Cabin Gulch

by Zane Grey

  During this rapid exchange between Kells and his lieutenant, Jim Cleve sat on the edge of the table, one dusty boot swinging so that his spur jangled, a wisp of a cigarette in his lips. His face was whole except where there seemed to be bruises under his eyes. Joan had never seen him look like this. She guessed that he had been drunk—perhaps was still drunk. That utterly abandoned face Joan was so keen to read made her bite her tongue to keep from crying out. Yes, Jim was lost.

  “What’d they fight about?” queried Kells.

  “Ask Cleve,” replied Pearce. “Reckon I’d just as lief not talk any more about him.”

  Then Kells turned to Cleve, and stepped before him. Somehow these two men face to face thrilled Joan to her depths. They presented such contrasts. Kells was keen, imperious, vital, strong, and complex, with an unmistakable friendly regard for this young outcast. Cleve seemed aloof, detached, indifferent to everything, with a white weary reckless scorn. Both were far above the gaping ruffians around them.

  “Cleve, why’d you draw on Gulden?” asked Kells sharply.

  “That’s my business,” replied Cleve slowly, and with his piercing eyes on Kells he blew a long thin blue stream of smoke upward.

  “Sure. But I remember what you asked me the other day . . . about Gulden. Was that why?”

  “Nope,” replied Cleve. “This was my affair.”

  “All right. But I’d like to know. Pearce says you’re in bad with Gulden’s friends. If I can’t make peace between you, I’ll have to take sides.”

  “Kells, I don’t need anyone on my side,” said Cleve, and he flung the cigarette away.

  “Yes, you do,” replied Kells persuasively. “Every man on this border needs that. And he’s lucky when he gets it.”

  “Well, I don’t ask for it. I don’t want it.”

  “That’s your own business, too. I’m not insisting or advising.”

  Kells’s force and ability to control men manifested itself in his speech and attitude. Nothing could have been easier than to rouse the antagonism of Jim Cleve, abnormally responding as he was to the wild conditions of this border environment.

  “Then you’re not calling my hand?” queried Cleve with his dark piercing glance on Kells.

  “I pass, Jim,” replied the bandit easily.

  Cleve began to roll another cigarette. Joan saw his strong brown hands tremble, and she realized that this came from his nervous condition, not from agitation. Her heart ached for him. What a white somber face—so terribly expressive of the overthrow of his soul. He had fled to the border in reckless fury at her—at himself. There in its wildness he had, perhaps, lost thought of himself and memory of her. He had plunged into the unrestrained border life. Its changing, raw, and fateful excitement might have made him forget, but behind all was the terrible seeking to destroy and be destroyed. Joan shuddered when she remembered how she had mocked this boy’s wounded vanity—how soothingly she had said he did not possess manhood and nerve enough even to be bad.

  “See here, Red,” said Kells to Pearce. “Tell me what happened . . . what you saw. Jim can’t object to that.”

  “Sure,” replied Pearce, thus admonished. “We was all over at Beard’s an’ several games were on. Gulden rode into camp last night. He’s always sore, but last night it seemed more’n usual. But he didn’t say much an’ nothin’ happened. We all reckoned his trip fell through. Today he was restless. He walked an’ walked just like a cougar in a pen. You know how Gulden has to be on the move. Well, we let him alone, you can bet. But sudden-like he comes up to our table . . . me an’ Cleve an’ Beard an’ Texas was playin’ cards . . . an’ he nearly kicks the table over. I grabbed the gold an’ Cleve, he saved the whiskey. We’d been drinkin’ an’ Cleve most of all. Beard was white at the gills with rage an’ Texas was suffocatin’. But we all was afraid of Gulden, except Cleve, as it turned out. But he didn’t move or look mean. An’ Gulden pounded on the table an’ addressed himself to Cleve.

  “ ‘I’ve a job you’ll like. Come on.’

  “ ‘Job? Say, man, you couldn’t have a job I’d like,’ replied Cleve, slow an’ cool.

  “You know how Gulden gets when them spells come over him. It’s just plain cussedness. I’ve seen gunfighters lookin’ for trouble . . . for someone to kill. But Gulden was worse than that. You-all take my hunch . . . he’s got a screw loose in his nut!

  “ ‘Cleve,’ he said, ‘I located the Brander gold diggin’s . . . an’ the girl was there.’

  “Some kind of a white flash went over Cleve. An’ we-all, rememberin’ Luce, began to bend low, ready to duck. Gulden didn’t look no different from usual. You can’t see any change in him. But I for one felt all hell burnin’ in him.

  “ ‘Oho! You have,’ said Cleve, quick like he was pleased. ‘An’ did you get her?’

  “ ‘Not yet. Just looked over the ground. I’m pickin’ you to go with me. We’ll split on the gold, an’ I’ll take the girl.’

  “Cleve slung the whiskey bottle an’ it smashed on Gulden’s mug, knockin’ him flat. Then Cleve was up, like a cat, gun burnin’ red. The other fellers was dodgin’ low. An’ as I ducked, I seen Gulden, flat on his back, draggin’ at his gun. He stopped short an’ his hand flopped. The side of his face went all bloody. I made sure he’d cashed, so I leaped up, an’ grabbed Cleve.

  “It’d’ve been all right if Gulden had only cashed. But he hadn’t. He came to an’ bellowed for his gun an’ fer his pards. Why, you could have heard him for a mile. Then, as I told you, I had trouble in holdin’ back a general mix-up. An’ while we was hollerin’ about it, I led them all over to you. Gulden is layin’ back there with his ear shot off. An’ that’s all.”

  Kells, with thoughtful mien, turned from Pearce to the group of dark-faced men.

  “This fight settles one thing,” he said, to them. “We’ve got to have organization. If you’re not all a lot of fools, you’ll see that. You need a head. Most of you swear by me, but some of you are for Gulden. Just because he’s a bloody devil. These times are the wildest the West ever knew and they’re growing wilder. Gulden is a great machine for execution. He has no sense of fear. He’s a giant. He loves to fight . . . to kill. But Gulden’s all but crazy. This last deal proves that. I leave it to your common sense. He rides around, hunting for some lone camp to rob. Or some girl to make off with. He does not plan with me or the men whose judgment I have confidence in. He’s always without gold. And so are most of his followers. I don’t know who they all are. And I don’t care. But here we split . . . unless they and Gulden take advice and orders from me. I’m not siding so much with Cleve. Any of you ought to admit that Gulden’s kind of work will disorganize a gang. He’s been with us so long, and he approaches Cleve with a job. Cleve is a stranger. He may belong here, but he’s not yet one of us. Gulden ought not to have approached him. It was no straight deal. We can’t figure what Gulden meant exactly, but it isn’t likely he wanted Cleve to go. It was a bluff. He got called. You men think this over . . . whether you’ll stick to Gulden or to me. Clear out now.”

  His strong direct talk evidently impressed them, and in silence they crowded out of the cabin, leaving Pearce and Cleve behind.

  “Jim, are you just hell-bent on fighting or do you mean to make yourself the champion of every poor girl in these wilds?”

  Cleve puffed a cloud of smoke that enveloped his head.

  “I don’t pick quarrels,” he replied.

  “Then you get red-headed at the very mention of a girl.”

  A savage gesture of Cleve’s suggested that Kells was right.

  “Here, don’t get red-headed at me!” called Kells with piercing sharpness. “I’ll be your friend if you let me. But declare yourself like a man . . . if you want me for a friend.”

  “Kells, I’m much obliged,” replied Cleve with a semblance of earnestness. “I’m no good, or I wouldn’t be out here. But I can’t stand for those . . . those deals with girls.”

  “You’ll change,” rejoined Kells bitterly.
“Wait till you live a few lonely years out here. You don’t understand the border. You’re young. I’ve seen the gold fields of California and Nevada. Men go crazy with the gold fever. It’s gold that makes men wild. If you don’t get killed, you’ll change. If you live, you’ll see life on this border. War debases the moral force of a man, but nothing like what you’ll experience here the next few years. Men with their wives and daughters are pouncing into this range. They’ve tasted blood. Wait till the great gold strike comes! Then you’ll see men and women go back ten thousand years. And then what’ll one girl more or less matter?”

  “Well, you see, Kells, I was loved so devotedly by one and made such a hero of . . . that I just can’t bear to see any girl mistreated.”

  He almost drawled the words and he was suave and cool, and his face was inscrutable, but a certain bitterness in his tone gave the lie to all he said and looked.

  Pearce caught the broader inference and he laughed as at a great joke. Kells shook his head doubtfully, as if Cleve’s transparent speech only added to the complexity. And Cleve turned away, as if in an instant he had forgotten his comrades.

  Afterward, in the silence and darkness of night, Joan Randle lay upon her bed, sleepless, haunted by Jim’s white face, amazed at the magnificent madness of him, thrilled to her soul by the meaning of his attack on Gulden, and tortured by a love that had grown immeasurably, full of the strength of these hours of suspense and the passion of this wild border.

  Even in her dreams Joan seemed to be bending all her will toward that inevitable and fateful moment when she must stand before Jim Cleve. It had to be. Therefore she would absolutely compel herself to meet it, regardless of the tumult that must rise within her. When all had been said, her experiences so far among these bandits, in spite of the shocks and suspense that had made her a different girl, had been infinitely more fortunate than might have been expected. She prayed for this luck to continue and forced herself into a belief that it would.

  That night she slept in Dandy Dale’s clothes, except for the boots, and sometimes, while turning in restless slumber, she had been awakened by rolling on the heavy gun, which she had not removed from the belt. At such moments she had to ponder in the darkness, to realize that she, Joan Randle, lay a captive in a bandit’s camp, dressed in a dead bandit’s garb, and packing his gun—even while she slept. It was such an improbable, impossible thing. Yet the cold feel of the polished gun sent a thrill of certainty through her.

  In the morning she at least did not have to suffer the shame of getting into Dandy Dale’s clothes, for she was already in them. That was something. She formed a grain of comfort even in that. When she had put on the mask and sombrero, she studied the effect in her little mirror. And she again decided that no one, not even Jim Cleve, could recognize her in this disguise. Likewise she gathered courage from the fact that even her best girl friend would have found her figure unfamiliar and striking where once it had been merely tall and slender and strong, ordinarily dressed. Then how would Jim Cleve ever recognize her? She remembered her voice that had been called a contralto, low and deep, and how she used to sing the simple songs she knew. She could not disguise that voice. But she need not let Jim hear it. Then there was a return of the idea that he would instinctively recognize her—that no disguise could be proof to a lover who had ruined himself for her. Suddenly she realized how futile all her worry and shame. Sooner or later she must reveal her identity to Jim Cleve. Out of all this complexity of emotion Joan divined that what she yearned for most was to spare Cleve the shame consequent upon recognition of her and then the agony he must suffer at a false conception of her presence here. It was a weakness in her. When death menaced her lover and the most inconceivably horrible situation yawned for her, still she could only think of her passionate yearning to have him know, all in a flash, that she loved him, that she had followed him in remorse, that she was true to him and would die before being anything else.

  When she left her cabin, she was in a mood to force an issue. Kells was sitting at table, and being served by Bate Wood.

  “Hello, Dandy,” he greeted her in surprise and pleasure. “This’s early for you.”

  Joan returned his greeting and said that she could not sleep all the time.

  “You’re coming around. I’ll bet you hold up a stage before a month is out.”

  “Hold up a stage?” echoed Joan.

  “Sure. It’ll be great fun,” replied Kells with a laugh. “Here . . . sit down and eat with me. Bate, come along lively with breakfast. It’s fine to see you there. That mask changes you, though. No one can see how pretty you are. Joan, your admirer Gulden has been incapacitated for the present.”

  Then in evident satisfaction Kells repeated the story that Joan had heard Red Pearce tell the night before, and in the telling Kells enlarged somewhat upon Jim Cleve.

  “I’ve taken a liking to Cleve,” said Kells. “He’s a strange youngster. But he’s more man than boy. I think he’s broken-hearted over some rotten girl who’s been faithless or something. Most women are no good, Joan. A while ago I’d have said all women were that, but since I’ve known you, I think . . . I know different. Still one girl out of a million doesn’t change a world.”

  “What will this J-Jim C-Cleve do . . . when he sees . . . me?” asked Joan, and she choked over the name.

  “Don’t eat so fast, girl,” said Kells. “You’re only seventeen years old and you’ve plenty of time. . . . Well, I’ve thought some about Cleve. He’s not crazy like Gulden, but he’s just as dangerous. He’s dangerous because he doesn’t know what he’s doing . . . has absolutely no fear of death . . . and then he’s swift with a gun. That’s a bad combination. Cleve will kill a man presently. He’s shot three already, and in Gulden’s case he meant to kill. If he once kills a man . . . that’ll make him a gunfighter. I’ve worried a little about his seeing you. But I can manage him, I guess. He can’t be scared or driven. But he may be led. I’ve had Red Pearce tell him you are my wife. I hope he believes it, for none of the other fellows believe it. Anyway, you’ll meet this Cleve soon, maybe today, and I want you to be friendly. If I can steady him . . . stop his drinking . . . he’ll be the best man for me on this border.”

  “I’m to help persuade him to join your band?” asked Joan, and she could not yet control her voice.

  “Is that so black a thing?” queried Kells, evidently nettled, and he glared at her.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” faltered Joan. “Is this . . . this boy a criminal yet?”

  “No. He’s only a fine decent young chap gone wild . . . gone to hell for some girl. I told you that. You don’t seem to grasp the point. If I can control him, he’ll be of value to me . . . he’ll be a bold and clever and dangerous man . . . he’ll last out here. If I can’t win him, why, he won’t last a week longer. He’ll be shot or knifed in a brawl. Without any control Cleve’ll go straight to the hell he’s headed for.”

  Joan pushed back her plate and, looking up, steadily eyed the bandit. “Kells, I’d rather he ended his . . . his career quickly . . . and went to . . . to hell . . . rather than live to be a bandit and murderer at your command.”

  Kells laughed mockingly, yet the savage action with which he threw his cup against the wall attested to the fact that Joan had strange power to hurt him.

  “That’s your sympathy, because I told you some girl drove him out here,” said the bandit. “He’s done for. You’ll know that the moment you see him. I really think he or any man out here would be the better for my interest. Now, I want to know if you’ll stand by me . . . put in a word to help influence this wild boy.”

  “I . . . I’ll have to see him first,” replied Joan.

  “Well, you take it sort of hard,” growled Kells. Then presently he brightened. “I seem always to forget that you’re only a kid. Listen. Now you do as you like. But I want to warn you that you’ve got to get back the same kind of nerve”—here he lowered his voice and glanced at Bate Wood—“that you showed when you shot m
e. You’re going to see some sights. A great gold strike. Men grown gold mad. Women of no more account than a puff of cottonseed. Hunger, toil, pain, disease, starvation, robbery, blood, murder, language, death . . . all nothing, nothing. There will be only gold. Sleepless nights . . . days of hell . . . rush and rush . . . all strangers with greedy eyes. The things that made life will be forgotten and life itself will be cheap. There will be only that yellow stuff . . . gold . . . over which men go mad and women sell their souls.”

  After breakfast, Kells had Joan’s horse brought out of the corral and saddled.

  “You must ride some every day. You must keep in condition,” he said. “Pretty soon we may have a chase, and I don’t want it to tear you to pieces.”

  “Where shall I ride?” asked Joan.

  “Anywhere you like, up and down the gulch.”

  “Are you going to have me watched?”

  “Not if you say you won’t run off.”

  “You trust me?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. I promise. And if I change my mind, I’ll tell you.”

  “Lord! Don’t do it, Joan. I . . . I . . . well, you’ve come to mean a great deal to me. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.” As she mounted the horse, Kells added: “Don’t stand any raw talk from any of the gang.”

  He had meant to tell her again that he loved her, yet he controlled it. Was he ashamed? Had he seen into the depths of himself and despised what he had imagined love? There were antagonistic forces at war within him.

  It was early morning and a rosy light tinged the fresh green. She let the eager horse break into a canter and then a gallop, and she rode up the gulch till the trail started into rough ground. Then, turning, she went back down under the pines, and by the cabins, to where the gulch narrowed its outlet into the wide valley. Here she met several dusty horsemen driving a pack train. One, a jovial ruffian, threw up his hands in mock surrender.