by Zane Grey
“Thanks,” he said. “It was lucky.… Sure our luck has changed.”
“Don’t forget some warm water,” added Lucy practically, calling after him.
Thus burdened, Pan hurried back to Louise’s wagon and deposited the basin on the seat, and the bundle beside her. “There you are, pioneer girl,” he said cheerily, and with swift hands he let down the canvas curtains of the wagon, shutting her in.
“Come on, Blink,” he called to the cowboy watching from behind the trees. “Let’s wrangle the teams.”
“Gus an’ your dad are comin’ in with them now,” replied Blinky joining him and presently, when they got away from the wagon he whispered: “How aboot it?”
“Blink, I swear it’ll go through fine,” declared Pan earnestly. “She knows she’s your wife—that I got her drunk and forced her into it. She doesn’t remember. I’m hoping she’ll not remember anything, but even if she does I’ll fix it.”
“Shore—you’re Panhandle Smith—all right,” returned Blinky unsteadily.
At this juncture they were called to breakfast. Pan needed only one glance at his father, his mother and Lucy to gather that bewilderment and worry had vanished. They knew that he knew. It seemed to Pan that the bursting sun knew the dark world had been transformed to a shining one. Yet he played with his happiness like a cat with a mouse.
“Mrs. Smith,” begged Blinky presently, “please fix me up some breakfast fer Louise. She’s better this mawnin’ an’ I reckon in a day or so will be helpin’ you an’ Lucy.”
Pan set himself some camp tasks for the moment, and annoyed his mother and embarrassed Lucy by plunging into duties they considered theirs.
“Mother, don’t you and Lucy realize we are going to a far country?” he queried. “We must rustle.… There’s the open road. Ho for Siccane—for sunny Arizonaland!”
When he presented himself before Louise he scarcely recognized her in the prim, comely change of apparel. The atmosphere of the Yellow Mine had vanished. She had managed to eat some breakfast. Blinky discreetly found a task that took him away.
“We’ve a little time to talk now, Louie,” said Pan. “They’ll be packing the wagons.”
He led her under the cottonwoods to the pasture fence where he found a seat for her.
“Pan, why did you do this thing?” she asked.
That was the very question he had hoped she would put first.
“Because my friend loves you and you told me you tried to keep him away from you—that if you didn’t you would like him too well,” answered Pan. “Blink had never been any good in the past. Just a wild reckless hard-drinking cowpuncher. But his heart was big. Then you were going straight to hell. You’d have been knifed or shot in some brawl, or have killed yourself with drink. A few more months of the Yellow Mine would have been your end.… Well, I thought, here’s an opportunity to make a man out of my friend, and save the soul of a girl who hasn’t had a chance. I never hesitated about taking advantage of you. That was only a means to an end. So I planned it and did it.”
“But, Pan—how impossible!” she replied brokenly.
“Why, I’d like to know?”
“I am—degraded.”
“No! I’ve a different notion. You were not when you were sober. But even so, that is past.”
“Blink might have been what you said, but still I—I’m no fit wife for him.”
“You can be,” went on Pan with strong feeling. “Just blot out the past. Begin now. Blink will make a good man, a successful rancher. He has money enough to start with. He’ll never drink again. No matter what you call yourself, you’re the only girl he ever loved. You’re the only one who can make him earnest. Blink saw as well as I the pity of it—your miserable existence there in that gambling hell.”
“Pan, you talk—like—oh, you make me think of what might have been,” she cried. “But I’ll not consent. I’ll not give men the right to point their fingers at Blink.… I’ll run away—or—or kill myself.”
“Louie, that is silly talk,” censured Pan sharply. “Don’t make me regret my interest in you—my affection. You are judging this thing with your mind on the past. You’re not considering the rough wild raw life we cowboys have lived. We must make way for the pioneers and become pioneers ourselves. In fifty years, when the West is settled, who will ever recall such as you and Blinky? These are hard days. You can do as much for the future of the West as any woman, Louise Melliss!”
“Pan, I understand—I—I could—I know, if I dared to bury it all. But I want to play square.”
“Could you come to love my friend—in time—I mean? That’s the great thing.”
“I believe I love him now,” she murmured. “That’s why I can’t risk it.—Someone who knew me would turn up. To disgrace my husband—and—and children, if I had any.”
“Not one chance in a million,” flashed Pan, feeling that she could not withstand him. “We’re going far—into another country.… Besides, everyone in Marco believes you lost your life in the fire.”
“What—fire?”
“The Yellow Mine burned. It must have caught—when we shot out the lamps… Dick Hardman was burned, and a girl they took for you.”
Suddenly Louise leaped up, ghastly pale.
“I remember now… Blink came to my room,” she said hoarsely. “I wouldn’t let him in. Then you came…oh, I remember now. I let you in when all the time Dick Hardman was hiding in my closet.”
“I knew you had him hidden,” rejoined Pan.
“You meant to kill him! The yellow dog!… He came to me when I was sick in bed. He begged me to hide him. And I did.… Then you talked to me, as you’re talking now… Blink came with the whisky. Oh, I see it all now!”
“Sure. And Louie—what did I tell you about Hardman?” returned Pan, sure of his ground now and stern in his forcefulness.
“I don’t remember.”
“You told me Hardman said he’d marry you, and that some day when you were drunk you’d do it.”
“Yes, he said that, and I might have agreed, but I don’t remember telling you.”
“Well, you did. And then I told you Hardman had forced my sweetheart, Lucy, to marry him.”
“What? He did that?”
“Reckon he did. I got there too late. But I drove him off to get a gun. Then he hid there with you.”
“So that was why?” she pondered, as if trying to penetrate the cloudiness of her mind. “Something comes like a horrible dream.”
“Sure,” he hurried on. “Let me get it over.… I told you he couldn’t marry you when he already had a wife. You went crazy then. You betrayed Hardman.… He came rushing out of the closet. Pretty nasty, he was, Louie…well, I left him lying in the hall! I grabbed you—wrapped you in a blanket—and ran out. Blink was waiting. He shot out the lights in the saloon. We got away. The place burned up, with some girl they took for you—and Hardman—”
“My God! Burned alive?”
“No,” replied Pan hoarsely.
“Pan—you—you avenged me—and your Lucy—you?—” she whispered, clinging to him.
“Hush! Don’t speak it! Don’t ever think it again,” he said sternly. “That’s our secret. Rumor has it he fled from me to hide with you, and you were both burned up.”
“But Lucy—your mother!” she cried.
“They know nothing except that you’re my friend’s wife—that you’ve been ill,” he replied. “They’re all kindness and sympathy. Dad never saw you, and Gus will keep his mouth shut. Play your part now, Louise. You and Blink make up your past. Just a few simple statements.… Then bury the past forever.”
“Oh—I’m slipping—slipping—” she whispered, bursting into tears. “Help me—back to the wagon.”
She walked a few rods with Pan’s arm supporting her. Then she collapsed. He had to carry her to the wagon, where he deposited her, sobbing and limp behind the canvas curtains. Pan pitied her with all his heart, yet he was glad indeed she had broken down. It had been eas
ier than he had anticipated.
Then he espied Blinky coming in manifest concern.
“Pard,” said Pan in his ear, “you’ve a pat hand. Play it for all you’re worth.”
The wagons rolled down the long winding open road.
For the shortest, fullest eight hours Pan had ever experienced he matched his wits against the wild horses that he and Gus had to drive. It was a down grade and the wagons rolled thirty miles before Pan picked a camp site in the mouth of a little grassy canyon where the wild horses could be corralled. Jack rabbits, deer, coyotes ranged away from the noisy invasion of their solitude. It was wild country. Marco was distant forty miles up the sweeping ridges—far behind—gone into the past.
As the wagons rolled one by one up to the camping place. Pan observed that Blinky, the last to arrive, had a companion on the driver’s seat beside him. Pan waved a glad hand. It was Louise who waved in return. Wind and sun had warmed the pallor out of her face.
Four days on the way to Siccane! The wild horses were no longer wild. The travelers to the far country had become like one big family. They all had their tasks. Even Bobby sat on his father’s knee and drove the team down the open road toward the homestead where he was to grow into a pioneer lad.
So far Pan had carried on his pretense of aloofness from Lucy, apparently blind to the wondering appeal in her eyes. Long ago he had forgiven her. Yet he waited, divining surely that some day or night when an opportune moment came, she would voice the question in her eyes. He thought he could hold out longer than she could.
That very evening when he went to fetch water she waylaid him, surprised him.
“Panhandle Smith, you are killing me!” she said, with great eyes of accusation.
“How so?” he asked weakly.
“You know,” she retorted. “And I won’t stand it longer.”
“What is it you won’t stand?” teased Pan.
But suddenly Lucy broke down. “Don’t. Don’t keep it up,” she cried desperately. “I know it was a terrible thing to do. But I told you why.… I couldn’t have gone away with him—after I’d seen you.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that. I was mad enough to think you might—even care for him.”
“Pan, I love only you. All my life it’s been only you.”
“Lucy!… Tomorrow we ride into Green River. Will you marry me there?”
“Yes—if you—love me,” she whispered, going close to him.
Pan dropped both of the buckets, splashing water everywhere.
Arizonaland!
It was not only a far country attained, but another, strange and beautiful. Siccane lay a white and green dot far over the purple sage. The golden-walled mesas stood up, black fringed against the blue. In the bold notches burned the red of autumn foliage. Valleys spread between the tablelands. There was room for a hundred homesteads. Pan’s keen eye sighted only a few and they were farther on, green squares in the gray. Down toward Siccane cattle made tiny specks on the vast expanse. Square miles of bleached grass contended with the surrounding slopes of sage, sweeping with slow graceful rise up to the bases of the walls and mesas.
“Water! Grass! No fences!” exclaimed Pan’s father, with a glad note of renewed youth.
“Dad. Lucy. Look,” replied Pan, pointing across the valley. “See that first big notch in the wall? Thick with bright green? There’s water. And see the open canyon with the cedars scattered? What a place for a ranch! It has been waiting for us all these years… That’s where we’ll homestead.”
“Wal, pard, an’ you, Louie—look over heah aways,” drawled Blinky, with long arm outstretched. “See the red circle wall, with the brook shinin’ down like a ribbon. Lookin’ to the south! Warm in winter—cool in summer. Shore’s I was born in the West thet’s the homestead fer me.”
The wagons rolled on behind wild horses that needed little driving. Down the long winding open road across the valley! And so on into the rich grass where no wheel track showed—on into the sage toward the lonely beckoning walls.
THE WILD-HORSE HUNTER (1933)
I
Three wild-horse hunters made camp one night beside a little stream in the Sevier Valley, five hundred miles, as a crow flies, from Bostil’s Ford.
These hunters had a poor outfit, excepting, of course, their horses. They were young men, rangy in build, lean and hard from life in the saddle, bronzed like Indians, still-faced, and keen-eyed. Two of them appeared to be tired out, and lagged at the camp-fire duties. When the meager meal was prepared they sat, cross-legged, before a ragged tarpaulin, eating and drinking in silence.
The sky in the west was rosy, slowly darkening. The valley floor billowed away, ridged and cut, growing gray and purple and dark. Walls of stone, pink with the last rays of the setting sun, inclosed the valley, stretching away toward a long, low, black mountain range.
The place was wild, beautiful, open, with something nameless that made the desert different from any other country. It was, perhaps, a loneliness of vast stretches of valley and stone, clear to the eye, even after sunset. That black mountain range, which looked close enough to ride to before dark, was a hundred miles distant.
The shades of night fell swiftly, and it was dark by the time the hunters finished the meal. Then the camp fire had burned low. One of the three dragged branches of dead cedars and replenished the fire. Quickly it flared up, with the white flame and crackle characteristic of dry cedar. The night wind had risen, moaning through the gnarled, stunted cedars near by, and it blew the fragrant wood smoke into the faces of the two hunters, who seemed too tired to move.
“I reckon a pipe would help me make up my mind,” said one.
“Wal, Bill,” replied the other, dryly, “your mind’s made up, else you’d not say smoke.”
“Why?”
“Because there ain’t three pipefuls of thet precious tobacco left.”
“Thet’s one apiece, then.… Lin, come an’ smoke the last pipe with us.”
The tallest of the three, he who had brought the firewood, stood in the bright light of the blaze. He looked the born rider, light, lithe, powerful.
“Sure, I’ll smoke,” he replied.
Then, presently, he accepted the pipe tendered him, and, sitting down beside the fire, he composed himself to the enjoyment which his companions evidently considered worthy of a decision they had reached.
“So this smokin’ means you both want to turn back?” queried Lin, his sharp gaze glancing darkly bright in the glow of the fire.
“Yep, we’ll turn back. An’, Gee! the relief I feel!” replied one.
“We’ve been long comin’ to it, Lin, an’ thet was for your sake,” replied the other.
Lin slowly pulled at his pipe and blew out the smoke as if reluctant to part with it. “Let’s go on,” he said, quietly.
“No. I’ve had all I want of chasin’ thet wild stallion,” returned Bill, shortly.
The other spread wide his hands and bent an expostulating look upon the one called Lin. “We’re two hundred miles out,” he said. “There’s only a little flour left in the bag. No coffee! Only a little salt! All the hosses except your big Nagger are played out. We’re already in strange country. An’ you know what we’ve heerd of this an’ all to the south. It’s all cañons, an’ somewheres down there is thet awful cañon none of our people ever seen. But we’ve heerd of it. An awful cut-up country.”
He finished with a conviction that no one could say a word against the common sense of his argument. Lin was silent, as if impressed.
Bill raised a strong, lean, brown hand in a forcible gesture. “We can’t ketch Wildfire!”
That seemed to him, evidently, a more convincing argument than his comrade’s.
“Bill is sure right, if I’m wrong, which I ain’t,” went on the other. “Lin, we’ve trailed thet wild stallion for six weeks. Thet’s the longest chase he ever had. He’s left his old range. He’s cut out his band, an’ left them, one by one. We’ve tried every trick we know on him. A
n’ he’s too smart for us. There’s a hoss! Why, Lin, we’re all but gone to the dogs chasin’ Wildfire. An’ now I’m done, an’ I’m glad of it.”
There was another short silence, which presently Bill opened his lips to break.
“Lin, it makes me sick to quit. I ain’t denyin’ thet for a long time I’ve had hopes of ketchin’ Wildfire. He’s the grandest hoss I ever laid eyes on. I reckon no man, onless he was an Arab, ever seen as good a one. But now thet’s neither here nor there.… We’ve got to hit the back trail.”
“Boys, I reckon I’ll stick to Wildfire’s tracks,” said Lin, in the same quiet tone.
Bill swore at him, and the other hunter grew excited and concerned.
“Lin Slone, are you gone plumb crazy over thet red hoss?”
“I—reckon,” replied Slone. The working of his throat as he swallowed could be plainly seen by his companions.
Bill looked at his ally as if to confirm some sudden understanding between them. They took Slone’s attitude gravely and they wagged their heads doubtfully.… It was significant of the nature of riders that they accepted his attitude and had consideration for his feelings. For them the situation subtly changed. For weeks they had been three wild-horse wranglers on a hard chase after a valuable stallion. They had failed to get even close to him. They had gone to the limit of their endurance and of the outfit, and it was time to turn back. But Slone had conceived that strange and rare longing for a horse—a passion understood, if not shared, by all riders. And they knew that he would catch Wildfire or die in the attempt. From that moment their attitude toward Slone changed as subtly as had come the knowledge of his feeling. The gravity and gloom left their faces. It seemed they might have regretted what they had said about the futility of catching Wildfire. They did not want Slone to see or feel the hopelessness of his task.
“I tell you, Lin,” said Bill, “your hoss Nagger’s as good as when we started.”
“Aw, he’s better,” vouchsafed the other rider. “Nagger needed to lose some weight. Lin, have you got an extra set of shoes for him?”
