by Zane Grey
Cal sat there silently looking at her, and finally forced his gaze away. He chose to let her think she had fooled him, when as a matter of truth he had suddenly divined that she had leaned so close to him and nestled in his arm just out of a pure feminine devilry or coquetry. Tuck Merry’s look at her, and his dry good-humored and shrewd remark, had caused her to sit up quickly. It had also guided Cal’s wandering thoughts. What a girl! Cal could have laughed loud and long at his tenderness. But he could not laugh. He had been struck deep in his heart by some unaccountable malady. It worried him. It was serious, baffling.
Just then the big touring car with Wess and the boys mounted the last bench of the hill behind, and came humming to a stop opposite the Ford.
“Wal, heah you are,” called Wess, peevishly. “It shore took you a long time to ditch thet Ford.”
“Cal, you son-of-a-gun, you run it halfway home,” said Pan Handle, admiringly. “I’m a-goin’ to apolergize fer insinuatin’ you couldn’t drive. Yore some driver.”
“Aw, fellars, I’m gamblin’ thet gent Cal took in is to blame fer spoilin’ all our fun,” growled Arizona.
“Say heah, you long-legged galoot,” called Tim Matthews to Merry, who was now examining the engine. “Is she busted—laid out—hamstrung?”
“Mister, do you mean this Ford or the young lady?” calmly queried Tuck.
“I mean thet car, you durn fool,” shouted Tim.
“So you run into thet bank?” added Wess, more cheerfully, as he lumberingly got his long length out of the touring car. “Broke down for good, hey?”
They all got out, leisurely, and swaggered toward the Ford. Twilight had deepened, so their faces could not be clearly seen. Meanwhile Cal had been pondering how best to meet the situation. If only he could turn the tables on them! Suddenly into his mind flashed a daring idea. Impulsively he leaned close to the girl so he could whisper in her ear. “They’ve been mean an’ they’ve got it on me. So won’t you please be—be nice an’ forget all I said—an’ stand by me? I can beat them yet.”
“Go to it. I’ll play up to your game,” she whispered back.
Cal resumed his former position, conscious of an inward tremor. How this girl affected him! Her soft whisper, suggestive of forgiveness and loyalty, seemed to linger in his ears.
“Wal, Cal, why don’t you come down off your hoss?” drawled Wess.
“Cousin, get your laugh off your chest quick,” replied Cal, loud and clear. “I knew you’d tampered with the engine.”
“You did? All the time? Wal, I’ll be gol-durned. Boys, you heah Cal? He says he knew all the time. Haw! Haw! Haw!” His comrades joined in his mirth, and for a long moment they made the gloaming resound to their riotous mirth. Tim Matthews recovered first.
“Cal—if you’re—ever a-goin’—to lick me—now’s yore time—when I’m weaker’n a calf.”
But Cal remained silent, and this strange fact, manifestly not what the boys had expected, soon had a contrary effect on them.
“Ahuh!” ejaculated Cal, at last. “You feel better now, I reckon. You’ve had your joke. You’ve had one more on the baby of the family. All right. . . . Now listen. It might have been well meant, though I don’t trust any of you, but it turned out bad. You know I’m a poor driver, an’ when somethin’ busted in the engine it scared me—threw me off guard—an’ we ran into this bank. Miss Georgiana got a hard jerk an’ knock. She fainted twice. I’m afraid she’s hurt—maybe bad.”
A blank dead silence ensued. Cal felt elated. He knew these big-hearted boys. If the girl now would only do her part! Then suddenly that silence was pierced by a little low moan of anguish. Georgiana had uttered it, establishing beyond doubt in Cal’s mind the proof that she was a consummate actress. He could have whooped aloud. She was a thoroughbred.
“Aw, hell!” gasped Wess, in abject, sincere misery.
“My Gawd! Cal, don’t say the little lady’s hurt,” ejaculated Arizona.
The other two boys were probably beyond expression of their feelings, especially Tim, who had been ringleader in the plot.
“Don’t stand there like a lot of boobs!” shouted Cal. The newly learned epithet delighted him. “Clear out the back of your car, so I can carry her in there.”
“It’s done,” added Wess, sharply, “an’ you fellars are to blame. Rustle now.” Then he approached the Ford on the girl’s side and opened the door. She lay back in the dark blanket, a singularly inert figure. Cal moved over close to Georgiana, and with every show of extreme tenderness he put his arms under her and lifted her. Another little moan escaped her.
“Of all the tough luck!” exclaimed Wess, huskily. “Cal, you may beat me half to death. But honest to Gawd I didn’t put up the job. It was Tim an’ Pan Handle. . . . Let me help you. . . . Easy now.”
“There, I can manage,” replied Cal as he straightened up free of the car. How light she was! He could have carried her clear to Green Valley. Silently the boys followed him—helped him into the big car, where he sat down to let Georgiana slip off his lap into the corner. But she still leaned against him. Her bonnet fell back. Cal could just see the white glow of her face, and the big eyes, now strangely black.
“Cal, you’d better support her head,” said Wess, assuming the authority here. “You know the road’s bad in places. Boys, hustle in with them bags. . . . An’, say, you elongated stranger, stick your pack on the fender an’ ride on the runnin’ board.”
In a few moments all appeared to be in readiness for the start. Tim and Pan Handle squeezed into the front seat with Wess, and Arizona got into the back seat beside Cal.
At this critical juncture Georgiana wailed out a most heartrending cry.
“Oh, Mister—Cal—to think any young men—could be so c-r-u-e-ll!” she sobbed out.
“Cal, hadn’t we better rustle to Ryson—fer the doctor?” asked Wess, hurriedly.
Cal deliberated a moment, during which Georgiana decided that momentous question.
“Take me—to Sister,” she wailed. “I want to die—in her arms. My neck’s—broken—and no doctor could help me now. . . . I need—minister to pray—for my soul—for I’m a very—very wicked girl. Oh—oh—ohhhh!”
The little minx was giving Cal’s free hand a sly squeeze at the very moment that she was wailing. She was more than reveling in the way she had helped Cal to turn the tables on these boys. She had created a situation of her own. How completely he had now evened up the score with the boys! He had already more than sipped the sweet cup of revenge, and the end was not yet.
Never had Wess driven so wonderfully. He had a genius for gliding over the rough places in the road, so as not to jar the little lady who had wailed that her neck was broken. Pan Handle seemed set in a gloomy trance, while Tim Matthews, the instigator of the plot to discomfit Cal, might well have been a criminal on his way to be hanged. Wretchedness was no word to express his state. And as for the fun-loving and easy-going Arizona, always in trouble of others’ making, he crouched on the seat beside Cal, and it was evident his heart was broken.
The night grew dark, and when the car hummed into the denser wooded section all was pitch black except the narrow road ahead. Cal could hardly see the gleam of the girl’s face against his shoulder. Whenever Wess slowed up at a bump or crossing or wash. Georgiana would utter a faint cry. That it pierced the consciences of these guilty tricksters there could not be the slightest doubt.
“Oh, Mister Cal,” complained Georgiana, in a most convincing sad little voice, “Sister wrote me—about the beautiful West—how fine and noble and kind—all the Tonto boys. . . . Oh, it was bunk—bunk—bunk!—Not you, Mister Cal—lor you’re wonderful—but that horrible cousin of yours—and his boob friends—they’re devils. . . . To frame up—a dirty job on—a poor little Eastern girl—who came West to get well and happy!—To murder her! Oh, they ought to burn—forever in Hades!”
“Never mind about them, Miss Stockwell,” responded Cal, with the soothing tone of one ministering to an invalid.
“They’re really not responsible for what they do. If we had an asylum at Ryson my cousin would be in it. An’ if we had a jail, Tim Matthews would be there. Never mind about them. They’ll get theirs, all right! You just try to be quiet an’ don’t fret.”
At the close of Cal’s long speech Georgiana became a dead weight against him and she was quivering in convulsions of mirth. Cal feared she was about to burst into irresistible laughter, and he gave her a little admonishing shake.
“Oh, Mister Cal—I can’t move,” moaned Georgiana, not to be silenced. “I’m so cold—creeping—icy—Oh, it’s paralysis!”
This talk seemed all very good, in the interest of their united efforts to annihilate the enemy; but a moment’s thought convinced Cal that he had carried the thing far enough. Wess and the boys had been sufficiently punished. They were in the Valley of Despond. Long would it be before they tried another trick on him. Moreover, Cal’s resentment had faded. He was satisfied. He never bore malice. But at the moment when he was about to burst out into an uproarious laugh that would betray his counter-trick to the boys, the girl’s soft, cold little hand slipped into his and she nestled closer to him.
His generosity toward the boys, his good intention not to carry his deception any further, were suddenly as if they had never been. This girl, whom he had known but for a few hours, who had stirred old and new emotions in him, had taken incredible hold on his feelings. He tried to think. She was only seventeen; she was only full of fun; she was only helping him get even. But was she unconscious of what she was doing? His natural chivalry fought for an affirmation of his hopes. To help him subjugate these tricky comrades she did not need to make her deception an intimate and personal thing. Perhaps she was really tired and cold, and more of a child than she had appeared at first. The facts, however, were hard to put aside as merely childish, thoughtless actions. Cal had held a girl’s hand before and he knew what responsiveness was. This girl’s little hand had vastly more than that; it nestled, it caressed, it appealed, it thrilled. It had a marvelous power. Moreover, she lay against him with her head on his shoulder. That, to be sure, could not have been avoided, in the first place, considering the exigency of their plot. Yet there was something about her way of doing it that immeasurably changed their innocent deception. But though Cal had held another girl’s hand, it was equally true that he had never before held a girl in his arms. And now the bewildering realization came that, outside of the joke on his comrades, whether she was overplaying her part or not, despite his growing concern as to her sincerity, he wanted her where she was.
Cal’s breast heaved with his conflicting emotions, and that deep heave lifted the fragrant curly head closer to his lips. Desperately he controlled the longing to kiss those curls. But Cal could not have yielded to a temptation like that. Did she divine how he felt? he wondered, and then he trembled as very slowly she slipped her head backward and tilted her face upward, closer, with a singular soft motion. And then with her head on his shoulder she became very quiet. Cal’s eyes pierced the darkness, and made out the pale oval of her face, the black depths of her eyes, the vague sweet mouth, indistinct, and all the more alluring for that. For an endless moment he peered at this face, pale against the shadowy background. She was watching him, and he imagined she smiled. For Cal the moment was strange, complex, infinite in its far-reaching effect. An instinct of exceeding strength urged him to kiss the shadowy mouth, those sweet eyes so deep and dark in the paleness of her face. He knew he could do so—that she would not resent it—that in her there were coquetry, devilry, something new and raw in femininity to him. And that was why he did not yield. He was too earnest. He felt too greatly. For him and his kind a kiss on a girl’s lips was no slight thing. Wherefore he turned his face away to look down the road, glad to see the twinkling lights of Green Valley Ranch. A few more moments would end this joke of his, this retaliation which had begun in mirthful zest and had subtly changed to something beyond his ken.
The car passed the corral fences, the barns, the sheds, and stopped before the long, rambling ranch house, from which lighted windows gleamed.
Wess turned to say, anxiously: “Cal, how is she?”
“Reckon she’s no worse,” replied Cal, feeling a strong regurgitation of his former glee.
“Lady—I—I do hope you’re recoverin’,” faltered Wess, in deep-voiced solicitation. Manifestly he was hoping against hope. And Cal felt how the other boys hung on her answer.
“Thank you—I guess—I’m a little better,” she said, languidly. “The terrible pain—is gone—and I’m easier. I guess my neck’s not broken, after all.—Please forgive me—for all I said—back there.”
Wess actually writhed and groaned in his self-accusing unhappiness. Her sweetly uttered request to be forgiven was the last straw.
“Wess, go in an’ break the news to teacher, but mind you, don’t scare her,” said Cal.
“My Gawd! Cal—I cain’t face Miss Mary an’ tell her what we’ve done to her little sister. I cain’t,” replied Wess, distractedly.
Cal felt a sly pinch on his arm, and he knew what to expect.
“Mister Cal—you go in, please—and tell sister,” said Georgiana. “Lie to her. Say I’m just tired out—little weak and sick, you know. Then come back after me. I’m afraid I can’t walk.”
“I’ll carry you,” interposed Wess, with mounting hopelessness.
“Oh no, thank you. Mister Cal knows just how to handle me,” she replied, graciously. “You can carry my baggage.”
Cal slipped out, taking with him another lingering, encouraging pressure from that little hand. He ran into the house. The long living room was bright with two lamps and blazing logs in the huge stone fireplace. Henry Thurman looked up from his paper.
“Wal, heah you be, Cal,” he drawled, with a smile smoothing out the net of fine wrinkles in his massive face. He was a large man, gray-haired, beardless, with the stamp of pioneer on every feature. Cal’s mother and sister both called in unison from the kitchen that supper was burning.
“Come in here,” answered Cal, and when they came in, happily expectant in their hospitality, Enoch, and Boyd also entered from the back porch. “Listen, folks, an’ don’t get scared, now. There’s been a little accident. I must tell teacher. Then I’ll fetch her sister in. Just wait an’ don’t be scared.”
As Cal hurried out his father drawled: “What air thet boy up to?” Miss Stockwell’s room was at the far end of the south porch. Cal knocked on the door and called. “Teacher, are you there?”
“Cal, is that you?” she replied, joyously, from within, and then opened the door. She was dressed in white and her comely face seemed happily eager, yet anxious.
“Teacher,” whispered Cal, almost hilariously, “Georgiana an’ I have put it all over Wess an’ his outfit.”
“You have? Oh, fine! Tell me. Where’s Georgie? Is she all right?”
“Listen. I can’t tell everythin’ now,” went on Cal, breathlessly. “The boys tampered with the Ford. It broke down as they’d planned. Then we pretended Georgiana was hurt in the accident. But she wasn’t, see. Wess, an’ the boys are sick. Now your part is to pretend to be terribly angry when Wess comes in. See.”
“Yes, Cal, I see. I’ll do my part. But hurry,” she replied.
“I’ll send Wess an’ his gang in first. You be there. You’re supposed to think Georgiana is bad hurt an’ that they did it. See! Then I’ll fetch her in. Oh, say, it’ll be great!”
With that Cal wheeled away, and leaping off the porch he ran round the house to the walk, and so out of the gate to the car. All the boys were standing there, dark, gloomy, waiting.
“Wess, go in an’ take your medicine,” ordered Cal, solemnly. “Drag your pardners with you.—Teacher is awful mad.”
“See heah, Cal,” blustered Wess, “I ain’t a-goin’ in there. Tim’s most to blame for this low-down job an’ he’s gotta face the music.”
“Mister Wess,” spoke up Georgiana from the car, and her youthf
ul high-pitched voice was cutting. “You and your friends are a fine brave bunch—I don’t think!”
Cal instantly saw how that remark settled it. Wess and his partners would have faced a regiment of infuriated sisters.
“Grab all the baggage you can carry,” said Cal, briskly. “An’ you, Tuck, go along with them. I’ll fetch the girl right in.”
When the five young men, heavily laden, had filed through the gate, Cal whispered into the car.
“Come on now. We’re sure goin’ to have some fun. I fixed it up with your sister. She’s on an’ she’ll do her part.”
“I was afraid you’d ball up this part of the play,” replied Georgiana. “I didn’t want Mary to be frightened.”
“Oh, she knows. Don’t worry. She’s goin’ to hop them hard before we get there. . . . We’ll hurry.”
“I’m all wrapped up,” complained the girl, stumbling as she stepped out on the running board. There she hesitated, looking down on Cal. The gleam from the windows lighted up her face. “I’m supposed to be crippled, am I not? Do I have to walk?”
“Why—why—yes, sure, I—You can walk to the door. Then I’ll carry you.” Nonplussed, and uncertain how to take her, Cal just stared upward into her face. She seemed to be a woman then, infinitely sure of herself, beyond Cal’s comprehension.
“Cal, you’re a fairly good actor,” she said, finally, “but when it comes to playing choosies in the dark you are certainly punk.”
“Choosies!” ejaculated Cal. “What on earth are they?”
“Your education has been neglected. If I can get up the pep I’ll have to take you in hand.”
The door of the house opened, sent out a broad flare of light for a moment, and then closed.
“Come on,” said Cal, again shot through with eagerness to see the climax of his joke. Georgiana gathered up the folds of the blanket from round her feet, and followed him into the yard and down to the porch.
“Oh, listen,” whispered Cal. She grasped his arm in her eagerness and it was certain that she giggled.
