by Zane Grey
“If I’m not, there’s going to be trouble for a certain young man.”
“Estie, I’m shore hungry an’ so is Brazos”
Blue had always found a welcome at the Bradleys’. The rancher’s Indian wife, and her daughter, a pretty dark-eyed girl of sixteen, came out to greet him.
“Wal, I’m shore a tough-lookin’ hombre to call on a lady,” he said as he made for the wash-bench. “Haven’t washed my face an’ hands for three days.”
“You dirty little boy!… I’ll have to teach you a lot of things presently.”
“Yeah.”
“Slim, I’ll see about your supper.”
“Rustle, darlin’. I cain’t stay long.”
In a few moments Blue was experiencing how marvelously strange and sweet it was to be served by Estelle Latch. She had brought his supper out on the porch. The long twilight was slowly darkening.
“Did you see Dad?” she queried, eagerly, as if unable longer to withstand anxiety.
“No. But I saw Benson.”
“Corny, you have bad news.”
“Wal, it could shore be worse. Before tellin’ you, though, I’d like to ask you somethin’ tumble intimate.”
“What?” she whispered, intrigued by his earnestness.
“Air you goin’ to persist in your ridiculous engagement to a no-good trail driver?”
“Corny!…Are you going to be the faithless one?”
“Answer me, Estie.”
“Yes. I shall persist—unless you——”
“Could you be happy on a little ranch like this? Keep house an’ mend my socks—when I had any—milk the cows an’ all such pioneer woman’s work—while I raised a herd of cattle?”
“Corny, I could be perfectly happy with you anywhere. And I’d not be afraid of a pioneer woman’s job.”
“Darlin’, it’s turrible hard. An’ you’ve been used to comfort and luxury.”
“Dad has spoiled me, Corny. But I’m sure it’s not too late.”
“You could stand ranch drudgery, bein’ poor, an’ not havin’ so much as these Bradleys—no money, no trips anywhere—just ranchin’ it all the time, every day like the last?… Course I love you as I reckon no wild hombre ever loved a girl before.”
“Corny, that would make up for everything else in the world,” she replied, softly.
“My Gawd!…I cain’t see how. But if you feel aboot me as I do aboot you it’s easy to understand.”
“I feel that way, Corny.”
“You could marry a Southern gentleman an’ live on a big plantation an’——”
She trilled a laugh. “I want my West and my trail driver.”
“You might even marry one of them millionaires in the East.”
“Listen to you. Slim Blue, are you trying to tempt me?”
“No. I’m just bein’ square. You could marry any man you wanted.”
“Very well. It’s settled. I want you.”
Slim dropped his head on his hands and sat silent a moment. The gods of fate had certainly uplifted him to a love and life infinitely beyond his merits. But since they had!—he uncovered his face to meet her eyes dark and compassionate and loving in the dusk.
“Let’s get my horse. Then you can walk oot with me to the big tree yonder.”
It was Estelle who led Brazos. Presently she said: “Corny, I gather from your seriousness—your concern for me—that Dad has lost all.”
“Wal, I didn’t mean thet. I was just supposin’.”
“Then we still own the ranch?”
“Yes.”
“You were just testing my love—my faith?”
“I reckon.”
“Oh, Slim! How could you?”
“Wal, you see, sweetheart, you happen to be worth about a million. An’ it worried me.”
She faced him in the dusk, let the bridle fall, sought his arms.
“Dear, you have talked queer ever since you got here. Have you been drinking?”
“No. Never was so sober,” he replied, smiling down on her.
“Worth a million!… You must be out of your head, darling.”
“Aboot you, shore. But not aboot the million…. Estelle, you air heiress to a million dollars from the Bowden estate, down East.”
“Heiress… Bowden? That was my mother’s name. … Corny, what has happened?”
“Wal, heah. Lawyer from Boston rode in today. Name’s Bowden. Some kin of your mother’s. He had clues thet brought him to Latchfield. Your dad, you know, saved your mother from the Indians. Married her. Rumor of this has got out of late years. Bowden heahed it somewhere. At Independence, where your mother an’ her uncle started with the caravan, old Tullt remembered the very wagon they left in. In fact, he built it. Big prairie-schooner with red letters painted on the front. Tullt an’ Company No. 1 A…. Wal, your dad told the lawyer thet he saved Cynthia Bowden an’ had married her. Thet you was her child. The lawyer had to have some substantial proof. Latch reckoned he could find thet very wagon your mother crossed the plains in. The Indians had dumped it over a canyon wall west of heah. He could fetch that lettered haidboard. Bowden, the lawyer, agreed to accept thet as proof. So your dad packed an’ rode off with Pedro.”
“How perfectly wonderful!” she cried.
“Wal, it is—sorta. Buffaloed me, all right.”
“But, Corny, it seems absurd to expect to find that wagon. After all these years!… Oh, it must have been Dad’s very last hope. If that were the only proof he had to establish my right to mother’s name! Oh, how heartrending it will be if he fails! Poor old Dad! There has always been something so aloof, so inexplicable, about him. But he is a great Westerner. He has been the best Dad in all this world. For his sake—to save the ranch he loves so well—I hope he finds the proof. But I can stand the disappointment, Corny.”
“Wal, if you air not the game kid!… Listen, Big Eyes! Your dad don’t need thet Tullt an’ Company No. 1 A wagon to prove you are Cynthia Bowden’s daughter an’ heiress to this fortune.”
“0—oh—Cor—ny!” she faltered, clinging to him, her great eyes shining in the gloom.
“If I could only have seen Latch before he left!” went on Corny, hurriedly. “But I didn’t. An’ after all, I reckon it’ll turn oot best this way. Estie, thet wallet I gave you for safe-keepin’ contains proof of your parentage.”
“What?” she whispered.
“Letters, papers, pictures, jewelry, marriage certificate. They belonged to your mother. Latch never saw them, for purposes of his own. Your mother died. An’ Latch never came back for five years…. Wal, I got on to Leighton’s plan to ruin your dad. Revenge! An’ I spied on Leighton. I heahed him speak aboot these proofs. An’ as I once told you, I hid in my room for weeks, waitin’ for a chance to steal them. Thet chance came night of your party. I had to muss things up a bit. But I got them, an’ burned Leighton’s saloon down afterward.”
“You knew all the time?”
“Wal, I reckon.”
“You can prove I’m Estelle Bowden Latch?”
“I should smile. When you go back to the cabin, look in that wallet.”
Suddenly she flung her arms around his neck. “O-oh—Corny, darling. I’ve got to cry my heart out. But I’ll hold in—till you’ve gone…. Oh, it’s so unbelievable.”
“Wal, it shore is. You cain’t never be a poor homesteader’s hard-workin’ wife now.”
“Oh, Slim, you won’t go back on me because I’m rich,” she entreated, and fell to kissing him.
“Reckon I didn’t mean it thet way,” he replied, unsteadily. He could understand her abandon. She kissed him and hugged him until she was utterly spent and lay on his breast, white and quivering.
“Now, Estie, you’ve had your spell an’ if you’ll brace up an’ listen I’ll say a few more things an’ then rustle.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“I’m leavin’ at once with an Indian to trail your dad. I reckon Leighton might get a hunch an’ follow. If they meet—wal, l
et’s not borrow trouble. I’ll try to prevent thet meetin’. Only you prepare yourself for anythin’ an’ be the game kid you’ve been all along. Stay heah till I come back. Thet ought to be less’n three days. An’ don’t worry, Estie. Our luck has changed.”
She could only gaze up at him with darkly distended eyes and hang on to him with tight little hands. He kissed her a last time, and breaking their hold leaped on Brazos and rode swiftly off into the gathering darkness.
That was a ride like the trail driver made on stampede nights. The action seemed in harmony with the force of his emotion and eased it—helped him grow away from it—to give all his cunning to the desperate task of saving Latch from Leighton.
Hawk Eye waited in the melancholy gloom. He bestrode one mustang and held the halter of another that carried a pack.
“Uggh! Which way go, Blueboy?” was his greeting.
“Which way best, Kiowa?”
“Far way. Leighton no watch back trail. Me see um.”
Hawk Eye made a slow gesture, indicating a long ride and detour.
“Go, Hawk Eye. Blue give hawse, silver, plenty rum.”
“Good,” grunted the Kiowa, and led away toward the west at a brisk trot. Blue followed, his eyes seeking to penetrate the gloom ahead. They crossed the creek and the road, and keeping out in the open, passed Latch’s ranch-house and gained the bluff. Hawk Eye climbed a little-used trail and, once up on the plateau, turned to the west into the cedars. Blue could tell by the stars that the Indian rode straight as a beeline, only departing from his course to head draws or go around thickets, rocks, or other rough places. The hours flew by. The sense of certain guidance and the miles slipping by under a steady trot satisfied the trail driver. They rode through the scattered cedars, out upon the rolling bare ridges, down into shallow dips, and across stony levels, always in a straight line. Wolves mourned and coyotes wailed from the lonely ridge tops. Some stars sank behind the black rim of the earth and others took their places. Late at night a misshapen weird moon came up to change the dark gloom to opaque gray.
Blue knew neither weariness nor drowsiness. His trail-driving nights numbered into the thousands. He felt no impatience. Something of the Kiowa’s impassiveness seemed added to his own iron calm.
CHAPTER
19
GARY dawn streaked the east. By its light Slim Blue began to discern the dark confines of a ragged canyon along the rim of which he had been following Hawk Eye.
The broken ledge-floored plateau sloped down to a rent in the earth. Cedar and pinon trees grew thickly in soft ground, sparsely out of the rocks. Broad daylight came. What a wild and wonderful vista greeted the trail driver! Long slants of gray stone sloped down to the canyon rim. The bottom of the deep gorge could not be seen. Across the blue abyss the opposite wall stood up, ragged and split, green and gray, with a heavy growth of timber on top. Beyond rose high domed peaks. It was a lonely, desolate region, silent as the grave.
Hawk Eye swerved to the right, working away from the rim. Halting at a point where the rocky slant resembled a mill-race cut in stone, he said, “Wagons go down.”
Blue gazed with a start. He grasped the significance of the Kiowa’s assertion. Here, then, was the place where Latch and Satana had disposed of the stolen prairie-schooners. The hard granite left no scar or scratch; the canyon yawned like a bottomless pit. There did not appear to be any point near where it would be safe to crawl down to the rim and look over. The edge of the precipice was a long way from where the trail driver sat his horse.
The Indian led on. Blue followed, conscious of a pondering blight upon his thoughts.
They had to head many intersecting ravines that jumped off into the canyon. The sun rose. Wilder and rougher grew the traveling. There was not the slightest sign of a trail. But the Kiowa was not at a loss. He knew the rocks. At last he led down into a crack, steep, of washed, bare, slippery steps of stone where Blue preferred to walk. Deep down, this crack opened into a narrow canyon as tortuous as a crawling snake. The walls were rugged, cracked, caverned, and as they sheered higher they leaned closer. No sunlight touched them low down. A slender stream of water meandered among the great boulders. Progress was exceedingly slow. Every detail of that canyon appeared magnified with each mile, and especially the fantastic wildness. But for ferns and moss, flowers and vines, sage and dwarfed trees, it would have been a ghastly, whorled grave of solid stone. A certain kind of beauty began to manifest itself.
Hours passed. Blue wearied in spite of his tremendous incentive. How long? Noonday had come and passed. Soon Leighton would have had time to overtake Latch. Then when Blue seemed on the verge of desperation Hawk Eye led out of a crack, scarcely wide enough to squeeze the horses through, into a luxuriously green canyon valley, magnificently enclosed and insulated by walls like pictures, melodiously murmurous with stream and hum of bees and song of mocking-birds. Far below a white waterfall fell like rising smoke over cliffs. Eagles soared above lonely crags. Deer lifted long ears and stood motionless. Grass and flowers reached halfway up the legs of the horses.
“Spider Web,” said Hawk Eye, gruffly. And indicating that Blue should look to the horses and wait there, he vanished among the spruce trees. Blue tied the horses back out of the open, and seeking shade along the edge of the timber, he took off spurs, chaps, boots, his vest and sombrero. Then he drank from a crystal bubbling spring. He lay back on the moss and gazed up through the foliage at the blue sky. His strength seemed to come back. This was the notorious Spider Web Canyon, hiding-place for outlaws and savages. Latch was below somewhere, with Leighton on his trail. The hour had almost come. Blue rested, cooled off, but could not restrain a mounting impatience. He drew his guns, added a shell to the empty chamber in each, weighed them, flipped them over and over. That far he got. Impossible to set any course of procedure! Yet many swift plans transgressed his stern resolve not to think until the right moment.
The Kiowa appeared, a buckskin-clad shadow, gliding out of the green spruce. His action was stealthy, his bronze face as impassive as that of a statue. But his piercing black eyes brought Blue to his knees, with a hot gush of blood swelling his veins.
Hawk Eye knelt beside Blue, to take up a twig, evidently to trace a map in the clean brown needles close to the trunk of the spruce.
“Good,” said the Kiowa, with the fire of intelligence in his sloe-black eyes. “Me find wagons. Latch there. Leighton ketch um—tie um up. Make heap war-dance.”
“Gawd! Has Leighton got Latch tied?”
The Indian nodded.
“Good!” he ejaculated, so emphatically that Blue realized it must be good. “You come me. Like snake. Me go close. Leighton heap loco. Watch Keeneedy—dog-face man. Bad hombres.”
“How far, scout?” queried Blue, tightening his belt.
The Kiowa studied the canyon wall below. Then he pointed to a notched section of rim, and indicated where the wagons had been rolled over, and that Latch, prisoner of his enemies, was there at the base of the cliff.
“How close we get?”
“Heap close.” Following these terse words the Kiowa made signs that Blue construed to mean the grass was deep and soft, the brush thick, and that they could shoot and not be seen.
“All right, Kiowa. Go slow. An’ no shoot till I yell.”
“Leighton heap slow. He powwow.”
“Ahuh—the—— —— —— ——! It’s his last—by Gawd!”
Hawk Eye glided away in among the slender wide-spreading spruces with Blue at his heels. The grass gave forth no sound; the foliage scarcely trembled as they slipped through the aisles. The Indian strode swiftly for a quarter of a mile, then grew cautious. He would look ahead, then turn his ear and listen. Blue heard only the murmur of waterfall and the music of mocking-birds. Hawk Eye zigzagged among the spruces, glided around the immense blocks of rocks, along the base of the cliff, to halt at open sunny lanes, look and listen, then dart across like a swallow. In his bare feet Blue followed silently. Slower went the Indian, u
ntil at last he got down on hands and knees. They were drawing close. A loud raucous laugh—Leighton’s—made Blue’s blood leap. He filled his lungs by a deep intake of air, then, kneeling, he soon was on the Kiowa’s heels. No need to tell that savage to go slow! He was a snail. He made no more sound than a snail. He scarcely moved a blade of grass. This was the Kiowa’s game and Blue blessed all that he had foreseen in kindness to him.
Blue did not look up again. He paid attention only to Hawk Eye’s moccasined feet, and to the exceeding caution with which he followed. He brushed the ferns and tips of spruce branches that softly closed over Hawk Eye’s body. The fragrance of spruce needles was permeated by the pungent odor of smoke. All grew densely green ahead. He hoped there would be no more uncovered patches to cross! He felt the presence of the overhanging cliff to the left and the open valley to the right. Water was tumbling off the cliff close at hand. Rustling of birds made Blue stiffen. Slower crawled the Indian until he scarcely moved. Voices grew distinct. Blue raised his head to see points of light through the brush. Spruce had given way to hackberry and scrub oak. It furnished as good cover as the spruce, and gave more room low down. Inch by inch the Kiowa wormed his way under the low-branching foliage. Blue, cold and sure now, with tight lips and nerves taut, made absolutely certain that he would not stir a leaf or snap a twig. He devoted all his faculties to this end. Once where he could see these outlaws close at hand, where he could command the element of surprise, he would be grim destiny itself for them. And this now seemed inevitable. All Leighton’s calculating years of hate had led to this.
The green canopy overhead brightened. Blue looked up to see that Hawk Eye was crawling into an open glade toward a narrow strip of thicket. Voices beyond this point indicated the whereabouts of the outlaws. Wood smoke came from a camp fire. To the left a yellow curving wall sheered up, so high that Blue could not see its rim. Under the wall lay an enormous gray and russet pile that at first glance Blue had taken for a slope of talus or disintegrated avalanche from the cliff above.
But a second glance petrified him. The enormous pile, which extended beyond his line of vision, consisted of ruins of wagons. He raised himself upon a shaking elbow. He stared. Was this sight a distorted scene from a nightmare? Wheels! Wheels! Wheels! Rusty tires, broken hubs, myriads of spokes, wagon-tongues standing up like denuded saplings, wagon-seats, wagon-beds, hoops and ragged bits of canvas, rusted brake-handles, boards with faded paint, every part of hundreds of prairie-schooners, made up this enormous pile of wreckage.
