Silvermane

by Zane Grey

  “In the event she bears you children, you will not seek to raise them Gentiles?”

  “I’d leave that to Rebecca,” replied Monty sagely.

  “And the name Sam Hill, by which you are known, is a middle name?”

  “Shore, just a cowboy middle name.”

  So they were married. Monty feared they would never escape from the many friends and the curious crowd. But at last they were safely in the buckboard, speeding homeward. Monty sat in the front seat alone. Mrs. Keitch and Rebecca occupied the rear seat. The girl’s expression of pure happiness touched Monty and made him swear deeply in his throat that he would try to deserve her. Mrs. Keitch had evidently lived through one of the few great events of her life. What dominated her feelings, Monty could not divine, but she had the look of a woman who asked no more. Somewhere a monstrous injustice or wrong had been done the Widow Keitch. Recalling the bishop’s strange look at Rebecca—a look of hunger—Monty pondered deeply. The ride home, being downhill with a pleasant breeze off the desert and that wondrous panorama coloring and smoking as the sun set, seemed all too short for Monty. He drawled to Rebecca, when they reached the portal of Cañon Walls and halted under the gold-leaved cottonwoods: “Wal, wife, heah we are home. But we shore ought to have made thet honeymoon drive a longer one.”

  That supper time was the only one in which Monty ever saw Widow Keitch bow her head for the salvation of these young people so strongly brought together, for the home overflowing with milk and honey, for the hopeful future.

  * * * * *

  They had their fifth cutting of alfalfa in September, and it was in the nature of an event. The Tyler boys rode over to help, fetching Sue to visit Rebecca. And there was merrymaking. Rebecca would climb over mounds of alfalfa and slide down, screaming her delight. And once she said to Monty: “Young man, you should pray under every haystack you build.”

  “Ahuh. An’ what for should I pray, Rebecca?” he drawled.

  “To give thanks for all this sweet-smelling alfalfa has brought you.”

  The harvest gods smiled on Cañon Walls that autumn. Three wagons plied between Kanab and the ranch for weeks, hauling the produce that could not be used. While Monty went off with the Tyler boys for their hunt on the Buckskin, the womenfolk and their guests, and the hired hands, applied themselves industriously to the happiest work of the year—preserving all they could of the luscious yield of the season.

  Monty came back to a home such as had never been his even in dreams. Rebecca was incalculably changed, and so happy that Monty trembled as he listened to her sing, as he watched her work. The mystery never ended for him, not even when she whispered that they might expect a little visit from the angels next spring. But Monty’s last doubt faded, and he gave himself over to work, to his loving young wife, to waltz in the dusk under the gleaming walls, to a lonely pipe beside his little fireside.

  The winter passed, and spring came, doubling former activities. They had taken over the cañon three miles to the westward, which, once cleared of brush and cactus and rock, promised well. The problem had been water and Monty solved it. Good fortune had attended his every venture.

  Around the middle of May, when the cottonwoods were green and the peach trees pink, Monty began to grow restless about the coming event. It uplifted him one moment, appalled him the next. In that past that seemed so remote now he had snuffed out life. Young, fiery, grim Smoke Bellew! And by some incomprehensible working out of life he was about to become a father.

  On the 17th of June, some hours after breakfast, he was hurriedly summoned from the fields. His heart appeared to choke him.

  Mrs. Keitch met him at the porch. He scarcely knew her.

  “My son, do you remember this date?”

  “No,” replied Monty wonderingly.

  “Two years ago today you came to us. And Rebecca has just borne you a son.”

  “Aw…my Gawd! Have…how is she, lady?” he gasped.

  “Both well. We could work no more. It has all been a visitation of God. Come.”

  Some days later the important matter of christening the youngster came up.

  “Ma wants one of those jaw-breaking Biblical names,” said Rebecca, pouting. “But I like just plain Sam.”

  “Wal, it ain’t much of a handle for such a wonderful boy.”

  “It’s your name. I love it.”

  “Rebecca, you kinda forget Sam Hill was just a…a sort of a middle name. It ain’t my real name.”

  “Oh, yes, I remember now,” replied Rebecca, her great eyes lighting. “At Kanab…the bishop asked about Sam Hill. Mother had told him this was your nickname.”

  “Darlin’, I had another nickname once,” he said sadly.

  “So, my man of mysterious past, and what was that?”

  “They called me Smoke.”

  “How funny! Well, I may be Missus Monty Smoke Bellew, according to the law and the church, but you, my husband, will still always be Sam Hill.”

  “An’ the boy?” asked Monty, enraptured.

  “Is Sam Hill, too.”

  An anxious week passed, and then all seemed surely well with the new mother and the baby. Monty ceased to tiptoe around. He no longer awoke with a start in the dead of night.

  Then one Saturday as he came out on the wide front porch, at a hello from someone, he saw four riders. A bolt shot back from a closed door of his memory. Arizona riders! How well he knew the lean faces, the lithe shapes, the gun belts, the mettlesome horses!

  “Nix, fellers!” called the foremost rider as Monty came slowly out.

  An instinct and a muscular contraction passed over Monty. Then he realized he packed no gun and was glad. Old habit might have been too strong. His hawk eye saw lean hands drop from hips. A sickening, terrible despair followed his first reaction.

  “Howdy, Smoke,” drawled the foremost rider.

  “Wal, dog-gone! If it ain’t Jim Sneed,” returned Monty as he recognized the sheriff, and he descended the steps to walk out and offer his hand, quick to see the swift, penetrating gray eyes run over him.

  “Shore, it’s Jim. I reckoned you’d know me. Hoped you would, as I wasn’t keen about raisin’ your smoke.”

  “Ahuh. What you-all doin’ over heah, Jim?” asked Monty, with a glance at the three watchful riders.

  “Main thing I come over for was to buy stock for Strickland. An’ he said, if it wasn’t out of my way, I might fetch you back. Word come that you’ve been seen in Kanab. An’ when I made inquiry at White Sage, I shore knowed who Sam Hill was.”

  “I see. Kinda tough it happened to be Strickland. Dog-gone! My luck just couldn’t last.”

  “Smoke, you look uncommon fine,” said the sheriff, with another appraising glance. “You shore haven’t been drinkin’. An’ I seen first off you wasn’t totin’ no gun.”

  “That’s all past for me, Jim.”

  “Wal, I’ll be damned!” ejaculated Sneed, and fumbled for a cigarette. “Bellew, I just don’t savvy.”

  “Reckon you wouldn’t, Jim. I’d like to ask if my name ever got linked up with that Green Valley deal two years an’ more ago?”

  “No, it didn’t, Smoke, I’m glad to say. Your pards, Slim an’ Cuffy, pulled that. Slim was killed coverin’ Cuffy’s escape.”

  “Ahuh. So Slim…wal, wal…,” sighed Monty, and paused a moment to gaze into space.

  “Smoke, tell me your deal here,” said Sneed.

  “Shore. But would you mind comin’ indoors?”

  “Reckon I wouldn’t. But, Smoke, I’m still figgerin’ you the cowboy.”

  “Wal, you’re way off. Get down an’ come in.”

  Monty led the sheriff into Rebecca’s bedroom. She was awake, playing with the baby, and both looked lovely. “Jim, this is my wife an’ youngster,” said Monty feelingly. “An’ Rebecca, this heah is an old friend of mine, Jim Sneed, from Ari
zona.”

  That must have been a hard moment for the sheriff—the cordial welcome of the blushing wife, the smiling mite of a baby who hung onto his finger, the atmosphere there of unadulterated joy. At any rate, when they went out again to the porch, Sneed wiped his perspiring face and swore at Monty: “God damn it. Cowboy, have you gone an’ double-crossed that sweet girl?”

  Monty told him the few salient facts of his romance, and told it with trembling eagerness to be believed.

  “So you’ve turned Mormon?” ejaculated the sheriff.

  “No, but I’ll be true to these women. An’ one thing I ask, Sneed. Don’t let it be known in White Sage or anywhere over heah why I’m with you. I can send word to my wife I’ve got to go. Then afterward I’ll come back.”

  “Smoke, I wish I had a stiff drink,” replied Sneed. “But I reckon you haven’t any thin’.”

  “Only water an’ milk.”

  “Good Lawd! For an Arizonian!” Sneed halted at the head of the porch steps and shot out a big hand. His cold eyes had warmed. “Smoke, may I tell Strickland you’ll send him some money now an’ then…till thet debt is paid?”

  Monty stared and faltered. “Jim…you shore can.”

  “Fine,” returned the sheriff in a loud voice, and he strode down the steps to mount his horse. “Adiós, cowboy. Be good to thet little woman.”

  Monty could not speak. He watched the riders down the lane, out into the road, and through the looming cañon gates to the desert beyond. His heart was full. He thought of Slim and Cuffy, those young firebrand comrades of his range days. He could remember now without terror. He could live once more with his phantoms of the past. He could see lean, lithe Arizona riders come into Cañon Walls, if that happy event ever chanced, and he was glad.

  FROM MISSOURI

  I

  With jingling spurs a tall cowboy stalked out of the post office to confront his three comrades crossing the wide street from the saloon opposite.

  “Look heah,” he said, shoving a letter under their noses. “Which one of you longhorns has wrote her again?”

  From a gay careless trio his listeners suddenly grew blank, then intensely curious. They stared at the handwriting on the letter.

  “Tex, I’m a son-of-a-gun if it ain’t from Missouri!” ejaculated Andy Smith, his lean red face bursting into a smile.

  “It shore is,” declared Nevada.

  “From Missouri!” echoed Panhandle Ames.

  “Wal?” queried Tex, almost with a snort.

  The three cowboys jerked up to look from Tex to one another, and then back at Tex.

  “It’s from her,” went on Tex, his voice hushing on the pronoun. “You-all know thet handwritin’. Now how aboot this deal? We swore none of us would write ag’in to this heah schoolmarm. Some one of you has double-crossed the outfit.”

  Loud and unified protestations of innocence emanated from his comrades. But it was evident Tex did not trust them, and that they did not trust him or each other.

  “Say, boys,” said Panhandle suddenly. “I see Beady in there lookin’ darn’ sharp at us. Let’s get off in the woods somehow.”

  “Back to the bar,” replied Nevada. “I reckon us’ll all need stimulants.”

  “Beady!” ejaculated Tex, as they turned across the street. “He could be to blame as much as any of us.”

  “Shore. It’d be more like Beady,” replied Nevada. “But, Tex, your mind ain’t workin’. Our lady friend from Missouri has wrote before without gettin’ any letter from us.”

  “How do we know thet?” demanded Tex suspiciously. “Shore the boss’s typewriter is a puzzle, but it could hide tracks. Savvy, pards?”

  “Gee, Tex, you need a drink,” returned Panhandle peevishly.

  They entered the saloon and strode to the bar, where from all appearances Tex was not the only one to seek artificial stimulus strength. Then they repaired to a corner, where they took seats and stared at the letter Tex threw down before them.

  “From Missouri, all right,” said Panhandle wearily, studying the postmark. “Kansas City, Missouri.”

  “It’s her writin’,” added Nevada in awe. “Shore I’d know thet out of a million letters.”

  “Ain’t you goin’ to read it to us?” queried Andy Smith.

  “Mister Frank Owens,” replied Tex, reading from the address on the letter. “Springer’s Ranch. Beacon, Arizona…. Boys, this heah Frank Owens is all of us.”

  “Huh! Mebbe he’s a darn’ sight more,” added Andy.

  “Looks like a low-down trick we’re to blame for,” resumed Tex, seriously shaking his hawk-like head. “Heah he reads in a Kansas City paper aboot a schoolteacher wantin’ a job out in dry Arizonie. And he ups an’ writes her an’ gets her a-rarin’ to come. Then, when she writes an’ tells us she’s not over forty, then us quits like yellow coyotes. An’ we four anyhow shook hands on never writin’ her again. Wal, somebody did, an’ I reckon you-all think me as big a liar as I think you. But thet ain’t the point. Heah’s another letter to Mister Owens an’ I’ll bet my saddle it means trouble. Shore, I’m plumb afraid to read it.”

  “Say, give it to me,” demanded Andy. “I ain’t afraid of any woman.”

  Tex snatched the letter out of Andy’s hand.

  “Cowboy, you’re too poor educated to read letters from ladies,” observed Tex. “Gimme a knife, somebody…. Say, it’s all perfumed.”

  Tex impressively spread out the letter and read laboriously:

  Kansas City, Mo.

  June 15

  Dear Mr. Owens:

  Your last letter has explained away much that was vague and perplexing in your other letters.

  It has inspired me with hope and anticipation. I shall not take time now to express my thanks, but hasten to get ready to go West. I shall leave tomorrow and arrive at Beacon on June 19 at 4:30 p.m. You see I have studied the timetable.

  Yours very truly,

  Jane Stacey

  Profound silence followed Tex’s perusal of the letter. The cowboys were struck dumb. But suddenly Nevada exploded.

  “My Gawd, fellers, today’s the Nineteenth!”

  “Wal, Springer needs a schoolmarm at the ranch,” finally spoke up the practical Andy. “There’s half a dozen kids growin’ up without any schoolin’, not to talk about other ranches. I heard the boss say this hisself.”

  “Who the hell did it?” demanded Tex in a rage with himself and his accomplices.

  “What’s the sense in hollerin’ aboot thet now?” returned Nevada. “It’s done. She’s comin’. She’ll be on the Limited. Reckon us’re got five hours. It ain’t enough. What’ll we do?”

  “I can get awful drunk in thet time,” contributed Panhandle nonchalantly.

  “Ahuh. An’ leave it all to us,” retorted Tex scornfully. “But we got to stand pat on this heah deal. Don’t you know this is Saturday an’ thet Springer will be in town?”

  “Aw, Lord! We’re all goin’ to get fired,” declared Panhandle. “Serves us right for listenin’ to you, Tex. Us can all gamble this trick hatched in your head.”

  “Not my haid more’n yours or anybody,” returned Tex hotly.

  “Say, you locoed cowpunchers,” interposed Nevada. “What’ll we do?”

  “Shore is bad,” sighed Andy. “What’ll we do?”

  “We’ll have to tell Springer.”

  “But, Tex, the boss’d never believe us about not followin’ the letters up. He’d fire the whole outfit.”

  “But he’ll have to be told somethin’,” returned Panhandle stoutly.

  “Shore he will,” went on Tex. “I’ve an idea. It’s too late now to turn this poor schoolmarm back. An’ somebody’ll have to meet her. Somebody’s got to borrow a buckboard an’ drive her out to the ranch.”

  “Excuse me!” replied Andy. And Panhandle and Nevada echoed him. “I’ll
ride over on my hoss, an’ see you-all meet the lady,” Andy added.

  Tex had lost his scowl, but he did not look as if he favorably regarded Andy’s idea. “Hang it all!” he burst out hotly. “Can’t some of you gents look at it from her side of the fence? Nice fix for any woman, I say. Somebody ought to get it good for this mess. If I ever find out….”

  “Go on with your grand idea,” interposed Nevada.

  “You-all come with me. I’ll get a buckboard. I’ll meet the lady an’ do the talkin’. I’ll let her down easy. An’ if I cain’t head her back, we’ll fetch her out to the ranch an’ then leave it up to Springer. Only we won’t tell her or him or anybody who’s the real Frank Owens.”

  “Tex, that ain’t so plumb bad,” declared Andy admiringly.

  “What I want to know is who’s goin’ go do the talkin’ to the boss?” queried Panhandle. “It mightn’t be so hard to explain now. But after drivin’ up to the ranch with a woman! You-all know Springer’s shy. Young an’ rich, like he is, an’ a bachelor…he’s been fussed over so he’s plumb afraid of girls. An’ here you’re fetchin’ a middle-aged schoolmarm who’s romantic an’ mushy! My Gawd, I say send her home on the next train.”

  “Pan, you’re wise on hosses an’ cattle, but you don’t know human nature, an’ you’re daid wrong about the boss,” rejoined Tex. “We’re in a bad fix, I’ll admit. But I lean more to fetchin’ the lady up than sendin’ her back. Somebody down Beacon way would get wise. Mebbe the schoolmarm might talk. She’d shore have cause. An’ suppose Springer hears about it…that some of us or all of us played a low-down trick on a woman. He’d be madder at that than if we fetched her up. Likely he’ll try to make amends. The boss may be shy on girls but he’s the squarest man in Arizona. My idea is we’ll deny any of us is Frank Owens, an’ we’ll meet Miss…Miss…what was that there name?…Miss Jane Stacey and fetch her up to the ranch, an’ let her do the talkin’ to Springer.”

  During the next several hours, while Tex searched the town for a buckboard and team he could borrow, the other cowboys wandered from the saloon to the post office and back again, and then to the store, the restaurant, and all around. The town had gradually filled up with Saturday visitors.