Robber's Roost (1989)

by Grey, Zane

  After breakfast he went out and found a boy to shine his high top- boots and brush his dark, worn suit and his black sombrero.

  Presently, then, he encountered Barnes. "Howdy, boy! Did you have a nice time home?"

  "Gee, I did!" the cowboy grinned. "I was with my gurl last night an' she wouldn't let me off."

  "Right she was. Your sure look bright this morning."

  "Wal, you look kinda spick an' span yourself, Jim," drawled Barnes.

  "Funny how the idear of a gurl gets a feller."

  "Funny? You mean terrible, my friend. A woman is as terrible as an army with banners."

  "Gosh! who'd ever dreamed you had been inside a Bible?" exclaimed the cowboy.

  "It's funny, though, how I happened to remember that. Now, Barnes, listen. This Miss Herrick might take me for an honest, decent fellow like you. But if I let that pass I'd be sailing under false colors. I don't do that. And as I can't very well tell her myself, you must."

  "Tell her what?" queried Barnes, with a puzzled grin.

  "You know . . . the kind of a man I am."

  "I sort of like you myself. So if you want me to tell her anythin' you must say what."

  "Well then, tell her about Herrick hiring all the desperadoes in Utah, and that I'm one of them. Make me out worse than Hays and Heeseman thrown together."

  "Shore. That's easy. But what's the idear, Jim?"

  "I wasn't always an outcast. . . . And I think it'd hurt me less if this girl was scared and repelled. If she took me for a real Westerner, you know, and talked and laughed--well, I'd go get powerfully drunk and probably shoot up Star Ranch. So you fix it for me, will you, Barnes?"

  "Shore, I'll fix it," replied Barnes, with a sly glance at Jim.

  "You jest give me a chanst when the stage rolls up. She's due now.

  I'll run down an' drive the buckboard up."

  But the stage did not show up for an hour--a long, nervous, dragging one for Jim Wall. Grand Junction was no different from other Western points remote from civilization--everybody turned out to see the stage come in. It was a gala occasion for the youngsters, of whom there was a surprising number. The women onlookers, Jim observed, rather hung in the background.

  The four-horse stage came rolling up in a cloud of dust. The driver, a grizzled old frontiersman, brought it to a stop with a fine flourish, and he bawled out: "Grand Junction! Half hour fer lunch."

  There were six passengers, two of them feminine. The last to leave the stage was a tall, veiled young woman, her lithe and erect figure incased in a long linen coat. She carried a small satchel.

  Expectantly she looked around. Jim stepped before her, baring his head.

  "Are you Miss Herrick?"

  "Oh! Yes," she exclaimed, in relief.

  "Your brother sent us to meet you," went on Jim, indicating Barnes, who stood to one side.

  "He did not come!" The full, rich voice, with its foreign intonation, struck pleasantly upon Jim's ear.

  "No. There's much work at Star Ranch. But it's perfectly all right, Miss Herrick. We will drive you safely over before dark."

  Jim could not see clearly through the tan veil, but he discerned well enough that big eyes studied him.

  "Didn't he send a letter or anything? How am I to know you men are employed by my brother?"

  "I'm afraid you'll have to take my word," replied Jim, gravely.

  "But, Barnes, here, he can prove his identity. He lives in Grand Junction, and of course there are responsible people who will vouch for him."

  "Miss, the boss did send word," spoke up Barnes, touching his hat, and stepping closer, he added in a lower tone, "he told me last night you was to fetch what come by Wells Fargo."

  "Then it is all right," she replied, apparently relieved. "My luggage is inside, on top, and tied on behind. The name is on every piece. Helen Herrick."

  "I'll attend to the baggage, Miss Herrick," rejoined Jim.

  "Meanwhile Barnes will show you where to eat. It might rest you to walk a little. We have an eight-hour drive."

  "Thank you. I've been riding steadily for two weeks and I'm stiff."

  Whereupon Jim set about collecting the pieces of baggage marked "Herrick." It appeared that the stage had been loaded down with them. Nineteen in all! Manifestly Miss Herrick had come to stay.

  To find room for all of them in the buckboard was going to be a task. He set about this methodically, his mind at once busy and absent. By packing carefully under the seats, and on them, too, Jim got the bags all in. He went to the store and bought rope to tie some of them on securely. Wonder what she looks like, he thought! He had felt vaguely uncomfortable when she looked him over through that veil. His task completed, Jim stood beside the restless horses, waiting. And it seemed he was waiting for he knew not what.

  Presently Barnes returned, wearing an excited grin. His eyes were important.

  "Jim, I fixed it. I shore gave her an earful," he said.

  "Did you? Much obliged, cowboy."

  "She took off thet coat an' veil. Lordy! . . . Utah never seen the likes of her. Red lips, pink cheeks, hair like gold, an' eyes like violets! Jim, for a minnit I went plumb back on my gurl!

  But, shucks! thet's crazy! She asked me to set at table. I did.

  She's just as nice an' free as Herrick. It was while we was eatin' thet I had the chanst to tell her about the nootorious Jim Wall.

  Mebbe I didn't spread it on. An' she looked--Gee! such eyes! She said, 'So Bernie Herrick sent a desperado to be my escort? How perfectly rippin'!' Honest, Jim, thet's what she said. So I shet up pronto. . . . When I jest come away she said she'd walk a little in the orchard an' after goin' into the Wells Fargo office she'd be ready."

  "Have you double-crossed me?" queried Jim, suspicious of this boy.

  "You were to make me out low-down."

  "Jim, honest to Gawd, if thet gurl ain't scared to death of you she's a new one on me," declared Barnes. But there was fun and evasion in his keen hazel eyes. Somehow he had failed to follow instructions.

  "I'll go in the Chink's here and get a bite to eat. You watch the horses."

  Upon his return Jim espied Miss Herrick emerging from the yard of Mrs. Bowe's lodging-house. She carried the linen coat on her arm, and without it did not appear so tall. She had a wonderful step, a free, swinging, graceful stride, expressive of health and vitality.

  She did not look slender, as in the long ulster, but superb, broad of shoulder. She wore a half-length coat over her brown dress. It had a collar of dark fur which presented vivid contrast to her exquisite complexion. The veil was tucked back and now permitted sight of a wave of shining golden hair. At a little distance her eyes looked like great, dark holes set in white. But as she approached Jim saw they were violet in hue, warm, beautiful, fearless.

  "Are we ready to go?" she asked, gayly.

  "Yes, if you have seen the Fargo people," replied Jim.

  "I have it in my satchel," she returned, indicating the half-hidden receptacle under her linen coat.

  Jim tried to interest himself in that satchel because he was in league with robbers, but it did not work. Suddenly he had a murderous desire to kill Hays. This girl--for she appeared a girl in vivid freshness of youth--seemed not in the least frightened, absolutely free from revulsion. Indeed, she was regarding him with undisguised interest and delight.

  "Mr. Jim Wall, you're not in the least what my brother's letters have led me to believe," she said.

  "Letters! Why, Herrick has not had time to write about me," exclaimed Jim, incredulously. "It takes long for a stage letter to go. . . . I've been at Star Ranch only a few days."

  "Oh, he did not write about YOU, individually," she laughed. "But from his letters about bandits and desperadoes I had evolved a rather frightful conception."

  "Thank you, Miss Herrick," he replied, gravely. "Don't trust appearances on our Western border. . . . Will you get up? We must be going."

  And he attempted to assist her inside the back seat of the buckboard.r />
  "If you are going to drive, I want to sit in front," she said, frankly.

  With a bow he helped her up the high step, cursing inwardly at Hank Hays and Herrick and the inscrutable fate that had brought this about. For some way or other he was lost. He almost forgot to wait for Barnes, who was saying good-by to a red-cheeked, wide-eyed girl in the crowd. Barnes came running to leap into the buckboard, and then Jim got in. Owing to the way he had packed the baggage, there was not a great deal of room in the front seat. His heavy gun and sheath bumped against Miss Herrick.

  "Rather tight quarters, with that gun there," he remarked, and swung the sheath round in his lap.

  "Do you sleep in it?" she asked, quizzically.

  "Yes. And never am dressed in the daytime till it's buckled on."

  "What startling folk, you Western Americans!"

  "Some of us are indeed startling. I hope you won't find us unpleasantly so," he replied and, loosening the reins, let the spirited team go. In a few moments the noise, dust, heat, and the staring populace of Grand Junction were far behind, and the red and black ranges lifted above the meadows and sage.

  "Oh, glorious!" she cried, and gazed raptly ahead as the curving road brought into view a wonderful sweep of Utah.

  Jim was hard put to it to keep the blacks from breaking out of a brisk trot. He thought grimly that he would have liked to let the team run off and kill them both. Far better that might be! Miss Herrick's photograph on her brother's desk fell infinitely short of doing her justice. It failed to give any hint of her color, of the vivid lips, of the glory and gleam of her hair, of the dancing, laughing violet eyes, of her pulsing vitality. Jim Wall felt the abundant life of this girl. It flowed out of her. It got into his veins. It heated his blood.

  "The wind makes me cry," she said, merrily. "Or maybe it's because I'm so happy. You say we'll get to Star Ranch before dark?"

  "Surely."

  "Oh, it's been such a long, slow, dusty, cramped journey," she exclaimed. "But now I want to see, to smell, to feel, to gloat."

  "Miss Herrick, this is fine country. But tame compared with that all about the Henrys. You will see them when we top the next hill.

  I've seen most of the West. And the canyon desert below Star Ranch is the wildest and most sublime of all the West, probably of the whole world."

  "Indeed! You speak strongly, not to say surprisingly. It never occurred to me that a gunman--that is what you are, is it not?-- could have any appreciation of the wonder and beauty of nature."

  "A common mistake, Miss Herrick," rejoined Jim. "Nature develops the men who spend their lonely, hard, bloody lives with her.

  Mostly she makes them into boasts with self-preservation the only instinct, but it is conceivable that one now and then might develop the opposite way."

  "You interest me," she replied, simply. "Tell me of this canyon desert and such men."

  Jim talked for a full hour, inspired by her unflagging interest.

  He described the magnificent reaches and escarpments ending in Wild Horse Mesa, and the unknown canyoned abyss between it and Navajo Mountain, and lastly the weird, ghastly brakes of the Dirty Devil.

  "Ugh! how you make me shiver!" she ejaculated. "But it's wonderful. I'm sick of people, of fog, rain, dirt, cold, noise.

  I'd like to get lost down in those red canyons."

  Chapter 7

  They came to a long level valley where the white road was like a floor, and the horses went like the wind. Wall's letting them out was unconscious: it was a release of his vagrant and startling imagination.

  Here the English lady could not catch her breath enough to talk.

  The tan veil was flying and so were some strands of her hair. She appeared to be a beautiful thing of porcelain and gold, animated by throbbing life.

  What was going to be the effect of this extraordinary female upon the fierce men of this lonely region? Upon that swarthy Hank Hays!

  Once in a long time, perhaps, his pale eyes alighted upon a fresh, red-cheeked, buxom girl, but for the most part, Jim knew, Hays never saw any but flat-chested, lanky-limbed, big-footed, and hard- handed women, whose faces were dark, coarse, weathered with skin dried in the wind. They wore overalls and boots, as often as feminine garments, and they were always married. Utah was still so wild and unsettled that the hags and camp-followers common to Wyoming had not arrived.

  At last the horses had to be held in at the base of the longest ascent on the journey. Miss Herrick tucked her disheveled hair with the ends of the veil under her bonnet.

  "What a run! I'm used to horses but not tearing along--with a vehicle like this," she said, breathlessly.

  "Wait till one of these old drivers get a chance at you. I'm really no teamster."

  "Are you a cowboy?"

  "I used to be. And I still ride after cattle occasionally. But now I'm only a--a range-rider."

  "What's the difference?"

  "Well, a range-rider just travels from camp to camp."

  "It must be a wonderful life. Like a gypsy's. I have been among the gypsies in Spain. But that can scarcely be the nature of your position on my brother's ranch."

  "Didn't young Barnes tell you who and what I am?" queried Jim, turning to her.

  "He talked like--like that babbling brook we just passed," returned the lady, with a musical laugh. "Much of it was Greek to me. But I grasped that you were a stranger to Utah--that you were from Wyoming, where you had killed many bad men, and that your mere reputation was enough out here to keep rustlers and desperadoes away from Star Ranch. Mr. Wall, you certainly are a hero in his eyes."

  It did not take great perspicuity to grasp that Jim was not far from that in her eyes. He groaned in spirit.

  "Miss Herrick, this young fellow is an awful liar," said Jim.

  "How so? He seemed very frank and sincere to me. And he has such honest eyes. I don't know Westerners, as they call you folk, but what of that?"

  "You are in for a terrible disillusion."

  "Mr. Wall, you cannot quell my enthusiasm. I know I am going to love this wild, glorious country. I've lived in London most of my life. I got to hate the crowded streets, the mud, the clamor, the dark, cold rooms where you had to have a light at midday, and the endless, ever-hurrying throngs of people. There's a strain of primitive blood in me. One of my ancestors was a viking. I think another must have been an American Indian." Here her rich laughter rang out. "At any rate, I am going to indulge my wild strain. The red gods have always whispered to me. Even as a child I knew I was intended for something big, strange, extraordinary."

  "I hardly understand you, Miss Herrick," returned Jim, in perplexity. "My education has been limited, except out in the open. I had some schooling, and I taught a country school before I was twenty. But I never saw anyone like you. So if I appear ignorant, please excuse it."

  "On the contrary, Mr. Wall, you have impressed me as far above the average Westerner," the girl returned, kindly, but without a trace of condescension. "I've met numberless people on the way out.

  Pioneers, farmers, ranchers, drivers, cowboys, and a good few that I couldn't place or learn from. But I talked with all of them.

  You certainly do not need to apologize for yourself. . . . And you have been a school-teacher! That is something that I would never have attributed to you. And what else have you been?"

  On the moment Jim was too stricken to take advantage of the opportunity to repel her once and for all. The astounding idea flashed over him that he did not want to repel her.

  "A little of everything--Western I guess," he floundered. He felt her gaze.

  "I see that you will not tell me about yourself," she went on.

  "Pardon my inquisitiveness. But I must inform you that I expect to go into the ranching business with my brother. You will be working for me, then, as well."

  "I hope you don't, Miss Herrick," he burst out, impulsively.

  "Somebody must tell you. It oughtn't come from a--a--rider like me. But this Utah is no place for such a
girl as you."

  "What do you mean, Mr. Wall? That hardly seems a compliment to me.

  I can work, and I want to. I shall adore this wild country. I tried to explain why. I can milk cows, bake bread, take care of horses. It doesn't follow just because I have money that I do not want to work."

  "Miss Herrick, you didn't get my meaning," replied Jim, hastily, with strong feeling. "It is not you who couldn't fit in. You've convinced me you could. And that is the biggest compliment I could pay you. . . . I meant that you will not be able to live, and work, too, in Utah the way you want to. You absolutely cannot indulge that primitive strain you spoke of--not out here. You dare not ride around--or even leave the house. Even that--"

  "For mercy's sake, why not?" she demanded, in astonishment.

  "Because, young woman, you are too new, too strange, too lovely to risk yourself in sight of these Utah men. . . . Not all of them, nor a tenth of them. But SOME of them. And they are the men you would meet at Star Ranch."

  His sudden intensity, perhaps as much as the content of his words, made her realize his sincerity, and that there was something amiss which her brother had failed to tell her.

  "You cannot be serious."

  "I swear it, Miss Herrick."

  "But what of the vaunted chivalry of Westerners? England rings with the daring, the gallantry, of Americans on the frontier. I've read of Fremont, Kit Carson, Crook, and many others. And of the thousands who are unsung."

  "That is true," he replied, his voice husky. "Thank God, I can say so. But you won't find THAT at Star Ranch."

  "You say I am too new, strange--too, too lovely to risk--I understand you, of course. I must doubt it, despite your evident strong feeling. You may be playing a Western joke on me."

  "I wish I was."

  "My brother will know if there is anything in what you say."

  "No! No!" burst out Jim, passionately. He was at the limit of patience with her and himself. What possessed him to talk this way? "Herrick doesn't know. He NEVER WILL know. He is English.