by Zane Grey
“Brung a gal ’long of me part way,” boasted the man, as he flung himself into a seat by the table. “Thought you fellers might like t’ see ’er, but she got too high an’ mighty fer me, wouldn’t take a pull at th’ bottle ’ith me, ’n’ shrieked like a catamount when I kissed ’er. Found ’er hangin’ on th’ water-tank. Got off ’t th’ wrong place. One o’ yer highbrows out o’ th’ parlor car! Good lesson fer ’er!”
The Boy looked up from his cards sternly, his keen eyes boring through the man. “Where is she now?” he asked, quietly; and all the men in the room looked up uneasily. There was that tone and accent again that made the Boy alien from them. What was it?
The man felt it and snarled his answer angrily. “Dropped ’er on th’ trail, an’ threw her fine-lady b’longin’s after ’er. Ain’t got no use fer thet kind. Wonder what they was created fer? Ain’t no good to nobody, not even ’emselves.” And he laughed a harsh cackle that was not pleasant to hear.
The Boy threw down his cards and went out, shutting the door. In a few minutes the men heard two horses pass the end of the bunk-house toward the trail, but no one looked up nor spoke. You could not have told by the flicker of an eyelash that they knew where the Boy had gone.
She was sitting in the deep shadow of a sage-bush that lay on the edge of the trail like a great blot, her suit-case beside her, her breath coming short with exertion and excitement, when she heard a cheery whistle in the distance. Just an old love-song dating back some years and discarded now as hackneyed even by the street pianos at home; but oh, how good it sounded!
From the desert I come to thee!
The ground was cold, and struck a chill through her garments as she sat there alone in the night. On came the clear, musical whistle, and she peered out of the shadow with eager eyes and frightened heart. Dared she risk it again? Should she call, or should she hold her breath and keep still, hoping he would pass her by unnoticed? Before she could decide two horses stopped almost in front of her and a rider swung himself down. He stood before her as if it were day and he could see her quite plainly.
“You needn’t be afraid,” he explained, calmly. “I thought I had better look you up after the old man got home and gave his report. He was pretty well tanked up and not exactly a fit escort for ladies. What’s the trouble?”
Like an angel of deliverance he looked to her as he stood in the starlight, outlined in silhouette against the wide, wonderful sky: broad shoulders, well-set head, close-cropped curls, handsome contour even in the darkness. There was about him an air of quiet strength which gave her confidence.
“Oh, thank you!” she gasped, with a quick little relieved sob in her voice. “I am so glad you have come. I was—just a little—frightened, I think.” She attempted to rise, but her foot caught in her skirt and she sank wearily back to the sand again.
The Boy stooped over and lifted her to her feet. “You certainly are some plucky girl!” he commented, looking down at her slender height as she stood beside him. “A ‘little frightened,’ were you? Well, I should say you had a right to be.”
“Well, not exactly frightened, you know,” said Margaret, taking a deep breath and trying to steady her voice. “I think perhaps I was more mortified than frightened, to think I made such a blunder as to get off the train before I reached my station. You see, I’d made up my mind not to be frightened, but when I heard that awful howl of some beast—And then that terrible man!” She shuddered and put her hands suddenly over her eyes as if to shut out all memory of it.
“More than one kind of beasts!” commented the Boy, briefly. “Well, you needn’t worry about him; he’s having his supper and he’ll be sound asleep by the time we get back.”
“Oh, have we got to go where he is?” gasped Margaret. “Isn’t there some other place? Is Ashland very far away? That is where I am going.”
“No other place where you could go to-night. Ashland’s a good twenty-five miles from here. But you’ll be all right. Mom Wallis ’ll look out for you. She isn’t much of a looker, but she has a kind heart. She pulled me through once when I was just about flickering out. Come on. You’ll be pretty tired. We better be getting back. Mom Wallis ’ll make you comfortable, and then you can get off good and early in the morning.”
Without an apology, and as if it were the common courtesy of the desert, he stooped and lifted her easily to the saddle of the second horse, placed the bridle in her hands, then swung the suit-case up on his own horse and sprang into the saddle.
CHAPTER III
He turned the horses about and took charge of her just as if he were accustomed to managing stray ladies in the wilderness every day of his life and understood the situation perfectly; and Margaret settled wearily into her saddle and looked about her with content.
Suddenly, again, the wide wonder of the night possessed her. Involuntarily she breathed a soft little exclamation of awe and delight. Her companion turned to her questioningly:
“Does it always seem so big here—so—limitless?” she asked in explanation. “It is so far to everywhere it takes one’s breath away, and yet the stars hang close, like a protection. It gives one the feeling of being alone in the great universe with God. Does it always seem so out here?”
He looked at her curiously, her pure profile turned up to the wide dome of luminous blue above. His voice was strangely low and wondering as he answered, after a moment’s silence:
“No, it is not always so,” he said. “I have seen it when it was more like being alone in the great universe with the devil.”
There was a tremendous earnestness in his tone that the girl felt meant more than was on the surface. She turned to look at the fine young face beside her. In the starlight she could not make out the bitter hardness of lines that were beginning to be carved about his sensitive mouth. But there was so much sadness in his voice that her heart went out to him in pity.
“Oh,” she said, gently, “it would be awful that way. Yes, I can understand. I felt so, a little, while that terrible man was with me.” And she shuddered again at the remembrance.
Again he gave her that curious look. “There are worse things than Pop Wallis out here,” he said, gravely. “But I’ll grant you there’s some class to the skies. It’s a case of ‘Where every prospect pleases and only man is vile.’” And with the words his tone grew almost flippant. It hurt her sensitive nature, and without knowing it she half drew away a little farther from him and murmured, sadly:
“Oh!” as if he had classed himself with the “man” he had been describing. Instantly he felt her withdrawal and grew grave again, as if he would atone.
“Wait till you see this sky at the dawn,” he said. “It will burn red fire off there in the east like a hearth in a palace, and all this dome will glow like a great pink jewel set in gold. If you want a classy sky, there you have it! Nothing like it in the East!”
There was a strange mingling of culture and roughness in his speech. The girl could not make him out; yet there had been a palpitating earnestness in his description that showed he had felt the dawn in his very soul.
“You are—a—poet, perhaps?” she asked, half shyly. “Or an artist?” she hazarded.
He laughed roughly and seemed embarrassed. “No, I’m just a—bum! A sort of roughneck out of a job.”
She was silent, watching him against the starlight, a kind of embarrassment upon her after his last remark. “You—have been here long?” she asked, at last.
“Three years.” He said it almost curtly and turned his head away, as if there were something in his face he would hide.
She knew there was something unhappy in his life. Unconsciously her tone took on a sympathetic sound. “And do you get homesick and want to go back, ever?” she asked.
His tone was fairly savage now. “No!”
The silence which followed became almost oppressive
before the Boy finally turned and in his kindly tone began to question her about the happenings which had stranded her in the desert alone at night.
So she came to tell him briefly and frankly about herself, as he questioned—how she came to be in Arizona all alone.
“My father is a minister in a small town in New York State. When I finished college I had to do something, and I had an offer of this Ashland school through a friend of ours who had a brother out here. Father and mother would rather have kept me nearer home, of course, but everybody says the best opportunities are in the West, and this was a good opening, so they finally consented. They would send post-haste for me to come back if they knew what a mess I have made of things right at the start—getting out of the train in the desert.”
“But you’re not discouraged?” said her companion, half wonderingly. “Some nerve you have with you. I guess you’ll manage to hit it off in Ashland. It’s the limit as far as discipline is concerned, I understand, but I guess you’ll put one over on them. I’ll bank on you after to-night, sure thing!”
She turned a laughing face toward him. “Thank you!” she said. “But I don’t see how you know all that. I’m sure I didn’t do anything particularly nervy. There wasn’t anything else to do but what I did, if I’d tried.”
“Most girls would have fainted and screamed, and fainted again when they were rescued,” stated the Boy, out of a vast experience.
“I never fainted in my life,” said Margaret Earle, with disdain. “I don’t think I should care to faint out in the vast universe like this. It would be rather inopportune, I should think.”
Then, because she suddenly realized that she was growing very chummy with this stranger in the dark, she asked the first question that came into her head.
“What was your college?”
That he had not been to college never entered her head. There was something in his speech and manner that made it a foregone conclusion.
It was as if she had struck him forcibly in his face, so sudden and sharp a silence ensued for a second. Then he answered, gruffly, “Yale,” and plunged into an elaborate account of Arizona in its early ages, including a detailed description of the cliff-dwellers and their homes, which were still to be seen high in the rocks of the cañons not many miles to the west of where they were riding.
Margaret was keen to hear it all, and asked many questions, declaring her intention of visiting those cliff-caves at her earliest opportunity. It was so wonderful to her to be actually out here where were all sorts of queer things about which she had read and wondered. It did not occur to her, until the next day, to realize that her companion had of intention led her off the topic of himself and kept her from asking any more personal questions.
He told her of the petrified forest just over some low hills off to the left; acres and acres of agatized chips and trunks of great trees all turned to eternal stone, called by the Indians “Yeitso’s bones,” after the great giant of that name whom an ancient Indian hero killed. He described the coloring of the brilliant days in Arizona, where you stand on the edge of some flat-topped mesa and look off through the clear air to mountains that seem quite near by, but are in reality more than two hundred miles away. He pictured the strange colors and lights of the place; ledges of rock, yellow, white and green, drab and maroon, and tumbled piles of red boulders, shadowy buttes in the distance, serrated cliffs against the horizon, not blue, but rosy pink in the heated haze of the air, and perhaps a great, lonely eagle poised above the silent, brilliant waste.
He told it not in book language, with turn of phrase and smoothly flowing sentences, but in simple, frank words, as a boy might describe a picture to one he knew would appreciate it—for her sake, and not because he loved to put it into words; but in a new, stumbling way letting out the beauty that had somehow crept into his heart in spite of all the rough attempts to keep all gentle things out of his nature.
The girl, as she listened, marveled more and more what manner of youth this might be who had come to her out of the desert night.
She forgot her weariness as she listened, in the thrill of wonder over the new mysterious country to which she had come. She forgot that she was riding through the great darkness with an utter stranger, to a place she knew not, and to experiences most dubious. Her fears had fled and she was actually enjoying herself, and responding to the wonderful story of the place with soft-murmured exclamations of delight and wonder.
From time to time in the distance there sounded forth those awful blood-curdling howls of wild beasts that she had heard when she sat alone by the water-tank, and each time she heard a shudder passed through her and instinctively she swerved a trifle toward her companion, then straightened up again and tried to seem not to notice. The Boy saw and watched her brave attempts at self-control with deep appreciation. But suddenly, as they rode and talked, a dark form appeared across their way a little ahead, lithe and stealthy and furry, and two awful eyes like green lamps glared for an instant, then disappeared silently among the mesquite bushes.
She did not cry out nor start. Her very veins seemed frozen with horror, and she could not have spoken if she tried. It was all over in a second and the creature gone, so that she almost doubted her senses and wondered if she had seen aright. Then one hand went swiftly to her throat and she shrank toward her companion.
“There is nothing to fear,” he said, reassuringly, and laid a strong hand comfortingly across the neck of her horse. “The pussy-cat was as unwilling for our company as we for hers. Besides, look here!”—and he raised his hand and shot into the air. “She’ll not come near us now.”
“I am not afraid!” said the girl, bravely. “At least, I don’t think I am—very! But it’s all so new and unexpected, you know. Do people around here always shoot in that—well—unpremeditated fashion?”
They laughed together.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I didn’t realize the shot might startle you even more than the wildcat. It seems I’m not fit to have charge of a lady. I told you I was a roughneck.”
“You’re taking care of me beautifully,” said Margaret Earle, loyally, “and I’m glad to get used to shots if that’s the thing to be expected often.”
Just then they came to the top of the low, rolling hill, and ahead in the darkness there gleamed a tiny, wizened light set in a blotch of blackness. Under the great white stars it burned a sickly red and seemed out of harmony with the night.
“There we are!” said the Boy, pointing toward it. “That’s the bunk-house. You needn’t be afraid. Pop Wallis ’ll be snoring by this time, and we’ll come away before he’s about in the morning. He always sleeps late after he’s been off on a bout. He’s been gone three days, selling some cattle, and he’ll have a pretty good top on.”
The girl caught her breath, gave one wistful look up at the wide, starry sky, a furtive glance at the strong face of her protector, and submitted to being lifted down to the ground.
Before her loomed the bunk-house, small and mean, built of logs, with only one window in which the flicker of the lanterns menaced, with unknown trials and possible perils for her to meet.
CHAPTER IV
When Margaret Earle dawned upon that bunk-room the men sat up with one accord, ran their rough, red hands through their rough, tousled hair, smoothed their beards, took down their feet from the benches where they were resting. That was as far as their etiquette led them. Most of them continued to smoke their pipes, and all of them stared at her unreservedly. Such a sight of exquisite feminine beauty had not come to their eyes in many a long day. Even in the dim light of the smoky lanterns, and with the dust and weariness of travel upon her, Margaret Earle was a beautiful girl.
“That’s what’s the matter, father,” said her mother, when the subject of Margaret’s going West to teach had first been mentioned. “She’s too beautiful. Far too beautiful to go among
savages! If she were homely and old, now, she might be safe. That would be a different matter.”
Yet Margaret had prevailed, and was here in the wild country. Now, standing on the threshold of the log cabin, she read, in the unveiled admiration that startled from the eyes of the men, the meaning of her mother’s fears.
Yet withal it was a kindly admiration not unmixed with awe. For there was about her beauty a touch of the spiritual which set her above the common run of women, making men feel her purity and sweetness, and inclining their hearts to worship rather than be bold.
The Boy had been right. Pop Wallis was asleep and out of the way. From a little shed room at one end his snoring marked time in the silence that the advent of the girl made in the place.
In the doorway of the kitchen offset Mom Wallis stood with her passionless face—a face from which all emotions had long ago been burned by cruel fires—and looked at the girl, whose expression was vivid with her opening life all haloed in a rosy glow.
A kind of wistful contortion passed over Mom Wallis’s hopeless countenance, as if she saw before her in all its possibility of perfection the life that she herself had lost. Perhaps it was no longer possible for her features to show tenderness, but a glow of something like it burned in her eyes, though she only turned away with the same old apathetic air, and without a word went about preparing a meal for the stranger.
Margaret looked wildly, fearfully, around the rough assemblage when she first entered the long, low room, but instantly the boy introduced her as “the new teacher for the Ridge School beyond the Junction,” and these were Long Bill, Big Jim, the Fiddling Boss, Jasper Kemp, Fade-away Forbes, Stocky, Croaker, and Fudge. An inspiration fell upon the frightened girl, and she acknowledged the introduction by a radiant smile, followed by the offering of her small gloved hand. Each man in dumb bewilderment instantly became her slave, and accepted the offered hand with more or less pleasure and embarrassment. The girl proved her right to be called tactful, and, seeing her advantage, followed it up quickly by a few bright words. These men were of an utterly different type from any she had ever met before, but they had in their eyes a kind of homage which Pop Wallis had not shown and they were not repulsive to her. Besides, the Boy was in the background, and her nerve had returned. The Boy knew how a lady should be treated. She was quite ready to “play up” to his lead.
