The Western Romance MEGAPACK ®: 20 Classic Tales

by Zane Grey

  The stranger nodded and then lifted his hat for the ceremony while he presented himself.

  ‘Name of Howard,’ he announced breezily. ‘Alan Howard of the old Diaz Rancho. Glad to know you both.’

  ‘It is a pleasure, I am sure, Mr. Howard,’ said the professor. ‘But, if you will pardon me, at this particular time of day——’

  Alan Howard laughed his understanding.

  ‘I’ll chase up to the pool and give Helen a drink of real water,’ he said lightly. ‘Funny my mare’s name should be Helen, too, isn’t it?’ This directly into a pair of eyes which the growing light showed to be grey and attractive, but just now hostile. ‘Then, if you say the word, I’ll romp back and take you up on a cup of coffee. And we’ll talk things over.’

  He stooped forward in the saddle a fraction of an inch; his mare caught the familiar signal and leaped; they were gone, racing away across the sand which was flung up after them like spray.

  ‘Of all the fresh propositions!’ gasped Helen.

  But she knew that he would not long delay his return, and so slipped quickly from under her blanket and hurried down to the water-hole to bathe her hands and face and set herself in order. Her flying fingers found her little mirror; there wasn’t any smudge on her face, after all, and her hair wasn’t so terribly unbecoming that way; tousled, to be sure, but then, nice, curly hair can be tousled and still not make one a perfect hag. It was odd about his mare being named Helen. He must have thought the name pretty, for obviously he and his horse were both intimate and affectionate. ‘Alan Howard.’ Here, too, was rather a nice name for a man met by chance out in the desert. She paused in the act of brushing her hair. Was she to get an explanation of last night’s puzzle? Was Mr. Howard the man who had lighted the other fire?

  The professor’s taciturnity was of a pronounced order this morning. Now and then as he made his own brief and customarily untidy toilet, he turned a look of accusation upon the big Colt lying on his bed. Before drawing on his boots he bestowed upon his toe a long glance of affection; the bullet that had passed within a very few inches of this adjunct of his anatomy had emphasized a toe’s importance. He had never realized how pleasant it was to have two big toes, all one’s own and unmarred. By the time the foot had been coaxed and jammed down into his new boot the professor’s good humour was on the way to being restored; a man of one thought at the time, due to his long habit of concentration, his emotion was now one of a subdued rejoicing. It needed but the morning cup of coffee to set him beaming upon the world.

  Alan Howard’s sudden call: ‘Can I come in now, folks?’ from across a brief space of sand and brush, found Professor Longstreet on his knees feeding twigs to a tiny blaze, and hastened Helen through the final touches of her dressing. Helen was humming softly to herself, her back to him, her mind obviously concentrated upon the bread she was slicing, when the stranger swung down from his saddle and came forward. He stood a moment just behind her, looking at her with very evident interest in his eyes.

  ‘How do you like our part of the world?’ he asked friendliwise.

  Helen ignored him briefly. Had Mr. Alan Howard been a bashful young man of the type that reddens and twists its hat in big nervous hands and looks guilty in general. Miss Helen Longstreet would have been swiftly all that was sweet and kind to him. Now, however, from some vague reason or clouded instinct, she was prepared to be as stiff as the fanged stalk of a cactus. Having ignored him the proper length of time, she replied coolly:

  ‘Father and I are very much pleased with the desert country. But, may I ask just why you speak of it as your part of the world rather than ours? Are we trespassing, pray?’ The afterthought was accompanied by an upflashing look that was little less than outright challenge.

  ‘Trespassing? Lord, no,’ conceded Howard heartily. ‘The land is wide, the trail open at both ends. But you know what I meant.’

  Helen shrugged and laid aside the half-loaf. Since she gave him no answer, Howard went on serenely:

  ‘I mean a man sort of acquires a feeling of ownership in the place in which he has lived a long time. You and your father are Eastern, not Western. If I came tramping into your neck of the woods—you see I call it yours. Right enough, too, don’t you think, professor?’

  ‘In a way of speaking, yes,’ answered the professor. ‘In another way, no. We have given up the old haunts and the old way of living. We are rather inclined, my dear young sir, to look upon this as our country, too.’

  ‘Bully for you!’ cried Howard warmly. ‘You’re sure welcome.’ His eyes came back from the father to rest upon the daughter’s bronze tresses. ‘Welcome as a water-hole in a hot land,’ he added emphatically.

  ‘Speaking of water-holes,’ suggested Longstreet, sitting back upon his boot heels in a manner to suggest the favourite squatting position of the cowboys of whom he and his daughter had seen much during these last few weeks, ‘was it you who made camp right over yonder?’ He pointed.

  Helen looked up curiously for Howard’s answer and thus met the eyes he had not withdrawn from her. He smiled at her, a frank, open sort of smile, and thereafter turned to his questioner.

  ‘When?’ he asked briefly.

  ‘Last night. Just before we came.’

  ‘What makes you think some one made camp there?’

  ‘There was a fire; bacon was frying, coffee boiling.’

  ‘And you didn’t step across to take a squint at your next-door neighbour?’

  ‘We did,’ said the professor. ‘But he had gone, leaving his fire burning, his meal cooking.’

  Howard’s eyes travelled swiftly to Helen, then back to her father.

  ‘And he didn’t come back?’

  ‘He did not,’ said Longstreet. ‘Otherwise I should not have asked if you were he.’

  Even yet Howard gave no direct answer. Instead he turned his back and strode away to the deserted camp site. Helen watched him through the bushes and noted how he made a quick but evidently thorough examination of the spot. She saw him stoop, pick up frying-pan and cup, drop them and pass around the spring, his eyes on the ground. Abruptly he turned away and pushed through a clump of bushes, disappearing. In five minutes he returned, his face thoughtful.

  ‘What time did you get here?’ he asked. And when he had his answer he pondered it a moment before he went on: ‘The gent didn’t leave his card. But he broke camp in a regular blue-blazes hurry; saddled his horse over yonder and struck out the shortest way toward King Cañon. He went as if the devil himself and his one best bet in hell hounds was running at his stirrups.’

  ‘How do you know?’ queried Longstreet’s insatiable curiosity. ‘You didn’t see him?’

  ‘You saw the fire and the things he left stewing,’ countered Howard. ‘They spelled hurry, didn’t they? Didn’t they shout into your ears that he was on the lively scamper for some otherwhere?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ maintained Longstreet eagerly. ‘Reasoning from the scant evidence before us, a man would say that while the stranger may have left his camp to hurry on, he may on the other hand have just dodged back when he heard us coming and hidden somewhere close by.’

  Again Howard pondered briefly.

  ‘There are other signs you did not see,’ he said in a moment. ‘The soil where he had his horse staked out shows tracks, and they are the tracks of a horse going some from the first jump. Horse and man took the straightest trail and went ripping through a patch of mesquite that a man would generally go round. Then there’s something else. Want to see?’

  They went with him, the professor with alacrity, Helen with a studied pretence at indifference. By the spring where Helen had found the willow rod and the bluebird feather, Howard stopped and pointed down.

  ‘There’s a set of tracks for you,’ he announced triumphantly. ‘Suppose you spell ’em out, professor; what do you make of
them?’

  The professor studied them gravely. In the end he shook his head.

  ‘Coyote?’ he suggested.

  Howard shook his head.

  ‘No coyote,’ he said with positiveness. ‘That track shows a foot four times as big as any coyote’s that ever scratched fleas. Wolf? Maybe. It would be a whopper of a wolf at that. Look at the size of it, man! Why, the ugly brute would be big enough to scare my prize shorthorn bull into taking out life insurance. And that isn’t all. That’s just the front foot. Now look at the hind foot. Smaller, longer, and leaving a lighter imprint. All belonging to the same animal.’ He scratched his head in frank bewilderment. ‘It’s a new one on me,’ he confessed frankly. Then he chuckled. ‘I’d bet a man that the gent who left on the hasty foot just got one squint at this little beastie and at that had all sorts of good reasons for streaking out.’

  A big lizard went rustling through a pile of dead leaves and all three of them started. Howard laughed.

  ‘We’re right near Superstition Pool!’ he informed them with suddenly assumed gravity. ‘Down in Poco Poco they tell some great tales about the old Indian gods going man-hunting by moonlight. Quién sabe, huh?’

  Professor Longstreet snorted. Helen cast a quick, interested look at the stranger and one of near triumph upon her father.

  ‘I smell somebody’s coffee boiling,’ said the cattleman abruptly. ‘Am I invited in for a cup? Or shall I mosey on? Don’t be bashful in saying I’m not wanted if I’m not.’

  ‘Of course you are welcome,’ said Longstreet heartily. But Howard turned to Helen and waited for her to speak.

  ‘Of course.’ said Helen carelessly.

  CHAPTER III

  Payment in Raw Gold

  ‘You were merely speaking by way of jest, I take it, Mr. Howard,’ remarked Longstreet, after he had interestedly watched the rancher put a third and fourth heaping spoonful of sugar in his tin cup of coffee. ‘I refer, you understand, to your hinting a moment ago at there being any truth in the old Indian superstitions. I am not to suppose, am I, that you actually give any credence to tales of supernatural influences manifested hereabouts?’

  Alan Howard stirred his coffee meditatively, and after so leisurely a fashion that Longstreet began to fidget. The reply, when finally it came, was sufficiently non-committal.

  ‘I said “Quién sabe?” to the question just now,’ he said, a twinkle in the regard bestowed upon the scientist. ‘They are two pretty good little old words and fit in first-rate lots of times.’

  ‘Spanish for “Who knows?” aren’t they?’

  Howard nodded. ‘They used to be Spanish; I guess they’re Mex by now.’

  Longstreet frowned and returned to the issue.

  ‘If you were merely jesting, as I supposed——’

  ‘But was I?’ demanded Howard. ‘What do I know about it? I know horses and cows; that’s my business. I know a thing or two about men, since that’s my business at times, too; also something like half of that about half-breeds and mules; I meet up with them sometimes in the run of the day’s work. You know something of what I think you call auriferous geology. But what does either of us know of the nightly custom of dead Indians and Indian gods?’

  Helen wondered with her father whether there were a vein of seriousness in the man’s thought. Howard squatted on his heels, from which he had removed his spurs; they were very high heels, but none the less he seemed comfortably at home rocking on them. Longstreet noted with his keen eyes, altered his own squatting position a fraction, and opened his mouth for another question. But Howard forestalled him, saying casually:

  ‘I have known queer things to happen here, within a few hundred yards of this place. I haven’t had time to go finding out the why of them; they didn’t come into my day’s work. I have listened to some interesting yarns; truth or lies it didn’t matter to me. They say that ghosts haunt the Pool just yonder. I have never seen a ghost; there’s nothing in raising ghosts for market, and I’m the busiest man I know trying to chew a chunk that I have bitten off. They tell you down at San Juan and in Poco Poco, and all the way up to Tecolote, that if you will come here a certain moonlight night of the year and will watch the water of the pool, you’ll see a vision sent up by the gods of the Underworld. They’ll even tell you how a nice little old god by the name of Pookhonghoya appears now and then by night, hunting souls of enemies—and running by the side of the biggest, strangest wolf that human eyes ever saw.’

  Helen looked at him swiftly. He had added the last item almost as an afterthought. She imagined that he had embellished the old tale from his own recent experience, and, further, that Mr. Alan Howard was making fun of them and was no adept in the science of fabrication.

  ‘They go further,’ Howard spun out his tale. ‘Somewhere in the desert country to the north there is, I believe, a tribe of Hidden People that the white man has never seen. The interesting thing about them is that they are governed by a young and altogether maddeningly pretty goddess who is white and whose name is Yahoya. When they come right down to the matter of giving names,’ he added gravely, ‘how is a man to go any further than just say, “Quién sabe?”’

  ‘That is stupid.’ said Longstreet irascibly. ‘It’s a man’s chief affair in life to know. These absurd legends——’

  ‘Don’t you think, papa,’ said Helen coolly, ‘that instead of taxing Mr. Howard’s memory and—and imagination, it would be better if you asked him about our way from here on?’

  Howard chuckled. Professor Longstreet set aside his cup, cleared his throat and agreed with his daughter.

  ‘I am prospecting,’ he announced, ‘for gold. We are headed for what is known as the Last Ridge country. I have a map here.’

  He drew it from his pocket, neatly folded, and spread it out. It was a map such as is to be purchased for fifty cents at the store in San Juan, showing the main roads, towns, waterholes and trails. With a blue pencil he had marked out the way they planned to go. Howard bent forward and took the paper.

  ‘We are going the same way, friend,’ he said as he looked up. ‘What is more, we are going over a trail I know by heart. There is a good chance I can save you time and trouble by making it a party of three. Am I wanted?’

  ‘It is extremely kind of you,’ said Longstreet appreciatively. ‘But you are on horseback and we travel slowly.’

  ‘I can spare the time,’ was the even rejoinder. ‘And I’ll be glad to do it.’

  During the half-hour required to break camp and pack the two horses, Alan Howard gave signs of an interest which now and then mounted almost to high delight. He made no remark concerning the elaborate system of water-bottles and canteens, but his eyes brightened as he aided the professor in making them fast. When the procession was ready to start he strode on ahead, leading his own horse and hiding from his new friends the widening grin upon his face.

  The sun was up; already the still heat of the desert was in the air. Behind the tall rancher and his glossy mare came Professor Longstreet driving his two pack animals. Just behind him, with much grave speculation in her eyes, came Helen. A new man had swum all unexpectedly into her ken and she was busy cataloguing him. He looked the native in this environment, but for all that he was plainly a man of her own class. No illiteracy, no wild shy awkwardness marked his demeanour. He was as free and easy as the north wind; he might, after all, be likeable. Certainly it was courtois of him to set himself on foot to be one of them. The mare looked gentle despite her high life; Helen wondered if Alan Howard had thought of offering her his mount?

  They had come to the first of the low-lying hills.

  ‘Miss Longstreet,’ called Howard, stopping and turning, ‘wouldn’t you like to swing up on Sanchia? She is dying to be ridden.’

  The trail here was wide and clearly defined; hence Longstreet and his two horses went by and Helen came up wit
h Howard. Hers was the trick of level, searching eyes. She looked steadily at him as she said evenly:

  ‘So her name is Sanchia?’

  For an instant the man did not appear to understand. Then suddenly Helen was treated to the sight of the warm red seeping up under his tan. And then he slapped his thigh and laughed; his laughter seeming unaffected and joyous.

  ‘Talk about getting absent-minded in my old age,’ he declared. ‘Her name did use to be Sanchia; I changed it to Helen. Think of my sliding back to the old name.’

  Helen’s candid look did not shift for the moment that she paused. Then she went on by him, following her father, saying merely:

  ‘Thank you, I’ll walk. And if she were mine I’d keep the old name; Sanchia suits her exactly.’

  But as she hurried on after her father she had time for reflection; plainly the easy-mannered Mr. Alan Howard had renamed his mare only this very morning; as plainly had he in the first place called her Sanchia in honour of some other friend or chance acquaintance. Helen wondered vaguely who the original Sanchia was. To her imagination the name suggested a slim, big-eyed Mexican girl. She found time to wonder further how many times Mr. Howard had named his horse.

  They skirted a hill, dipped into the hollow which gave passageway between this hill and its twin neighbour, mounted briefly, and within twenty minutes came to the pool about which legends flocked. From their vantage point they looked down upon it. The sun searched it out almost at the instant that their eyes caught the glint of it. Fed by many hidden springs it was a still, smooth body of water in the bowl of the hills; it looked cool and deep and had its own air of mystery; in its ancient bosom it may have hidden bones or gold. Some devotee had planted a weeping willow here long ago; the great tree now flourished and cast its reflection across its own fallen leaves.