The Western Romance MEGAPACK ®: 20 Classic Tales

by Zane Grey

  On the instant Helen had the clear vision to know that in this skirmish she was defeated. She had thought her father would follow her; she knew that she would not go without him. At least not yet. In a moment her anger would get the best of her; she went quickly to the door and outside. Howard came quickly behind her.

  ‘Helen,’ he said harshly, ‘you’ve got to listen to me.’

  ‘Well?’ She whirled and confronted him, her body drawn up rigidly. ‘What have you to say?’

  ‘You mustn’t leave like this. You must stay.’

  ‘I am not going to leave,’ she retorted. ‘I am going to stay!’

  ‘But,’ he began, at sea once more, ‘I thought——’

  ‘Think what you please, Mr. Howard,’ she told him hotly. ‘But here’s one thing you don’t have to speculate upon. I am not going to leave my father in the hands of that Murray woman to do as she pleases with. She can have whatever I don’t want,’ and he knew she meant Alan Howard, ‘but I am not going to give her the satisfaction of having all of the mines and horses in the world named after her.’

  The last came out despite her; she could have bitten her tongue to hold back the words which came rushing forth with such vehemence. She did not know what had put that thought into her mind at this crisis; perhaps it had always been there. But it was this which had chief significance for Howard.

  ‘I have a horse named Sanchia,’ he said. ‘The one I rode the first day I saw you. You think that I named it after her?’

  ‘What if you did?’ she demanded. ‘Do you suppose that I care?’

  ‘That horse,’ he went on steadily, ‘I bought a long time ago from Yellow Barbee. It was before I had so much as heard of Sanchia Murray. He named the beast.’

  Helen’s old familiar sniff was his answer. The matter, he was to know, was of no moment to her. But she knew otherwise, and looked at him swiftly hoping he had something else to say.

  ‘You’ve got to stay here,’ he continued gravely. ‘And we both know it. I believe in your father and in his ultimate success. We must watch over him, we must see that Mrs. Murray does not worm his secret out of him again and steal what he finds. And you’ve got to know that when a man loves a girl as I love you, he is not going to tolerate any further interference from a lying, deceitful jade like that woman in there.’

  Helen laughed her disbelief.

  ‘I rode first of all to the place where your cabin used to stand,’ he went on, his big hat crumpled in his hands. ‘You had left, and I was afraid you had gone East. I rode into the mining-camp to get word of you. I saw Barbee; he said that Sanchia Murray knew where you had moved. I asked her. When she said she was coming up this way, I did not wait for her. She appears to have it in for me; she hates you for standing between her and your father. She knows that I love you, and——’

  Longstreet was calling from the door,

  ‘Helen, I want you and Howard to come back. We must talk everything over. Mrs. Murray has much to explain; she hates Jim Courtot and his crowd, she is working against them instead of with them. Be fair, young people; remember these words,’ he paused, lifted his hand oratorically and then made his statement with an unusually deep gravity,—‘Every one, though appearing guilty, must be given an opportunity to prove himself innocent. That’s it and that’s fair: the opportunity to prove his innocence.’ He emphasized the words in repeating them. ‘That’s all that I ask now. Please let’s talk things over.’

  Helen returned slowly to the cabin.

  ‘I must go back,’ she said to Howard. ‘After all, I must keep my head and watch over papa every minute while she is with him.’

  ‘May I come in, too?’ he asked gently.

  ‘Won’t you believe me, Helen? And won’t you let me help you?’

  She hesitated. Then she turned her head so that he could see her eyes.

  ‘I am apt to have my hands full,’ she admitted. She even smiled a little. ‘Maybe there will be work for both of us.’

  But when he sought to come to her side, she ran on ahead of him. The face which she presented at the door for Sanchia’s vision was radiant. Even Sanchia was at a loss for the amazing alteration. How these two could have come to an understanding in two minutes baffled her. But as Howard presented his own face at the door there was no misdoubting that he and Helen had travelled far along the road which she had thought to close to them.

  ‘What in the world has happened?’ Guarded as was the tongue of Sanchia Murray it was human after all.

  Helen laughed merrily and gave her eyes for an instant to Howard’s. Then, lightly, to Sanchia:

  ‘We were just laughing over a story Alan was telling me. Yellow Barbee has a new girl.’

  Sanchia understood, and her face went red. Howard merely knew that for the first time Helen had called him Alan. Of trifles is the world made.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  The Will-o’-the-Wisp

  For the hour, if for no longer, the tables plainly were turned upon Sanchia. The high content which so abruptly had enveloped Helen and Howard was comparable to the old magic armour of the fairy tales which the fortunate prince found always at his time of need. Through it venomed glance and bitter tongue might not pass; as Sanchia’s anger rose the two lovers looked into each other’s eyes and laughed. Again Sanchia bit her lips and sat back.

  ‘Dear old pops,’ said Helen, going to her father’s side and slipping both arms about his neck, ruffling his scant hair and otherwise making free with his passive person, thereby achieving the dual result of coming between him and Sanchia and giving a joyous outlet to a new emotion. ‘I am not going to leave you, after all. And the West is the nicest country in the world, too. And Alan and I were wrong to run off and leave you as we did. We’ll stay right with you now, and it will be so much jollier that way; won’t it, Mrs. Murray?’

  Longstreet patted her hand; Sanchia Murray measured her anew.

  ‘And I too,’ ran on Helen, ‘must take more interest in your work, your books. Now that we live right on the spot where the things are, the strata and eroded cañons and—and relics of monster upheavals and fossils of the Pliocene age and all that—it will be so much fun to study about them, all together. Alan thinks so, I’m sure. Don’t you agree, Mrs. Murray?’

  Helen’s eyes were dancing, Longstreet imagined with newly inspired interest, Alan knew with the light of battle; Sanchia’s eyes were angry. The girl had stated her plan of campaign as though in so many words. If time came when Longstreet had a second golden secret to tell, she meant to hear it and to have Alan hear it at least not an instant later than Mrs. Murray; thereafter, with odds two to one against the widow, they should see what they would see.

  Sanchia did much thinking and little talking. She remained an hour. During the last half-hour she developed a slight but growingly insistent cough. Before she left she had drawn the desired query from Longstreet. Oh, hadn’t he noticed before? It had been coming on her for a month. The doctors were alarmed for her—but she smiled bravely. They had even commanded that she move away from the dust and noise of a town; that she pitch a tent somewhere on the higher lands and live out-doors all of the time. Helen saw what was coming before the actual words were spoken. It was Longstreet who was finally led to extend the invitation! Why didn’t she move into a tent near them? And with a look in which gratitude seemed blurred in a mist of tears, Sanchia accepted. She would move to-morrow and pitch her tent right up there near the spring.

  ‘If you don’t mind, Helen dear?’ she said. ‘Your little summer house by the spring may be sacred ground?’

  Promptly Helen made her a present of it. All that she wanted were some things she had left there, a pair of spurs and a bridle; Sanchia was perfectly welcome to the rest.

  They all went out together for Sanchia’s horse. And Sanchia, accepting the altered battle-ground to which He
len’s tactics had driven her, seeing that she was to have little opportunity of getting Longstreet off to herself, began a straight drive at her main objective. She laid an affectionate hand on his arm as though thrown upon that necessity by the irregularities of the trail in which she had stumbled, and turned the battery of her really very pretty eyes upon him. With her eyes she said, boldly yet timidly: ‘You splendid man, you have touched my heart! You noble creature, you have made Sanchia Murray love you! Generous man, you have come to mean everything to a poor little woman who is lonely!’

  It is much to be said in a glance, but Sanchia had never travelled so far on her chosen road of life if she had not learned, long ago, how to put into a look all that she did not feel. And she did not stop with the one look; again she appeared to stumble, again her eyelids fluttered upward, her glance melted into his; again she flashed sufficient message to redden Longstreet’s cheeks and make his own eyes burn with embarrassment. And since it was obvious that henceforward the combat must be waged in the open, she did not await the unlikely opportunity of some distant tête-à-tête to emphasize her intention. Before she mounted she managed to allow the glowingly embarrassed man to hold her two hands; and she told him whisperingly:

  ‘I would to God that you had come a few years earlier into the life of Sanchia Murray!’ She sighed and squeezed his hands. Then she smiled a wan little smile. ‘You have come to mean so much, oh, so much, in my poor little lonely existence.’

  She mounted and rode away, waving her farewell, looking only at Longstreet. They all saw how, before she reached the bend in the trail, her handkerchief went to her eyes. Longstreet appeared genuinely worried.

  ‘I am sorry for that little woman,’ he said thoughtfully.

  ‘She’s making love at you, papa,’ laughed Helen, as though the matter were of no moment but delightfully ridiculous. ‘Fancy Sanchia Murray falling in love with dear old pops!’

  He looked at her severely.

  ‘You should not speak lightly of such matters, my dear,’ he chided her. ‘Mind you, I am not admitting that there is any ground for such a suspicion as you express.’

  ‘But if there were ground for it?’

  ‘Is there any reason why a pretty woman should not fall in love?’ he asked her stiffly. ‘Further, is your father such a man that no woman could care for him?’ He stalked away.

  Helen gasped after him and was speechless.

  In due course of time Howard recalled that there was a man named Roberts, a teamster in Sanchia’s Town; and that on the Desert Valley ranch there were mules which should be sold; and that, though there was a golden paradise here in Bear Valley, there remained a workaday world outside the charmed confines where time was of the essence. He made Helen understand that if he were to make good in his acquisition of the cattle range he must be down there among his men and his herds during every working hour of the day, but that the nights were his own. He was to come up every night that it was possible. She was to guard her father from Sanchia during the days; he was to seek to be on hand if ever the golden news broke again; they two were to check the adventuress’ move. And Helen was to keep the spurs and bridle; she was to take Danny not as a loan but as a gift, of which only they were to know; she was to induce her father to ride down to the lower valley to watch the round-up. Then, lingeringly and with many a backward look, Alan Howard went on his way.

  He found his man and, while Howard sat sideways in the saddle and Roberts whittled at a stick, they drove their bargain. The mules were sold for two thousand dollars, if they were as Roberts remembered them and as Howard represented them; Roberts would ride down the next day for them and would pay six hundred dollars as the first payment and thereafter not less than two hundred a month. Howard was satisfied. He would have a little more cash for running expenses or for the purchase of more stock if he could find another chance like that when he had bought the calves from Tony Vaca in French Valley.

  The week rolled by, bursting with details requiring quick attention. Danny was found, roped, saddled and bridled. Longstreet rode him, delighting in the pony’s high spirits, more delighted to see how he ‘came around.’ Gentled sufficiently and reminded that he was no longer a free agent to fling up his heels at the wind and race recklessly where he would, but that he was man’s friend and servant, Danny was presented to Helen. He ate sugar that she gave him; he returned bit by bit the impulsive love which she granted him outright. In his new trappings, to which Howard had added a saddle from his own stables, Danny accepted his new honours like a thoroughbred.

  Helen rode him the day she and her father came down from the hills for the round-up. Longstreet out-Romaned the Romans: his spurs were the biggest, his yell when he circled a herd was the most piercing, his borrowed chaps struck the eye from afar; his hat was a Stetson and amazingly tall. Now and then, when his horse swerved sharply to head off a racing steer, he came near falling. Once he did fall and rolled wildly through the dust of a corral; but he only continued his occupation with the more vim and was heard to shout over and over: ‘It’s the life, boys! It’s the life!’

  Helen, often riding at Howard’s side, saw how the herds were brought down from the hills; how they were counted and graded; how the select were driven into the fattest pasture lands. She watched the branding of those few head that had escaped other round-ups. At first she cringed back as she saw the hot iron and the smoke rising from the hides and smelled the scorching hair and flesh. But she came to understand the necessity and further she saw that little pain was inflicted, that the victims though they struggled and bellowed were soon grazing quietly with their fellows. And at last the time had come when she had learned to ride. That was the supreme joy of the moment.

  To Howard, no less, was it a joy. He watched her race, with whip whirling over her head, to cut off the lunging attempt at escape made over and over by the wilder cattle; he saw that with every hour her seat in the saddle became more secure; he read that she was not afraid. He looked forward to long rides, just the two of them, across the billowing sweep of Desert Valley, in the golden time when the title rested secure with them, in the time when at last all dreams came true.

  Of any world outside their own happy valley they knew little. Sanchia had pitched her tent near the Longstreet camp, but these days she was left very much to herself. They did not pass through Sanchia’s Town on their way back and forth and knew and cared nothing of its activities. The Longstreets, keenly interested in all that went forward on the ranch, were persuaded to accept Howard’s hospitality for three days and nights. They rode early and late; there were the brief before-bedtime talks together; Helen saw the bluebird feather and laughed about it; she claimed it, but was in the end, after a deal of bantering argument, content to leave it where it was. She allowed Howard to talk what she branded as foolishness about certain alterations in the old house which he prophesied would be necessary before long; she grew into the custom of speaking of the room which she had occupied on her first visit to the ranch as ‘my room.’ She was very happy and forgot that her father was a troublesome childlike parent who fancied that he knew how to discover gold mines. What did mere gold amount to, anyway?

  Then came the drive. The pick of the herd were to be moved slowly down to San Juan. Howard had communicated with his former buyers, and they were eager for more of his stock and at the former price. He wanted Helen and her father to come with them. But Longstreet shook his head smilingly.

  ‘I’m two-thirds cowboy now,’ he chuckled. ‘A few more days of this and I’ll be coming to you and asking for a job! It won’t do, my boy. It won’t do. Especially at a time like this. You make your drive and I’ll make mine. And I’ll bet you a new twenty-dollar hat that when you get back I’ll have found gold again.’

  So the Longstreets went back to Bear Valley and the drive began. Howard started his cattle moving at three o’clock the next morning. And almost from the begi
nning, although everything started auspiciously, he encountered hardship. At ten o’clock that morning he came upon a dead calf, its throat torn out as though by a ravening monster wolf; a section of the flesh seemed to have been removed by a sharp knife. That was nothing; to him it merely spelled Kish Taka, and Kish Taka was his friend and welcome. But as he rode on, reflecting, he read more in the omen. If Kish Taka were here, in the hills, then somewhere near by Jim Courtot had passed. Then shortly after noon he came upon what he knew must be the work of Jim Courtot. And he surmised with rising anger that recently Courtot had seen Sanchia and that again Courtot was Sanchia’s right hand. Here was a little hollow; on two sides were steep banks. Along these banks lay four big steers, dead, a rifle bullet through each one. Already the buzzards were gathering.

  Dave Terril came upon him and found him bending over one of the big stiffening bodies. Howard’s face was white, the deadly hue of rage.

  ‘Who done that for you, Al?’ muttered Dave wonderingly.

  ‘Jim Courtot!’

  ‘Why don’t you go get him, Al?’

  ‘Why don’t I?’ said Howard dully.

  Why did he not lay a fierce hand upon the wind that danced over the hills? It was no more elusive than Jim Courtot. Why did not Kish Taka, the eternally vigilant, come up with his prey? Nowhere in the world is there so baffling a quarry as a hunted man. Jim Courtot struck and vanished; he played the waiting game; he would give his right hand for Howard’s death, his left hand for the Indian’s. But in his heart, his visions his own, he was afraid.

  Before they came to Sunderberg’s Meadows, where it had been arranged that the herd was to pasture that night, they saw the wide-flung grey films of smoke. Accident or hatred had fired the dry grass; flames danced and sang their thin songs of burning destruction; the wide fields were already black. Howard had bought and paid for the pasture land; the loss was his, not Sunderberg’s; Courtot, if Courtot it was, or perhaps Monte Devine or Ed True, had been before him. Sanchia’s venom—for, be the hand of the agent whose it may, he recalled always the look in Sanchia’s eyes and the threat from Sanchia’s lips—seemed to travel with him and in front of him. His cattle browsed that night on a rocky, almost grassless ground, making the best of what poor shrub growths they could lay their dry tongues to. There was no water; the pools lay in the heart of a smouldering tract too hot to drive across.