Second Fiddle)
CHAPTER I
A DESERT MEETING
As she lay crouched in the bear-grass there came to the girl clearly the crunch of wheels over disintegrated granite. The trap had dipped into a draw, but she knew that presently it would reappear on the winding road. The knowledge smote her like a blast of winter, sent chills racing down her spine, and shook her as with an ague. Only the desperation of her plight spurred her flagging courage.
Round the bend came a pair of bays hitched to a single-seated open rig. They were driven by a young man, and as he reached the summit he drew up opposite her and looked down into the valley.
It lay in a golden glow at their feet, a basin of pure light and silence stretching mile on mile to the distant edge of jagged mountain-line which formed its lip. Sunlight strong as wine flooded a clean world, an amber Eden slumbering in an unbroken, hazy dream primeval.
“Don’t move!”
At the summons the driver swung his head sharply to a picture he will never forget. A young woman was standing on the bank at the edge of the road covering him with a revolver, having apparently just stepped from behind the trunk of the cottonwood beside her. The color had fled her cheeks even to the edge of the dull red-copper waves of hair, but he could detect in her slim young suppleness no doubt or uncertainty. On the contrary, despite her girlish freshness, she looked very much like business. She was like some young wild creature of the forest cornered and brought to bay, but the very terror in her soul rendered her more dangerous. Of the heart beating like a trip-hammer the gray unwinking eyes that looked into hers read nothing. She had schooled her taut nerves to obedience, and they answered her resolute will steadily despite fluttering pulses.
“Don’t move!” she said again.
“What do you want?” he asked harshly.
“I want your team,” she panted.
“What for?”
“Never mind. I want it.”
The rigor of his gaze slowly softened to a smile compound both of humor and grimness. He was a man to appreciate a piquant situation, none the less because it was at his expense. The spark that gleamed in his bold eye held some spice of the devil.
“All right. This is your hold-up, ma’am. I’ll not move,” he said, almost genially.
She was uneasily aware that his surrender had been too tame. Strength lay in that close-gripped salient jaw, in every line of the reckless sardonic face, in the set of the lean muscular shoulders. She had nerved herself to meet resistance, and instead he was yielding with complacent good nature.
“Get out!” she commanded.
He stepped from the rig and offered her the reins. As she reached for them his right hand shot out and caught the wrist that held the weapon, his left encircled her waist and drew her to him. She gave a little cry of fear and strained from him, fighting with all her lissom strength to free herself.
For all the impression she made the girdle round her waist might have been of steel. Without moving, he held her as she struggled, his brown muscular fingers slowly tightening round her wrist. Her stifled cry was of pain this time, and before it had died the revolver fell to the ground from her paralyzed grip.
But her exclamation had been involuntary and born of the soft tender flesh. The wild eyes that flamed into his asked for no quarter and received none. He drew her slowly down toward him, inch by inch, till she lay crushed and panting against him, but still unconquered. Though he held the stiff resistant figure motionless she still flashed battle at him.
He looked into the storm and fury of her face, hiding he knew not what of terror, and laughed in insolent delight. Then, very deliberately, he kissed her lips.
“You—coward!” came instantly her choking defiance.
“Another for that,” he laughed, kissing her again.
Her little fist beat against his face and he captured it, but as he looked at her something that had come into the girl’s face moved his not very accessible heart. The salt of the adventure was gone, his victory worse than a barren one. For stark fear stared at him, naked and unconcealed, and back of that he glimpsed a subtle something that he dimly recognized for the outraged maidenly modesty he had so ruthlessly trampled upon. His hands fell to his side reluctantly.
She stumbled back against the tree trunk, watching him with fascinated eyes that searched him anxiously. They found their answer, and with a long ragged breath the girl turned and burst into hysterical tears.
The man was amazed. A moment since the fury of a tigress had possessed her. Now she was all weak womanish despair. She leaned against the cottonwood and buried her face in her arm, the while uneven sobs shook her slender body. He frowned resentfully at this change of front, and because his calloused conscience was disturbed he began to justify himself. Why didn’t she play it out instead of coming the baby act on him? She had undertaken to hold him up and he had made her pay forfeit. He didn’t see that she had any kick coming. If she was this kind of a
boarding-school kid she ought not to have monkeyed with the buzz-saw. She was lucky he didn’t take her to El Paso with him and have her jailed.
“I reckon we’ll listen to explanations now,” he said grimly after a minute of silence interrupted only by her sobs.
The little fist that had struck at his face now bruised itself in unconscious blows at the bark of the tree. He waited till the staccato breaths had subsided, then took her by the shoulders and swung her round.
“You have the floor, ma’am. What does this gun-play business mean?”
Through the tears her angry eyes flashed starlike.
“I sha’n’t tell you,” she flamed. “You had no right to—How dared you insult me as you have?”
“Did I insult you?” he asked, with suave gentleness. “Then if you feel insulted I expect you lay claim to being a lady. But I reckon that don’t fit in with holding up strangers at the end of a gun. If I’ve insulted you I’ll ce’tainly apologize, but you’ll have to show me I have. We’re in Texas, which is next door but one to Missouri, ma’am.”
“I don’t want your apologies. I detest and hate you,” she cried,
“That’s your privilege, ma’am, and it’s mine to know whyfor I’m held up with a gun when I’m traveling peaceably along the road,” he answered evenly.
“I’ll not tell you.”
He spoke softly as if to himself. “That’s too bad. I kinder hate to take her to jail, but I reckon I must.”
She shrank back, aghast and white.
“No, no! You don’t understand. I didn’t mean to—I only wanted—Why, I meant to pay you for the team.”
“I’ll understand when you tell me,” he said placidly.
“I’ve told you. I needed the team. I was going to let you have one of our horses and seventy-five dollars. It’s all I have with me.”
“One of your horses, you say? With seventy-five dollars to boot? And you was intending to arrange the trade from behind that gun. I expect you needed a team right bad.”
