by Zane Grey
“Aw, hell! Thet’s different. Every new rancher drives in a few unbranded calves an’ keeps them. But stealin’ stock—thet’s different. An’ I’d as soon suspect my own son of rustlin’ as Wils Moore.”
Bellounds spoke with a sincere and frank ardor of defense for a young man once employed by him and known to be honest. The significance of the comparison he used had not struck him. His was the epitome of a successful rancher, sure in his opinions, speaking proudly and unreflectingly of his own son, and being just to another man.
Wade bowed and backed out of the door. “Sure that’s what I’d reckon you’d say, Bellounds.… I’ll drop in on you if I find any sign in the woods. Good night.”
Columbine went with him to the end of the porch, as she had used to go before the shadow had settled over the lives of the Bellounds.
“Ben, you’re up to something,” she whispered, seizing him with hands that shook.
“Sure. But don’t you worry,” he whispered back.
“Do they hint that Wilson is a rustler?” she asked, intensely.
“Somebody did, Collie.”
“How vile! Who? Who?” she demanded, and her face gleamed white.
“Hush, lass! You’re all a-tremble,” he returned, warily, and he held her hands.
“Ben, they’re pressing me hard to set another wedding-day. Dad is angry with me now. Jack has begun again to demand. Oh, I’m afraid of him! He has no respect for me. He catches at me with hands like claws. I have to jerk away.… Oh, Ben, Ben! dear friend, what on earth shall I do?”
“Don’t give in. Fight Jack! Tell the old man you must have time. Watch your chance when Jack is away an’ ride up the Buffalo Park trail an’ look for me.”
Wade had to release his hands from her clasp and urge her gently back. How pale and tragic her face gleamed!
* * * *
Wade took his horses, his outfit, and the dog Fox, and made his abode with Wilson Moore. The cowboy hailed Wade’s coming with joy and pestered him with endless questions.
From that day Wade haunted the hills above White Slides, early and late, alone with his thoughts, his plans, more and more feeling the suspense of happenings to come. It was on a June day when Jack Bellounds rode to Kremmling that Wade met Columbine on the Buffalo Park trail. She needed to see him, to find comfort and strength. Wade far exceeded his own confidence in his effort to uphold her. Columbine was in a strange state, not of vacillation between two courses, but of a standstill, as if her will had become obstructed and waited for some force to upset the hindrance. She did not inquire as to the welfare of Wilson Moore, and Wade vouchsafed no word of him. But she importuned the hunter to see her every day or no more at all. And Wade answered her appeal and her need by assuring her that he would see her, come what might. So she was to risk more frequent rides.
During the second week of June Wade rode up to visit the prospector, Lewis, and learned that which complicated the matter of the rustlers. Lewis had been suspicious, and active on his own account. According to the best of his evidence and judgment there had been a gang of rough men come of late to Gore Peak, where they presumably were prospecting. This gang was composed of strangers to Lewis. They had ridden to his cabin, bought and borrowed of him, and, during his absence, had stolen from him. He believed they were in hiding, probably being guilty of some depredation in another locality. They gave both Kremmling and Elgeria a wide berth. On the other hand, the Smith gang from Elgeria rode to and fro, like ranchers searching for lost horses. There were only three in this gang, including Smith. Lewis had seen these men driving unbranded stock. And lastly, Lewis casually imparted the information, highly interesting to Wade, that he had seen Jack Bellounds riding through the forest. The prospector did not in the least, however, connect the appearance of the son of Bellounds with the other facts so peculiarly interesting to Wade. Cowboys and hunters rode trails across the range, and though they did so rather infrequently, there was nothing unusual about encountering them.
Wade remained all night with Lewis, and next morning rode six miles along the divide, and then down into a valley, where at length he found a cabin described by the prospector. It was well hidden in the edge of the forest, where a spring gushed from under a low cliff. But for water and horse tracks Wade would not have found it easily. Rifle in hand, and on foot, he slipped around in the woods, as a hunter might have, to stalk drinking deer. There were no smoke, no noise, no horses anywhere round the cabin, and after watching awhile Wade went forward to look at it. It was an old ramshackle hunter’s or prospector’s cabin, with dirt floor, a crumbling fireplace and chimney, and a bed platform made of boughs. Including the door, it had three apertures, and the two smaller ones, serving as windows, looked as if they had been intended for port-holes as well. The inside of the cabin was large and unusually well lighted, owing to the windows and to the open chinks between the logs. Wade saw a deck of cards lying bent and scattered in one corner, as if a violent hand had flung them against the wall. Strange that Wade’s memory returned a vivid picture of Jack Bellounds in just that act of violence! The only other thing around the place which earned scrutiny from Wade was a number of horseshoe tracks outside, with the left front shoe track familiar to him. He examined the clearest imprints very carefully. If they had not been put there by Wilson Moore’s white mustang, Spottie, then they had been made by a horse with a strangely similar hoof and shoe. Spottie had a hoof malformed, somewhat in the shape of a triangle, and the iron shoe to fit it always had to be bent, so that the curve was sharp and the ends closer together than those of his other shoes.
Wade rode down to White Slides that day, and at the evening meal he casually asked Moore if he had been riding Spottie of late.
“Sure. What other horse could I ride? Do you think I’m up to trying one of those broncs?” asked Moore, in derision.
“Reckon you haven’t been leavin’ any tracks up Buffalo Park way?”
The cowboy slammed down his knife. “Say, Wade, are you growing dotty? Good Lord! if I’d ridden that far—if I was able to do it—wouldn’t you hear me yell?”
“Reckon so, come to think of it. I just saw a track like Spottie’s, made two days ago.”
“Well, it wasn’t his, you can gamble on that,” returned the cowboy.
* * * *
Wade spent four days hiding in an aspen grove, on top of one of the highest foothills above White Slides Ranch. There he lay at ease, like an Indian, calm and somber, watching the trails below, waiting for what he knew was to come.
On the fifth morning he was at his post at sunrise. A casual remark of one of the new cowboys the night before accounted for the early hour of Wade’s reconnoiter. The dawn was fresh and cool, with sweet odor of sage on the air; the jays were squalling their annoyance at this early disturber of their grove; the east was rosy above the black range and soon glowed with gold and then changed to fire. The sun had risen. All the mountain world of black range and gray hill and green valley, with its shining stream, was transformed as if by magic color. Wade sat down with his back to an aspen-tree, his gaze down upon the ranch-house and the corrals. A lazy column of blue smoke curled up toward the sky, to be lost there. The burros were braying, the calves were bawling, the colts were whistling. One of the hounds bayed full and clear.
The scene was pastoral and beautiful. Wade saw it clearly and whole. Peace and plenty, a happy rancher’s home, the joy of the dawn and the birth of summer, the rewards of toil—all seemed significant there. But Wade pondered on how pregnant with life that scene was—nature in its simplicity and freedom and hidden cruelty, and the existence of people, blindly hating, loving, sacrificing, mostly serving some noble aim, and yet with baseness among them, the lees with the wine, evil intermixed with good.
By and by the cowboys appeared on their spring mustangs, and in twos and threes they rode off in different directions. But none rode Wade’s way. The sun rose higher, and there was warmth in the air. Bees began to hum by Wade, and fluttering moths winged uncertai
n flight over him.
At the end of another hour Jack Bellounds came out of the house, gazed around him, and then stalked to the barn where he kept his horses. For a little while he was not in sight; then he reappeared, mounted on a white horse, and he rode into the pasture, and across that to the hay-field, and along the edge of this to the slope of the hill. Here he climbed to a small clump of aspens. This grove was not so far from Wilson Moore’s cabin; in fact, it marked the boundary-line between the rancher’s range and the acres that Moore had acquired. Jack vanished from sight here, but not before Wade had made sure he was dismounting.
“Reckon he kept to that grassy ground for a reason of his own—and plainer to me than any tracks,” soliloquized Wade, as he strained his eyes. At length Bellounds came out of the grove, and led his horse round to where Wade knew there was a trail leading to and from Moore’s cabin. At this point Jack mounted and rode west. Contrary to his usual custom, which was to ride hard and fast, he trotted the white horse as a cowboy might have done when going out on a day’s work. Wade had to change his position to watch Bellounds, and his somber gaze followed him across the hill, down the slope, along the willow-bordered brook, and so on to the opposite side of the great valley, where Jack began to climb in the direction of Buffalo Park.
After Bellounds had disappeared and had been gone for an hour, Wade went down on the other side of the hill, found his horse where he had left him, in a thicket, and, mounting, he rode around to strike the trail upon which Bellounds had ridden. The imprint of fresh horse tracks showed clear in the soft dust. And the left front track had been made by a shoe crudely triangular in shape, identical with that peculiar to Wilson Moore’s horse.
“Ahuh!” muttered Wade, in greeting to what he had expected to see. “Well, Buster Jack, it’s a plain trail now—damn your crooked soul!”
The hunter took up that trail, and he followed it into the woods. There he hesitated. Men who left crooked trails frequently ambushed them, and Bellounds had made no effort to conceal his tracks. Indeed, he had chosen the soft, open ground, even after he had left the trail to take to the grassy, wooded benches. There were cattle here, but not as many as on the more open aspen slopes across the valley. After deliberating a moment, Wade decided that he must risk being caught trailing Bellounds. But he would go slowly, trusting to eye and ear, to outwit this strangely acting foreman of White Slides Ranch.
To that end he dismounted and took the trail. Wade had not followed it far before he became convinced that Bellounds had been looking in the thickets for cattle; and he had not climbed another mile through the aspens and spruce before he discovered that Bellounds was driving cattle. Thereafter Wade proceeded more cautiously. If the long grass had not been wet he would have encountered great difficulty in trailing Bellounds. Evidence was clear now that he was hiding the tracks of the cattle by keeping to the grassy levels and slopes which, after the sun had dried them, would not leave a trace. There were stretches where even the keen-eyed hunter had to work to find the direction taken by Bellounds. But here and there, in other localities, there showed faint signs of cattle and horse tracks.
The morning passed, with Wade slowly climbing to the edge of the black timber. Then, in a hollow where a spring gushed forth, he saw the tracks of a few cattle that had halted to drink, and on top of these the tracks of a horse with a crooked left front shoe. The rider of this horse had dismounted. There was an imprint of a cowboy’s boot, and near it little sharp circles with dots in the center.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” ejaculated Wade. “I call that mighty cunnin’. Here they are—proofs as plain as writin’—that Wils Moore rustled Old Bill’s cattle!… Buster Jack, you’re not such a fool as I thought.… He’s made somethin’ like the end of Wils’s crutch. An’ knowin’ how Wils uses that every time he gets off his horse, why, the dirty pup carried his instrument with him an’ made these tracks!”
Wade left the trail then, and, leading his horse to a covert of spruce, he sat down to rest and think. Was there any reason for following Bellounds farther? It did not seem needful to take the risk of being discovered. The forest above was open. No doubt Bellounds would drive the cattle somewhere and turn them over to his accomplices.
“Buster Jack’s outbusted himself this time, sure,” soliloquized Wade. “He’s double-crossin’ his rustler friends, same as he is Moore. For he’s goin’ to blame this cattle-stealin’ onto Wils. An’ to do that he’s layin’ his tracks so he can follow them, or so any good trailer can. It doesn’t concern me so much now who’re his pards in this deal. Reckon it’s Smith an’ some of his gang.”
Suddenly it dawned upon Wade that Jack Bellounds was stealing cattle from his father. “Whew!” he whistled softly. “Awful hard on the old man! Who’s to tell him when all this comes out? Aw, I’d hate to do it. I wouldn’t. There’s some things even I’d not tell.”
Straightway this strange aspect of the case confronted Wade and gripped his soul. He seemed to feel himself changing inwardly, as if a gray, gloomy, sodden hand, as intangible as a ghostly dream, had taken him bodily from himself and was now leading him into shadows, into drear, lonely, dark solitude, where all was cold and bleak; and on and on over naked shingles that marked the world of tragedy. Here he must tell his tale, and as he plodded on his relentless leader forced him to tell his tale anew.
Wade recognized this as his black mood. It was a morbid dominance of the mind. He fought it as he would have fought a devil. And mastery still was his. But his brow was clammy and his heart was leaden when he had wrested that somber, mystic control from his will.
“Reckon I’d do well to take up this trail tomorrow an’ see where it leads,” he said, and as a gloomy man, burdened with thought, he retraced his way down the long slope, and over the benches, to the grassy slopes and aspen groves, and thus to the sage hills.
It was dark when he reached the cabin, and Moore had supper almost ready.
“Well, old-timer, you look fagged out,” called out the cowboy, cheerily. “Throw off your boots, wash up, and come and get it!”
“Pard Wils, I’m not reboundin’ as natural as I’d like. I reckon I’ve lived some years before I got here, an’ a lifetime since.”
“Wade, you have a queer look, lately,” observed Moore, shaking his head solemnly. “Why, I’ve seen a dying man look just like you—now—round the mouth—but most in the eyes!”
“Maybe the end of the long trail is White Slides Ranch,” replied Wade, sadly and dreamily, as if to himself.
“If Collie heard you say that!” exclaimed Moore, in anxious concern.
“Collie an’ you will hear me say a lot before long,” returned Wade. “But, as it’s calculated to make you happy—why, all’s well. I’m tired an’ hungry.”
Wade did not choose to sit round the fire that night, fearing to invite interrogation from his anxious friend, and for that matter from his other inquisitively morbid self.
Next morning, though Wade felt rested, and the sky was blue and full of fleecy clouds, and the melody of birds charmed his ear, and over all the June air seemed thick and beating with the invisible spirit he loved, he sensed the oppression, the nameless something that presaged catastrophe.
Therefore, when he looked out of the door to see Columbine swiftly riding up the trail, her fair hair flying and shining in the sunlight, he merely ejaculated, “Ahuh!”
“What’s that?” queried Moore, sharp to catch the inflection.
“Look out,” replied Wade, as he began to fill his pipe.
“Heavens! It’s Collie! Look at her riding! Uphill, too!”
Wade followed him outdoors. Columbine was not long in arriving at the cabin, and she threw the bridle and swung off in the same motion, landing with a light thud. Then she faced them, pale, resolute, stern, all the sweetness gone to bitter strength—another and a strange Columbine.
“I’ve not slept a wink!” she said. “And I came as soon as I could get away.”
Moore had no word for her, not e
ven a greeting. The look of her had stricken him. It could have only one meaning.
“Mornin’, lass,” said the hunter, and he took her hand. “I couldn’t tell you looked sleepy, for all you said. Let’s go into the cabin.”
So he led Columbine in, and Moore followed. The girl manifestly was in a high state of agitation, but she was neither trembling nor frightened nor sorrowful. Nor did she betray any lack of an unflinching and indomitable spirit. Wade read the truth of what she imagined was her doom in the white glow of her, in the matured lines of womanhood that had come since yesternight, in the sustained passion of her look.
“Ben! Wilson! The worst has come!” she announced.
Moore could not speak. Wade held Columbine’s hand in both of his.
“Worst! Now, Collie, that’s a terrible word. I’ve heard it many times. An’ all my life the worst’s been comin’. An’ it hasn’t come yet. You—only twenty years old—talkin’ wild—the worst has come!… Tell me your trouble now an’ I’ll tell you where you’re wrong.”
“Jack’s a thief—a cattle-thief!” rang Columbine’s voice, high and clear.
“Ahuh! Well, go on,” said Wade.
“Jack has taken money from rustlers—for cattle stolen from his father!”
Wade felt the lift of her passion, and he vibrated to it.
“Reckon that’s no news to me,” he replied.
Then she quivered up to a strong and passionate delivery of the thing that had transformed her.
“I’m going to marry Jack Bellounds!”
Wilson Moore leaped toward her with a cry, to be held back by Wade’s hand.
“Now, Collie,” he soothed, “tell us all about it.”
Columbine, still upheld by the strength of her spirit, related how she had ridden out the day before, early in the afternoon, in the hope of meeting Wade. She rode over the sage hills, along the edges of the aspen benches, everywhere that she might expect to meet or see the hunter, but as he did not appear, and as she was greatly desirous of talking with him, she went on up into the woods, following the line of the Buffalo Park trail, though keeping aside from it. She rode very slowly and cautiously, remembering Wade’s instructions. In this way she ascended the aspen benches, and the spruce-bordered ridges, and then the first rise of the black forest. Finally she had gone farther than ever before and farther than was wise.
