Desert Gold and the Light of Western Stars

by Zane Grey

  It was that which made Madeline hesitate then and go forward slowly. She had given no thought at all to what Stewart might feel when suddenly surprised by her presence.

  “Florence, you wait also,” said Madeline, at the doorway, and turned in alone.

  And she had stepped into a broken-down patio littered with alfalfa straw and debris, all clear in the sunlight. Upon a bench, back toward her, sat a man looking out through the rents in the broken wall. He had not heard her. The place was not quite so filthy and stifling as the passages Madeline had come through to get there. Then she saw that it had been used as a corral. A rat ran boldly across the dirt floor. The air swarmed with flies, which the man brushed at with weary hand. Madeline did not recognize Stewart. The side of his face exposed to her gaze was black, bruised, bearded. His clothes were ragged and soiled. There were bits of alfalfa in his hair. His shoulders sagged. He made a wretched and hopeless figure sitting there. Madeline divined something of why Nels shrank from being present.

  “Mr. Stewart. It is I, Miss Hammond, come to see you,” she said.

  He grew suddenly perfectly motionless, as if he had been changed to stone. She repeated her greeting.

  His body jerked. He moved violently as if instinctively to turn and face this intruder; but a more violent movement checked him.

  Madeline waited. How singular that this ruined cowboy had pride which kept him from showing his face! And was it not shame more than pride?

  “Mr. Stewart, I have come to talk with you, if you will let me.”

  “Go away,” he muttered.

  “Mr. Stewart!” she began, with involuntary hauteur. But instantly she corrected herself, became deliberate and cool, for she saw that she might fail to be even heard by this man. “I have come to help you. Will you let me?”

  “For God’s sake! You—you—” he choked over the words. “Go away!”

  “Stewart, perhaps it was for God’s sake that I came,” said Madeline, gently. “Surely it was for yours—and your sister’s—” Madeline bit her tongue, for she had not meant to betray her knowledge of Letty.

  He groaned, and, staggering up to the broken wall, he leaned there with his face hidden. Madeline reflected that perhaps the slip of speech had been well.

  “Stewart, please let me say what I have to say?”

  He was silent. And she gathered courage and inspiration.

  “Stillwell is deeply hurt, deeply grieved that he could not turn you back from this—this fatal course. My brother is also. They wanted to help you. And so do I. I have come, thinking somehow I might succeed where they have failed. Nels brought your sister’s letter. I—I read it. I was only the more determined to try to help you, and indirectly help your mother and Letty. Stewart, we want you to come to the ranch. Stillwell needs you for his foreman. The position is open to you, and you can name your salary. Both Al and Stillwell are worried about Don Carlos, the vaqueros, and the raids down along the border. My cowboys are without a capable leader. Will you come?”

  “No,” he answered.

  “But Stillwell wants you so badly.”

  “No.”

  “Stewart. I want you to come.”

  “No.”

  His replies had been hoarse, loud, furious. They disconcerted Madeline, and she paused, trying to think of a way to proceed. Stewart staggered away from the wall, and, falling upon the bench, he hid his face in his hands. All his motions, like his speech, had been violent.

  “Will you please go away?” he asked.

  “Stewart, certainly I cannot remain here longer if you insist upon my going. But why not listen to me when I want so much to help you? Why?”

  “I’m a damned blackguard,” he burst out. “But I was a gentleman once, and I’m not so low that I can stand for you seeing me here.”

  “When I made up my mind to help you I made it up to see you wherever you were. Stewart, come away, come back with us to the ranch. You are in a bad condition now. Everything looks black to you. But that will pass. When you are among friends again you will get well. You will be your old self. The very fact that you were once a gentleman, that you come of good family, makes you owe so much more to yourself. Why, Stewart, think how young you are! It is a shame to waste your life. Come back with me.”

  “Miss Hammond, this was my last plunge,” he replied, despondently. “It’s too late.”

  “Oh no, it is not so bad as that.”

  “It’s too late.”

  “At least make an effort, Stewart. Try!”

  “No. There’s no use. I’m done for. Please leave me—thank you for—”

  He had been savage, then sullen, and now he was grim. Madeline all but lost power to resist his strange, deadly, cold finality. No doubt he knew he was doomed. Yet something halted her—held her even as she took a backward step. And she became conscious of a subtle change in her own feeling. She had come into that squalid hole, Madeline Hammond, earnest enough, kind enough in her own intentions; but she had been almost imperious—a woman habitually, proudly used to being obeyed. She divined that all the pride, blue blood, wealth, culture, distinction, all the impersonal condescending persuasion, the fatuous philanthropy on earth would not avail to turn this man a single hair’s breath from his downward career to destruction. Her coming had terribly augmented his bitter hate of himself. She was going to fail to help him. She experienced a sensation of impotence that amounted almost to distress. The situation assumed a tragic keenness. She had set forth to reverse the tide of a wild cowboy’s fortunes; she faced the swift wasting of his life, the damnation of his soul. The subtle consciousness of change in her was the birth of that faith she had revered in Stillwell. And all at once she became merely a woman, brave and sweet and indomitable.

  “Stewart, look at me,” she said.

  He shuddered. She advanced and laid a hand on his bent shoulder. Under the light touch he appeared to sink.

  “Look at me,” she repeated.

  But he could not lift his head. He was abject, crushed. He dared not show his swollen, blackened face. His fierce, cramped posture revealed more than his features might have shown; it betrayed the torturing shame of a man of pride and passion, a man who had been confronted in his degradation by the woman he had dared to enshrine in his heart. It betrayed his love.

  “Listen, then,” went on Madeline; and her voice was unsteady. “Listen to me, Stewart. The greatest men are those who have fallen deepest into the mire, sinned most, suffered most, and then have fought their evil natures and conquered. I think you can shake off this desperate mood and be a man.”

  “No!” he cried.

  “Listen to me again. Somehow I know you’re worthy of Stillwell’s love. Will you come back with us—for his sake?”

  “No. It’s too late, I tell you.”

  “Stewart, the best thing in life is faith in human nature. I have faith in you. I believe you are worth it.”

  “You’re only kind and good—saying that. You can’t mean it.”

  “I mean it with all my heart,” she replied, a sudden rich warmth suffusing her body as she saw the first sign of his softening. “Will you come back—if not for your own sake or Stillwell’s—then for mine?”

  “What am I to such a woman as you?”

  “A man in trouble, Stewart. But I have come to help you, to show my faith in you.”

  “If I believed that I might try,” he said.

  “Listen,” she began, softly, hurriedly. “My word is not lightly given. Let it prove my faith in you. Look at me now and say you will come.”

  He heaved up his big frame as if trying to cast off a giant’s burden, and then slowly he turned toward her. His face was a blotched and terrible thing. The physical brutalizing marks were there, and at that instant all that appeared human to Madeline was the dawning in dead, furnace-like eyes of a beautiful light.

  “I’ll come,” he whispered, huskily. “Give me a few days to straighten up, then I’ll come.”

  CHAPTER 9

  T
HE NEW FOREMAN

  Toward the end of the week Stillwell informed Madeline that Stewart had arrived at the ranch and had taken up quarters with Nels.

  “Gene’s sick. He looks bad,” said the old cattleman. “He’s so weak an’ shaky he can’t lift a cup. Nels says that Gene has hed some bad spells. A little liqour would straighten him up now. But Nels can’t force him to drink a drop, an’ has hed to sneak some liquor in his coffee. Wal, I think we’ll pull Gene through. He’s forgotten a lot. I was goin’ to tell him what he did to me up at Rodeo. But I know if he’d believe it he’d be sicker than he is. Gene’s losin’ his mind, or he’s got somethin’ powerful strange on it.”

  From that time Stillwell, who evidently found Madeline his most sympathetic listener, unburdened himself daily of his hopes and fears and conjectures.

  Stewart was really ill. It became necessary to send Link Stevens for a physician. Then Stewart began slowly to mend and presently was able to get up and about. Stillwell said the cowboy lacked interest and seemed to be a broken man. This statement, however, the old cattleman modified as Stewart continued to improve. Then presently it was a good augury of Stewart’s progress that the cowboys once more took up the teasing relation which had been characteristic of them before his illness. A cowboy was indeed out of sorts when he could not vent his peculiar humor on somebody or something. Stewart had evidently become a broad target for their badinage.

  “Wal, the boys are sure after Gene,” said Stillwell, with his huge smile. “Joshin’ him all the time about how he sits around an’ hangs around an’ loafs around jest to get a glimpse of you, Miss Majesty. Sure all the boys hev a pretty bad case over their pretty boss, but none of them is a marker to Gene. He’s got it so bad, Miss Majesty, thet he actooly don’t know they are joshin’ him. It’s the amazinest strange thing I ever seen. Why, Gene was always a feller thet you could josh. An’ he’d laugh an’ get back at you. But he was never before deaf to talk, an’ there was a certain limit no feller cared to cross with him. Now he takes every word an’ smiles dreamy like, an’ jest looks an’ looks. Why, he’s beginnin’ to make me tired. He’ll never run thet bunch of cowboys if he doesn’t wake up quick.”

  Madeline smiled her amusement and expressed a belief that Stillwell wanted too much in such short time from a man who had done body and mind a grievous injury.

  It had been impossible for Madeline to fail to observe Stewart’s singular behavior. She never went out to take her customary walks and rides without seeing him somewhere in the distance. She was aware that he watched for her and avoided meeting her. When she sat on the porch during the afternoon or at sunset Stewart could always be descried at some point near. He idled listlessly in the sun, lounged on the porch of his bunk-house, sat whittling the top bar of the corral fence, and always it seemed to Madeline he was watching her. Once, while going the rounds with her gardener, she encountered Stewart and greeted him kindly. He said little, but he was not embarrassed. She did not recognize in his face any feature that she remembered. In fact, on each of the few occasions when she had met Stewart he had looked so different that she had no consistent idea of his facial appearance. He was now pale, haggard, drawn. His eyes held a shadow through which shone a soft, subdued light; and, once having observed this, Madeline fancied it was like the light in Majesty’s eyes, in the dumb, worshiping eyes of her favorite stag-hound. She told Stewart that she hoped he would soon be in the saddle again, and passed on her way.

  That Stewart loved her Madeline could not help but see. She endeavored to think of him as one of the many who, she was glad to know, liked her. But she could not regulate her thoughts to fit the order her intelligence prescribed. Thought of Stewart dissociated itself from thought of the other cowboys. When she discovered this she felt a little surprise and annoyance. Then she interrogated herself, and concluded that it was not that Stewart was so different from his comrades, but that circumstances made him stand out from them. She recalled her meeting with him that night when he had tried to force her to marry him. This was unforgettable in itself. She called subsequent mention of him, and found it had been peculiarly memorable. The man and his actions seemed to hinge on events. Lastly, the fact standing clear of all others in its relation to her interest was that he had been almost ruined, almost lost, and she had saved him. That alone was sufficient to explain why she thought of him differently. She had befriended, uplifted the other cowboys; she had saved Stewart’s life. To be sure, he had been a ruffian, but a woman could not save the life of even a ruffian without remembering it with gladness. Madeline at length decided her interest in Stewart was natural, and that her deeper feeling was pity. Perhaps the interest had been forced from her; however, she gave the pity as she gave everything.

  Stewart recovered his strength, though not in time to ride at the spring round-up; and Stillwell discussed with Madeline the advisability of making the cowboy his foreman.

  “Wal, Gene seems to be gettin’ along,” said Stillwell. “But he ain’t like his old self. I think more of him at thet. But where’s his spirit? The boys ’d ride roughshod all over him. Mebbe I’d do best to wait longer now, as the slack season is on. All the same, if those vaqueros of Don Carlos’s don’t lay low I’ll send Gene over there. Thet’ll wake him up.”

  A few days afterward Stillwell came to Madeline, rubbing his big hands in satisfaction and wearing a grin that was enormous.

  “Miss Majesty, I reckon before this I’ve said things was amazin’ strange. But now Gene Stewart has gone an’ done it! Listen to me. Them Greasers down on our slope hev been gettin’ prosperous. They’re growin’ like bad weeds. An’ they got a new padre—the little old feller from El Cajon, Padre Marcos. Wal, this was all right, all the boys thought, except Gene. An’ he got blacker’n thunder an’ roared round like a dehorned bull. I was sure glad to see he could get mad again. Then Gene haids down the slope fer the church. Nels an’ me follered him, thinkin’ he might hev been took sudden with a crazy spell or somethin’. He hasn’t never been jest right yet since he left off drinkin’. Wal, we run into him comin’ out of the church. We never was so dumfounded in our lives. Gene was crazy all right—he sure hed a spell. But it was the kind of a spell he hed thet paralyzed us. He ran past us like a streak, an’ we follered. We couldn’t ketch him. We heerd him laugh—the strangest laugh I ever heerd! You’d thought the feller was suddenly made a king. He was like thet feller who was tied in a buryin’-sack an’ throwed into the sea, an’ cut his way out, an’ swam to the island where the treasures was, an’ stood up yellin’: ‘The world is mine!’ Wal, when we got up to his bunk-house he was gone. He didn’t come back all day an’ all night. Frankie Slade, who has a sharp tongue, says Gene hed gone crazy fer liquor an’ thet was his finish. Nels was some worried. An’ I was sick.

  “Wal, this mawnin’ I went over to Nels’s bunk. Some of the fellers was there, all speculatin’ about Gene. Then big as life Gene struts round the corner. He wasn’t the same Gene. His face was pale an’ his eyes burned like fire. He hed thet old mockin’, cool smile, an’ somethin’ besides thet I couldn’t understand. Frankie Slade up an’ made a remark—no wuss than he’d been makin’ fer days—an’ Gene tumbled him out of his chair, punched him good, walked all over him. Frankie wasn’t hurt so much as he was bewildered. ‘Gene,’ he says, ‘what the hell struck you?’ An’ Gene says, kind of sweet like, ‘Frankie, you may be a nice feller when you’re alone, but your talk’s offensive to a gentleman.’

  “After thet what was said to Gene was with a nice smile. Now, Miss Majesty, it’s beyond me what to allow for Gene’s sudden change. First off, I thought Padre Marcos had converted him. I actooly thought thet. But I reckon it’s only Gene Stewart come back—the old Gene Stewart an’ some. Thet’s all I care about. I’m rememberin’ how I once told you thet Gene was the last of the cowboys. Perhaps I should hev said he’s the last of my kind of cowboys. Wal, Miss Majesty, you’ll be appreciatin’ of what I meant from now on.”

  It was also beyond Madel
ine to account for Gene Stewart’s antics, and, making allowance for the old cattleman’s fancy, she did not weigh his remarks very heavily. She guessed why Stewart might have been angry at the presence of Padre Marcos. Madeline supposed that it was rather an unusual circumstance for a cowboy to be converted to religious belief. But it was possible. And she knew that religious fervor often manifested itself in extremes of feeling and action. Most likely, in Stewart’s case, his real manner had been both misunderstood and exaggerated. However, Madeline had a curious desire, which she did not wholly admit to herself, to see the cowboy and make her own deductions.

  The opportunity did not present itself for nearly two weeks. Stewart had taken up his duties as foreman, and his activities were ceaseless. He was absent most of the time, ranging down toward the Mexican line. When he returned Stillwell sent for him.

  This was late in the afternoon of a day in the middle of April. Alfred and Florence were with Madeline on the porch. They saw the cowboy turn his horse over to one of the Mexican boys at the corral and then come with weary step up to the house, beating the dust out of his gauntlets. Little streams of gray sand trickled from his sombrero as he removed it and bowed to the women.

  Madeline saw the man she remembered, but with a singularly different aspect. His skin was brown; his eyes were piercing and dark and steady; he carried himself erect; he seemed preoccupied, and there was not a trace of embarrassment in his manner.

  “Wal, Gene, I’m sure glad to see you,” Stillwell was saying. “Where do you hail from?”

  “Guadalupe Cañon,” replied the cowboy.

  Stillwell whistled.

  “Way down there! You don’t mean you follered them hoss tracks thet far?”

  “All the way from Don Carlos’s rancho across the Mexican line. I took Nick Steele with me. Nick is the best tracker in the outfit. This trail we were on led along the foothill valleys. First we thought whoever made it was hunting for water. But they passed two ranches without watering. At Seaton’s Wash they dug for water. Here they met a pack-train of burros that came down the mountain trail. The burros were heavily loaded. Horse and burro tracks struck south from Seaton’s to the old California emigrant road. We followed the trail through Guadalupe Cañon and across the border. On the way back we stopped at Slaughter’s ranch, where the United States Cavalry are camping. There we met foresters from the Peloncillo forest reserve. If these fellows knew anything they kept it to themselves. So we hit the trail home.”