by Zane Grey
“Are you from Texas?” she asked.
“Yes, Miss, I am—an’ I reckon I don’t deserve it,” replied Wilson. It was certain that a vague shame attended his confession.
“Oh! I believed even a bandit from Texas would fight for a helpless girl!” she replied, in withering scorn of disappointment.
Jim Wilson dropped his head. If anyone there suspected a serious turn to Wilson’s attitude toward that situation it was the keen outlaw leader.
“Beasley, you’re courtin’ death,” he broke in.
“You bet you are!” added Bo, with a passion that made her listeners quiver. “You’ve put me at the mercy of a gang of outlaws! You may force my sister out of her home! But your day will come.’ Tom Carmichael will kill you.”
Beasley mounted his horse. Sullen, livid, furious, he sat shaking in the saddle, to glare down at the outlaw leader.
“Snake, thet’s no fault of mine the deal’s miscarried. I was square. I made my offer for the workin’ out of my plan. It ain’t been done. Now there’s hell to pay an’ I’m through.”
“Beasley, I reckon I couldn’t hold you to anythin’,” replied Anson, slowly. “But if you was square you ain’t square now. We’ve hung around an’ tried hard. My men are all sore. An’ we’re broke, with no outfit to speak of. Me an’ you never fell out before. But I reckon we might.”
“Do I owe you any money—accordin’ to the deal?” demanded Beasley.
“No, you don’t,” responded Anson, sharply.
“Then thet’s square. I wash my hands of the whole deal. Make Riggs pay up. He’s got money an’ he’s got plans. Go in with him.”
With that Beasley spurred his horse, wheeled and rode away. The outlaws gazed after him until he disappeared in the cedars.
“What’d you expect from a greaser?” queried Shady Jones.
“Anson, didn’t I say so?” added Burt.
The black-visaged Moze rolled his eyes like a mad bull and Jim Wilson studiously examined a stick he held in his hands. Riggs showed immense relief.
“Anson, stake me to some of your outfit an’ I’ll ride off with the girl,” he said, eagerly.
“Where’d you go now?” queried Anson, curiously.
Riggs appeared at a loss for a quick answer; his wits were no more equal to this predicament than his nerve.
“You’re no woodsman. An’ onless you’re plumb locoed you’d never risk goin’ near Pine or Show Down. There’ll be real trackers huntin’ your trail.”
The listening girl suddenly appealed to Wilson.
“Don’t let him take me off—alone—in the woods!” she faltered. That was the first indication of her weakening.
Jim Wilson broke into gruff reply. “I’m not bossin’ this gang.”
“But you’re a man!” she importuned.
“Riggs, you fetch along your precious firebrand an’ come with us,” said Anson, craftily. “I’m particular curious to see her brand you.”
“Snake, lemme take the girl back to Pine,” said Jim Wilson.
Anson swore his amaze.
“It’s sense,” continued Wilson. “We’ve shore got our own troubles, an’ keepin’ her ’ll only add to them. I’ve a hunch. Now you know I ain’t often givin’ to buckin’ your say-so. But this deal ain’t tastin’ good to me. Thet girl ought to be sent home.”
“But mebbe there’s somethin’ in it for us. Her sister ’d pay to git her back.”
“Wal, I shore hope you’ll recollect I offered—thet’s all,” concluded Wilson.
“Jim, if we wanted to git rid of her we’d let Riggs take her off,” remonstrated the outlaw leader. He was perturbed and undecided. Wilson worried him.
The long Texan veered around full faced. What subtle transformation in him!
“Like hell we would!” he said.
It could not have been the tone that caused Anson to quail. He might have been leader here, but he was not the greater man. His face clouded.
“Break camp,” he ordered.
Riggs had probably not heard that last exchange between Anson and Wilson, for he had walked a few rods aside to get his horse.
In a few moments when they started off, Burt, Jones, and Moze were in the lead driving the pack-horses, Anson rode next, the girl came between him and Riggs, and significantly, it seemed, Jim Wilson brought up the rear.
This start was made a little after the noon hour. They zigzagged up the slope, took to a deep ravine, and followed it up to where it headed in the level forest. From there travel was rapid, the pack-horses being driven at a jogtrot. Once when a troop of deer burst out of a thicket into a glade, to stand with ears high, young Burt halted the cavalcade. His well-aimed shot brought down a deer. Then the men rode on, leaving him behind to dress and pack the meat. The only other halt made was at the crossing of the first water, a clear, swift brook, where both horses and men drank thirstily. Here Burt caught up with his comrades.
They traversed glade and park, and wended a crooked trail through the deepening forest, and climbed, bench after bench, to higher ground, while the sun sloped to the westward, lower and redder. Sunset had gone, and twilight was momentarily brightening to the afterglow when Anson, breaking his silence of the afternoon, ordered a halt.
The place was wild, dismal, a shallow vale between dark slopes of spruce. Grass, fire-wood, and water were there in abundance. All the men were off, throwing saddles and packs, before the tired girl made an effort to get down. Riggs, observing her, made a not ungentle move to pull her off. She gave him a sounding slap with her gloved hand.
“Keep your paws to yourself,” she said. No evidence of exhaustion was there in her spirit.
Wilson had observed this by-play, but Anson had not.
“What come off?” he asked.
“Wal, the Honorable Gunman Riggs jest got caressed by the lady—as he was doin’ the elegant,” replied Moze, who stood nearest.
“Jim, was you watchin’?” queried Anson. His curiosity had held through the afternoon.
“He tried to yank her off an’ she biffed him,” replied Wilson.
“That Riggs is jest daffy or plain locoed,” said Snake, in an aside to Moze.
“Boss, you mean plain cussed. Mark my words, he’ll hoodoo this outfit. Jim was figgerin’ correct.”
“Hoodoo—” cursed Anson, under his breath.
Many hands made quick work. In a few moments a fire was burning brightly, water was boiling, pots were steaming, the odor of venison permeated the cool air. The girl had at last slipped off her saddle to the ground, where she sat while Riggs led the horse away. She sat there apparently forgotten, a pathetic droop to her head.
Wilson had taken an ax and was vigorously wielding it among the spruces. One by one they fell with swish and soft crash. Then the sliding ring of the ax told how he was slicing off the branches with long sweeps. Presently he appeared in the semi-darkness, dragging half-trimmed spruces behind him. He made several trips, the last of which was to stagger under a huge burden of spruce boughs. These he spread under a low, projecting branch of an aspen. Then he leaned the bushy spruces slantingly against this branch on both sides, quickly improvising a V-shaped shelter with narrow aperture in front. Next from one of the packs he took a blanket and threw that inside the shelter. Then, touching the girl on the shoulder, he whispered:
“When you’re ready, slip in there. An’ don’t lose no sleep by worryin’, fer I’ll be layin’ right here.”
He made a motion to indicate his length across the front of the narrow aperture.
“Oh, thank you! Maybe you really are a Texan,” she whispered back.
“Mebbe,” was his gloomy reply.
CHAPTER XXI
The girl refused to take food proffered her by Riggs, but she ate and drank a little that Wilson brought her, then she disappeared in the spruce lean-to.
Whatever loquacity and companionship had previously existed in Snake Anson’s gang were not manifest in this camp. Each man seemed preoccupied, as if po
ndering the dawn in his mind of an ill omen not clear to him yet and not yet dreamed of by his fellows. They all smoked. Then Moze and Shady played cards awhile by the light of the fire, but it was a dull game, in which either seldom spoke. Riggs sought his blanket first, and the fact was significant that he lay down some distance from the spruce shelter which contained Bo Rayner. Presently young Burt went off grumbling to his bed. And not long afterward the card-players did likewise.
Snake Anson and Jim Wilson were left brooding in silence beside the dying camp-fire.
The night was dark, with only a few stars showing. A fitful wind moaned unearthly through the spruce. An occasional thump of hoof sounded from the dark woods. No cry of wolf or coyote or cat gave reality to the wildness of forest-land.
By and by those men who had rolled in their blankets were breathing deep and slow in heavy slumber.
“Jim, I take it this hyar Riggs has queered our deal,” said Snake Anson, in low voice.
“I reckon,” replied Wilson.
“An’ I’m feared he’s queered this hyar White Mountain country fer us.”
“Shore I ain’t got so far as thet. What d’ ye mean, Snake?”
“Damme if I savvy,” was the gloomy reply. “I only know what was bad looks growin’ wuss. Last fall—an’ winter—an’ now it’s near April. We’ve got no outfit to make a long stand in the woods.… Jim, jest how strong is thet Beasley down in the settlements?”
“I’ve a hunch he ain’t half as strong as he bluffs.”
“Me, too. I got thet idee yesterday. He was scared of the kid—when she fired up an’ sent thet hot-shot about her cowboy sweetheart killin’ him. He’ll do it, Jim. I seen that Carmichael at Magdalena some years ago. Then he was only a youngster. But, whew! Mebbe he wasn’t bad after toyin’ with a little red liquor.”
“Shore. He was from Texas, she said.”
“Jim, I savvied your feelin’s was hurt—by thet talk about Texas—an’ when she up an’ asked you.”
Wilson had no rejoinder for this remark.
“Wal, Lord knows, I ain’t wonderin’. You wasn’t a hunted outlaw all your life. An’ neither was I.… Wilson, I never was keen on this girl deal—now, was I?”
“I reckon it’s honest to say no to thet,” replied Wilson. “But it’s done. Beasley’ll get plugged sooner or later. Thet won’t help us any. Chasin’ sheep-herders out of the country an’ stealin’ sheep—thet ain’t stealin’ gurls by a long sight. Beasley’ll blame that on us, an’ be greaser enough to send some of his men out to hunt us. For Pine an’ Show Down won’t stand thet long. There’s them Mormons. They’ll be hell when they wake up. Suppose Carmichael got thet hunter Dale an’ them hawk-eyed Beemans on our trail?”
“Wal, we’d cash in—quick,” replied Anson, gruffly.
“Then why didn’t you let me take the gurl back home?”
“Wal, come to think of thet, Jim, I’m sore, an’ I need money—an’ I knowed you’d never take a dollar from her sister. An’ I’ve made up my mind to git somethin’ out of her.”
“Snake, you’re no fool. How’ll you do thet same an’ do it quick?”
“’Ain’t reckoned it out yet.”
“Wal, you got aboot to-morrer an’ thet’s all,” returned Wilson, gloomily.
“Jim, what’s ailin’ you?”
“I’ll let you figger thet out.”
“Wal, somethin’ ails the whole gang,” declared Anson, savagely. “With them it’s nothin’ to eat—no whisky—no money to bet with—no tobacco!… But thet’s not what’s ailin’ you, Jim Wilson, nor me!”
“Wal, what is, then?” queried Wilson.
“With me it’s a strange feelin’ thet my day’s over on these ranges. I can’t explain, but it jest feels so. Somethin’ in the air. I don’t like them dark shadows out there under the spruces. Savvy?… An’ as fer you, Jim—wal, you allus was half decent, an’ my gang’s got too lowdown fer you.”
“Snake, did I ever fail you?”
“No, you never did. You’re the best pard I ever knowed. In the years we’ve rustled together we never had a contrary word till I let Beasley fill my ears with his promises. Thet’s my fault. But, Jim, it’s too late.”
“It mightn’t have been too late yesterday.”
“Mebbe not. But it is now, an’ I’ll hang on to the girl or git her worth in gold,” declared the outlaw, grimly.
“Snake, I’ve seen stronger gangs than yours come an’ go. Them Big Bend gangs in my country—them rustlers—they were all bad men. You have no likes of them gangs out heah. If they didn’t get wiped out by Rangers or cowboys, why they jest naturally wiped out themselves. Thet’s a law I recognize in relation to gangs like them. An’ as for yours—why, Anson, it wouldn’t hold water against one real gun-slinger.”
“A-huh’ Then if we ran up ag’in’ Carmichael or some such fellar—would you be suckin’ your finger like a baby?”
“Wal, I wasn’t takin’ count of myself. I was takin’ generalities.”
“Aw, what ’n hell are them?” asked Anson, disgustedly. “Jim, I know as well as you thet this hyar gang is hard put. We’re goin’ to be trailed an’ chased. We’ve got to hide—be on the go all the time—here an’ there—all over, in the roughest woods. An’ wait our chance to work south.”
“Shore. But, Snake, you ain’t takin’ no count of the feelin’s of the men—an’ of mine an’ yours.… I’ll bet you my hoss thet in a day or so this gang will go to pieces.”
“I’m feared you spoke what’s been crowdin’ to git in my mind,” replied Anson. Then he threw up his hands in a strange gesture of resignation. The outlaw was brave, but all men of the wilds recognized a force stronger than themselves. He sat there resembling a brooding snake with basilisk eyes upon the fire. At length he arose, and without another word to his comrade he walked wearily to where lay the dark, quiet forms of the sleepers.
Jim Wilson remained beside the flickering fire. He was reading something in the red embers, perhaps the past. Shadows were on his face, not all from the fading flames or the towering spruces. Ever and anon he raised his head to listen, not apparently that he expected any unusual sound, but as if involuntarily. Indeed, as Anson had said, there was something nameless in the air. The black forest breathed heavily, in fitful moans of wind. It had its secrets. The glances Wilson threw on all sides betrayed that any hunted man did not love the dark night, though it hid him. Wilson seemed fascinated by the life inclosed there by the black circle of spruce. He might have been reflecting on the strange reaction happening to every man in that group, since a girl had been brought among them. Nothing was clear, however; the forest kept its secret, as did the melancholy wind; the outlaws were sleeping like tired beasts, with their dark secrets locked in their hearts.
After a while Wilson put some sticks on the red embers, then pulled the end of a log over them. A blaze sputtered up, changing the dark circle and showing the sleepers with their set, shadowed faces upturned. Wilson gazed on all of them, a sardonic smile on his lips, and then his look fixed upon the sleeper apart from the others—Riggs. It might have been the false light of flame and shadow that created Wilson’s expression of dark and terrible hate. Or it might have been the truth, expressed in that lonely, unguarded hour, from the depths of a man born in the South—a man who by his inheritance of race had reverence for all womanhood—by whose strange, wild, outlawed bloody life of a gun-fighter he must hate with the deadliest hate this type that aped and mocked his fame.
It was a long gaze Wilson rested upon Riggs—as strange and secretive as the forest wind moaning down the great aisles—and when that dark gaze was withdrawn Wilson stalked away to make his bed with the stride of one ill whom spirit had liberated force.
He laid his saddle in front of the spruce shelter where the girl had entered, and his tarpaulin and blankets likewise and then wearily stretched his long length to rest.
The camp-fire blazed up, showing the exquisite green and brown-flecked festooning of the spruce
branches, symmetrical and perfect, yet so irregular, and then it burned out and died down, leaving all in the dim gray starlight. The horses were not moving around; the moan of night wind had grown fainter; the low hum of insects was dying away; even the tinkle of the brook had diminished. And that growth toward absolute silence continued, yet absolute silence was never attained. Life abided in the forest; only it had changed its form for the dark hours.
Anson’s gang did not bestir themselves at the usual early sunrise hour common to all woodsmen, hunters, or outlaws, to whom the break of day was welcome. These companions—Anson and Riggs included—might have hated to see the dawn come. It meant only another meager meal, then the weary packing and the long, long ride to nowhere in particular, and another meager meal—all toiled for without even the necessities of satisfactory living, and assuredly without the thrilling hopes that made their life significant, and certainly with a growing sense of approaching calamity.
The outlaw leader rose surly and cross-grained. He had to boot Burt to drive him out for the horses. Riggs followed him. Shady Jones did nothing except grumble. Wilson, by common consent, always made the sour-dough bread, and he was slow about it this morning. Anson and Moze did the rest of the work, without alacrity. The girl did not appear.
“Is she dead?” growled Anson.
“No, she ain’t,” replied Wilson, looking up. “She’s sleepin’. Let her sleep. She’d shore be a sight better off if she was daid.”
“A-huh! So would all of this hyar outfit,” was Anson’s response.
“Wal, Sna-ake, I shore reckon we’ll all be thet there soon,” drawled Wilson, in his familiar cool and irritating tone that said so much more than the content of the words.
Anson did not address the Texas member of his party again.
Burt rode bareback into camp, driving half the number of the horses; Riggs followed shortly with several more. But three were missed, one of them being Anson’s favorite. He would not have budged without that horse. During breakfast he growled about his lazy men, and after the meal tried to urge them off. Riggs went unwillingly. Burt refused to go at all.
