Nevada (1995)

by Grey, Zane

  "Hettie, you don't want to get left, do you?" he asked, gruffly.

  "I should smile not, Marvie," she replied, secretly amused at him.

  "Well, rustle to your wagon," he replied, and spurred his horse away.

  Hettie watched the lad. He could ride. "I wonder," she mused.

  "Some Arizona girl will fall in love with him."

  "Men, here's the deal," Ben was saying as Hettie reached the wagons. "We're in no hurry. Save the horses and stick close together. About mid-afternoon look for water and grass."

  Then followed days that held increasing interest for Hettie. Once off the main road, swift progress would have been impossible, even had Ben desired it. The road was not merely rough, but narrow and dangerous. Yet it showed signs of considerable travel. But they met not a wagon or horseman going or coming.

  The third day, while climbing the foothills Hettie grew tired of dust and heat and the brush that continually obstructed her view, and she sought the comfort and security of the inside of their little canvas home. Camp was made so late that darkness had intervened. The next day was hard, a long jolting ride downhill, with nothing to see but rough slopes, gullies, and dust.

  They expected to reach Lineville in time to pitch camp early, but sunset had come and gone before they rode into a wide street lined by strange old houses, which constituted the border town. Hettie would have been more curious had she been less fatigued. As it was, the place gave her a queer sensation and she would far rather have gone on to camp in the open.

  The wagons halted. Rough-looking men, some with picks and packs over their shoulders, passed by with bold eyes seeking out Hettie and Ina. Also she saw Chinamen peep from dark portals, and tall white-faced men in black garb and high hats stare fixedly at her.

  So she sought her tent.

  Presently Ben poked his head between the curtains at the back of the wagon and said: "There's a hotel here, but I reckon we'll dodge it. It's called the Gold Mine. Raidy said it was a terrible dive once, an' it's pretty raw yet. But there's a woman has a nice place near the edge of town. We can drive in her yard and get our supper there. It'll be a little change and save waiting. The men will go on to a farm outside town and make camp."

  Hettie peeped out to take a look at the Gold Mine. It was a drab low building, with vacant eye-like windows, the blinds of which seemed to hide secrets. Dark faces peered from a wide doorway.

  "Ben, I'd rather not stay in this town," said Hettie.

  "Reckon I'm not keen on that myself," replied Ben, with a laugh.

  "After supper we'll drive on to where the boys make camp."

  Hettie did not look out again. The driver called, "Getdap" to his tired horses, and again the wagon rolled on. It relieved Hettie that some distance was traveled before they made another halt.

  Darkness had fallen when again Ben called: "Come, mother and Hettie. Supper is ready. And I'll bet it'll be good, for I was in the kitchen. The woman's name is Mrs. Wood. She's a Westerner, all right, and likes to talk."

  Ina was beside Ben, and he held the sleepy Blaine in his arms. The house apparently stood back in a large lot, surrounded by trees through which the wind roared. Ben led the way round to the side, where a bright light shone. They were ushered into a clean, warm kitchen, where in the light Hettie saw a stout, ruddy-faced woman who appeared most agreeable and kind. She had keen eyes that did not miss anything. Hettie liked her, particularly her solicitude for the weary little Blaine, who did not thoroughly awake until he was being fed. Hettie sat at the table, aware of the ample and appetizing supper, and hungry enough to do justice to it. But for some reason she could not eat much. She attributed her inhibition to a nervousness roused on the entrance into this border town. Yet she was seldom nervous.

  Ben and Ida enjoyed the meal, and were not in the least affected by any unaccountable something in Lineville. Ben particularly found the woman interesting. He kept asking questions. Hettie noted that, though Mrs. Wood appeared talkative in the extreme, she never made one query or showed any curiosity whatever.

  "How long have you lived here?" asked Ben.

  "Nigh on to six years now," she replied.

  "Then you must have seen Lineville in its heyday?"

  "I seen it when it was bad, if that's what you mean. Course Lineville ain't no Sunday school to-day, but, shucks! it's nothin' to what I've seen it. Lineville is a growin' town. We've got a school, post office, church, new stores, an' people comin', mostly people connected with minin' interests."

  "Any cattle?" asked Ben.

  "No. The cattle went with the rustlers," she replied, smiling.

  "That's lucky for your town and for the ranchers over the range," laughed Ben.

  "Yes, I guess so. But some rustlers weren't so bad, when you come to know them. All cattlemen on the open range are rustlers, if you know what I mean. I've met a pile of Westerners in my day, an'

  I've knowed worse men than rustlers. The gamblers, now, I've no use for them, though my husband was a gambler once, an' a gunman, too--years back in Texas an' New Mexico, where life was uncertain, I'll tell you."

  "Raidy, one of my men, tells me life used to be pretty uncertain right here in Lineville, not so long ago," said Ben.

  "Well, that depends upon experience," replied the woman. "Your man never seen any real frontier towns, such as old Dodge, an'

  Cimmaron, or Lincoln, or a hundred others. Not that there wasn't some real killers droppin' in Lineville now and then, years back.

  McPherson, a gambler an' a gunman, which was unusual for gamblers.

  An' Sandy Hall. He killed four men here once in a shootin' row.

  An' a miner named Hendricks. He was no slouch with a gun, either.

  Reckon, though, Jim Lacy was the most dangerous man who ever struck Lineville."

  "Jim Lacy?" said Ben, with interest. "I've heard of him, at least.

  What was he like? Did you ever see him?"

  "See Jim Lacy! Why, he lived with me two winters," replied Mrs.

  Wood. "He used to set right there behind my stove an' talk for hours. Jim was only a boy. Somethin' like Billy the Kid, who I knew well. But Jim wasn't mean. He was just the quietest, nice, soft-speakin' fellar. Circumstances must have made Jim a gunman.

  He hailed from Idaho an' he was hell when he got riled. Jim killed several men here years back. The last one was a loud-yappin' coyote named Cawthorne. Link Cawthorne. He was the cheap notoriety-seekin', braggin' gunfighter. An' he was always tryin' to force Jim Lacy into a fight. Everybody knew Link'd get killed.

  But the fool himself couldn't see it. He beat a girl to death.

  Then Jim called him out an' shot him. After that Jim left for Arizona. I've never heard of him since."

  "Arizona? That's where we are bound for," replied Ben, smiling.

  "We hoped to find the climate there beneficial. But if Arizona is full of Jim Lacys it might not be so healthy."

  "Arizona or any other Territory would only be the better for men like Jim Lacy," returned the woman, rather brusquely.

  "Reckon so. I was only joking," said Ben, as he arose. "We must be going. Thanks for a capital supper."

  She received the money Ben proffered and led the way to the door, holding the lamp.

  "Good luck to you, sir," she said. "It's a glorious country you're goin' to. But you'll lose this big-eyed sister of yours over there. . . . Good-by, little boy; you'll grow up on a horse in Arizona. Good-by, lady, an' you, miss."

  Chapter eight.

  The days multiplied until Hettie no longer could keep account of them. Endless leagues of Nevada, wastes of barren ground, plains of green, valleys between bleak ranges, ridge and upland ever heaving higher, lay back along the winding, rolling road.

  "Boss, we're gettin' into the wild-hoss country," said old Raidy, one morning, when the caravan was about ready to start. "Yestiddy we seen herds of broomtails. An' the boys had their troubles.

  California Red had to be roped. An' I reckon, to-day, if you don't put him under
a saddle we'll have to hawg-tie him."

  "Fetch Red in," replied Ben, with a gleam of light flashing across his darkly tanned face. "I'll ride him and help drive the horses."

  The road led over high country, where from every elevation the defiance of far-flung distances seemed to greet the travelers. A vast monotony like an invisible blanket covered the land. Gone were the towns, the mining camps, the lonely ranches of western and central Nevada. Away to the east and south stretched the desert solitude, day by day changing by almost imperceptible degree, gathering color and force, calling and beckoning toward some unseen yet promised infinitude.

  Hettie Ide had come to touch happiness again, strangely, fearfully, as if these June days were dreams. The action and incident and life of such travel, day after day, with every mile bringing new scenes, with the future there beyond the purple ranges, satisfied a longing she had scarcely known she possessed. The dust and wind, the chill storms that blew down from the rocky heights, the rough descents and the slow uphill climbs, the rolling, rolling of the wagon wheels, the late camps and black nights, the work that it was imperative she share--all these did not pall upon Hettie. Rather they discovered some bond between her and the vague past and grew toward fulfillment of a need of her soul.

  And in watching for and sighting the bands of wild horses she came at last to understand her brother Ben. His passion for wild horses that had almost been his ruin! But such conviction, so long her father's, and therefore accepted by family and friends, had begun to lose its hold on Hettie. Might not such love of horses and the open range, solitude, freedom, the hard fare and toil, the kinship with nature--might not these develop character to noble ends?

  She saw the clouds of dust way out on the desert, under which dark moving bands of horses, with long manes and tails streaming in the wind, swept onward, to be swallowed by the gray obscurity. Black and sharp stood a stallion on a ridge top, silhouetted against the sky, to leap away and down, wildly instinct with freedom. On the cedar slopes, where the gnarled and stunted trees grew wide apart and the bleached dead grass waved over the outcropping green, wild horses grazed to start erect, lean heads high, ears and tails up, to stand like statues an instant, bays and buckskins, blacks and whites, with a pinto flashing like a zebra here and there, suddenly to bound into action and speed away.

  "I know now why the boys call them broomies," Hettie told her mother. "Most of them have tails like brooms. Wild, ragged, scrawny horses! Yet some are sleek and graceful, long of tail and mane. And now and then I can pick out a beauty."

  "I don't want to see any wild horses," replied Mrs. Ide. "I hope there'll be none where we settle down to ranch."

  At times, on level plains or down long slopes, Hettie could see how Ben and the riders had almost to fight off wild stallions. How California Red glistened in the sunlight! He was in his element with the scent of his kind in his nostrils. Sometimes a piercing whistle floated back to Hettie.

  The day passed as if it had flown, and Hettie recorded in memory pictures of lone stallions, and stragglers and strings and herds of wild horses numbering into the thousands. That night, far into the late hours, Hettie heard Ben's riders yelling and shooting, galloping in and out of camp. It was a hard night for them.

  More wild-horse days, as Ben called them, passed and were added to the weeks. Then the colored rock walls of Utah rose above the long slopes of sage and greasewood.

  Marysville at last! The Mormon town, far over the border into Utah, had been a Mecca for the riders. Here on the outskirts horses were rested, wagons were repaired, supplies were bought, and much-needed information secured.

  "Yes, you can cross over into Arizona," an old Mormon told Ben in Hettie's hearing, while his keen eyes, like blue lightning, flashed over her. "Good road to Lund an' Kanab. Then you cross into the land of cliffs an' canyons. An' from there it's slow travel.

  Vermilion Cliffs, Buckskin, Rock House Valley, under the Paria Plateau, an' so on, down the Lee's Ferry an' the Canyon. When you reach there, stranger, you'll want to turn back. Better abide here with us, in this desert we've made blossom."

  Hettie liked the black-hooded Mormon women, though she pitied them, and the unseen sealed wives the riders whispered about. The healthy happy children were most lovable. But when she saw the old white-bearded Mormons or the tall, still-faced, fire-eyed sons, she wanted to run back to the covert of her tent.

  Then on again, rolling downgrade over a hard desert road, eating up the miles, the Ide caravan traveled, descending league-long slopes of red earth and green growths, with the red cliff walls keeping pace with them, and ever rising higher, as they wandered on down into the dim-hazed marvelous region of canyons.

  Kanab was a lonesome Mormon settlement close to the Arizona line.

  Its white church stood out against the green background; orchards and fields encompassed log cabins and stone houses; irrigation ditches bordered the road on both sides. The sun smiled upon the fertile spot.

  Arizona at last! Early the next morning Hettie heard that pealing slogan from Ben's lusty throat. What magic in a name! But as she gazed down the green-and-red hollow, thirty miles that looked like only three, up the purpling slope to the black fringe of Buckskin Plateau, where it flowed like a river of trees that merged into a lake of forests, and on to the grandly-looming Vermilion Cliffs, she marveled no more at the enchantment of that name. One long breathless look won Hettie Ide forever. After all the weeks of travel, the training of eye, the judgment of color and distance, she was confounded here on the border of Arizona.

  "Oh, Ben," she called, "let us stop here!"

  But Ben rode far ahead, ever thoughtful of his beloved horses.

  Hettie could see him gaze away down the wonderful valley toward the dim obscurity of the rock-walled fastnesses and again up at the vast frowning front of Buckskin.

  At sunset the riders halted to camp in the edge of the pines, far above the valley which it had taken all day to cross. It had to be a dry camp, but the horses had been watered below. Hettie stood under the last pines and faced the west. She could not tell what it was that she saw. A glory of gold and purple cloud overhung a region of red rock, distant, broken, carved, where a lilac haze in transparent veils and rays spread from the sinking sun. She looked through that haze into an obscurity baffling and compelling, where shadows might be mountains and the purple depths beyond conception.

  Then, as the pageant failed and faded, leaving her with a pang of regret, as if she had suffered actual loss, she turned to the forest and the camp. What magnificent pines! Black squirrels with white tails scurried over the brown-matted, bluebell-dotted ground.

  Marvie was to be seen prowling from tree to tree with his rifle.

  After so many camps on the desert, wide and open and windy, where camp fires were meager, and there was neither friendliness nor intimacy, how wonderful this temporary stand in the forest! Hettie had difficulty drawing her breath and the tang of pine seemed to clog her nostrils. Ben whistled as he brushed and combed his horse; the riders sang as they came in with bridles and nosebags on their arms; little Blaine, now like an Indian, gamboled about, and Mrs. Ide, as always, was bustling around the camp fire. Ina seemed busy at the back of her wagon. Hettie imagined they were nomads, gypsies on the march.

  "Supper," sang out Mrs. Ide, cheerily.

  "Come an' git it!" yelled Hank as if to outcall her.

  "Marvie!" called Ben. His deep voice peeled down through the darkening aisles of the forest.

  That night Hettie sought her bed early, exhausted in mind and body.

  But she did not at once fall asleep. Packs of coyotes surrounded the camp and kept up a continual howling, yelping, barking, whining. But what a wild, satisfying medley! Back on Tule Lake it had been an event for Hettie to hear one lonesome coyote, far off on the hills. On Buckskin Plateau it appeared the coyotes were many and bold. She was sure several ventured close to her wagon.

  At length they gradually worked away, until their wails and mourns died i
n the deep forest.

  Hettie imagined she had prepared herself for Arizona. But next day, when riding horseback for a change, she emerged from the pines to the edge of the plateau, she was unable even to give an echo of Ben's stentorian long-drawn "WHOOPEE!"

  Wild, beautiful, majestic, zigzagged the Vermilion Cliffs, towering over another and the vastly greater valley, softly, deeply purple, and sweeping away, widening like a colossal fan, out to the desert, where a ragged rent in the earth, tremendous and awe-inspiring, told Hettie she was gazing at the Grand Canyon.

  From that moment time seemed to cease for Hettie Ide. She let her horse follow the leaders, and rode down and down, where neither dust nor heat meant aught to her. The purple valley yawned and seemed to swallow her. Lost was the sweep of the range and that fascinating rent in the desert. The red wall towered on the left, and on the right mounted the gray-sloped black-fringed plateau.

  Over the purple sage-flat strung out the cavalcade, hour after hour, until another sunset halted the weary travelers in a grass- green basin, where water salt to the taste wound its gleaming musical way.

  "Two more days, folks, and then the Rubicon!" called out Ben, prayerfully, yet gayly.

  "Wal, boss, what may thet there Rubicon be?" asked Raidy as he wiped his grimy face.

  "Lee's Ferry, man, where we cross the Colorado--if we ever do."

  "Son, we ain't crossin' any Rubies or ferries till we come to them," relied Raidy. "I'm thinkin' luck is with this Ide outfit."

  "Not a horse lost yet, not a wheel slipped," returned Ben, throwing up his head, like a lion tossing its mane.

  "Wal, we ain't met any hoss thieves yet, or real bad roads. But the Mormons say wait till we hit across the canyon."

  On the morrow, up out of the valley they climbed, like snails; up out of the green to the dragging sand, and toiled on ever nearer and nearer the grand jutting corner of the red cliff that hid the desert beyond.