Panguitch

by Zane Grey

  “It was my fault,” replied Sue deliberately. “I told Chane … if he’d free Panguitch … I’d be his wife.”

  “An’ he took you up?” McPherson shouted in gleeful wonder.

  “Yes. He let me pull the lasso free.”

  “Wal, I’ve seen the day I could have done the same, even if it had been Panguitch!” boomed McPherson. From the rough, hardened outlaw that speech was a subtle compliment to both Sue and Chane. It hinted, also, of a time when McPherson had not been what he was now. Suddenly he lost that shadow of memory, and wheeled to Manerube, who stood derisive and rancorous, glaring at Chane.

  “Didn’t I tell you that hoss was tuckered out? Didn’t I say he was all wet?”

  “Yes, you said so, but I don’t have to believe you. And Weymer’s a liar,” retorted Manerube.

  “Sure I’m a liar … when you’ve got a gun and I haven’t,” interposed Chane stingingly.

  “Huh! You wouldn’t call the little lady a liar, too, would you?” demanded McPherson.

  “She would lie and he would swear to it,” snapped Manerube.

  “Wal, that’s no matter, except where I come from men didn’t call girls names. But what I gotta beat into your thick head is this … that Panguitch was a spent horse. An’ you never seen it. You thought you roped him when he was good as ever. You never seen it!”

  “Suppose I didn’t,” Manerube returned furiously. “I roped him, spent or not. And he’s mine.”

  “Hell! You’re a fine wild hoss wrangler!” exclaimed McPherson in disgust. “You don’t even get my hunch. Let me say it slow an’ plain. In this heah Utah there’s a code, the same among hoss thieves as among wranglers. It’s love of a grand hoss. An’ I’m tellin’ you it’s a damn shame Panguitch fell into your rope.”

  “Say, Bud, are you going to let Manerube keep that horse?” demanded Chane ringingly, sure now of his game. He could play upon this outlaw’s feelings as upon an instrument.

  “Wha-at?” queried McPherson, as if staggered. The idea Chane launched had struck like a thunderbolt.

  “If it’s your outfit … if you’re the boss, Panguitch is yours,” asserted Chane positively. “That’s the law of the range. But even if it wasn’t, would you let Manerube keep that grand stallion? He’ll ruin the horse. He couldn’t break him. He couldn’t ride him. For this man is not the real thing as a rider. He never was a wrangler … Now, McPherson, listen. You may be a horse thief, but you’re a real rider. You have a rider’s love for a grand stallion like Panguitch. You have a wrangler’s pride in him. You’d never beat Panguitch, now would you?”

  “Hell no! I never beat any hoss!” shouted the outlaw hoarsely.

  “There you are,” announced Chane with finality, and he threw up his hands. How well he knew the state into which he had thrown McPherson! Chane actually thrilled in the suspense of the issue at stake. His argument had been sound, his persuasion hard for a rider to resist, but he staked most on McPherson’s dislike of Manerube. Any honest rider would despise Manerube, but McPherson, hard, strong, matured outlaw, who, bad as he was, would have died for a horse, would hate him.

  “Reckon you’re talkin’ fine, Weymer, but ain’t a little of it fer your hoss, Brutus?” queried McPherson shrewdly.

  “No. I never thought of my horse. But now you mention him, I’ll say this. You stole my last bunch of mustangs. Brutus is all I have left. A horse and a saddle! That’s the extent of my riches. You’d not be so mean as to rob me of them?”

  “Wal, Weymer, I reckon I wouldn’t now,” he replied significantly. “Brutus ain’t so bad. But what’d I do with him now? Haw! Haw!”

  Chane drew a quick breath of relief, yet the suspense of that argument was in no wise diminished.

  Manerube grew black with rage. His light eyes gleamed balefully.

  “Bud McPherson, you mean you’ll take Panguitch?” he rasped out.

  “Wal, you heerd Weymer’s idee of the code of the range,” replied the outlaw calmly. With all his acumen and experience he had no fear of Manerube. Rather contempt!

  “Code be damned!” Manerube yelled fiercely. “Panguitch is mine. I roped him.”

  “Shore. But you’re in my outfit, an’ what you ketch is mine, if I want it. An’ I want Panguitch. Savvy?”

  Chane, watching so piercingly, saw a break in Manerube’s quivering rage. His body grew rigid before the blackness left his face. If Chane had been in McPherson’s boots he would have reacted with subtle keenness to those peculiar changes.

  “You’re a … horse … thief,” panted Manerube, suddenly crouching.

  “Wal, wal, wal!” guffawed McPherson, and he bent double with the mirth of the joke. When he straightened up it was to meet the red flame, the blue spurt of Manerube’s gun. He uttered a gasp and fell limply, as if his legs had been chopped from under him.

  Manerube did not lower the leveled gun. Smoke issued from the dark hole in the barrel. All the men seemed paralyzed, except Chane, who stepped aside, with eyes roving for a weapon in the belts near him. But none showed. Chane read Manerube’s ferocious face. It was now gray and set with murderous intent.

  “Jump aside, Slack, or I’ll kill you,” he hissed. “I want Weymer.”

  Slack frantically leaped aside, leaving Chane exposed. But Manerube did not fire. The smoking gun shook in his nerveless hand, and fell. At that instant, perhaps a fraction of a second before, Chane heard a tiny spat. He knew what it was. A lead bullet striking flesh!

  Chane’s gaze shot over Manerube’s outstretched hand to his face. It was the same, but fixed. Then from the ragged brushy cliff above rang out the crack of a rifle. The echoes clapped back and forth. Over Manerube’s glazed blank eyes, in his forehead, appeared a little round hole, first blue, then red. He swayed and fell, full length, face down.

  This action was incredibly swift. Before Chane could make a move to rush to Sue he heard another spat. The bullet spanged off bone. Slack was knocked flat. Again the sharp crack of a rifle rang out. It broke the rigidity of that group. Frantically the three left of McPherson’s band rushed for their horses. Slack leaped up, bloody of face, wild of mien, and he bellowed, “It’s them hellhound Paiutes! Bud swore they was trailin’ us. Get on an’ ride!”

  Not far behind was he in a leap to the saddle. The horses plunged madly and broke up the cañon. Another shot sounded from the cliff, deadened by the trampling hoofs. Then the swiftly moving dark blot of riders disappeared.

  Chane’s first thought was for Sue. He ran to her, took her in his arms. She seemed stiff, but her hands suddenly clutched him. Her cheek, which was all he could see as he grasped her, was ashen in hue.

  “Come away, Sue dear,” he said gently, half carrying her. “Over here where Chess is … You’re safe. I’m all right. We’re all saved. They went up a different cañon from the one your father took. They won’t meet him.”

  Sue hid her face against his breast while a long shudder went through her.

  “How … terrible,” she whispered hoarsely. “All so … so sudden. Let me sit down. I’m weak and sick. But I won’t faint.”

  “Sure you won’t. Just keep your eyes away … from over there,” replied Chane, and, releasing her, he ran to untie Chess’ bonds.

  “My Gawd, what blew in here?” queried Chess in decidedly weak voice.

  “Kinda stormy and smoky, wasn’t it, boy,” replied Chane. “I’ve seen some of that sort of thing. Been in it, too … You go to Sue and talk. Get her mind off it.”

  Chane’s next move was to release Loughbridge, who sat up with popping eyes and incoherent speech. From him Chane ran to the dead men, who had fallen close to each other. He covered them with a canvas. After that Chane gazed up at the cliff whence had come the rifle shots. Thin clouds of blue smoke were floating on the still air, gradually thinning. The cliff was broken and ragged, green with brush, and marked by a wildness of ledge up to
the rim. It was not far to the top. Full well Chane knew who had fired that shot fatal to Manerube. But he would never tell, and no one else would ever know. The depths of the cañons hid many mysteries.

  He hurried back to Sue, finding her recovered, though she was leaning on Chess’ shoulder. Chane promptly relieved him of the burden.

  “Humph! I thought she was in the family now,” protested Chess.

  “Boy, you wander in mind,” returned Chane softly.

  “If only Dad would come!” exclaimed Sue in anxious dread.

  “Well, he’s coming,” Chane said gladly. “Look up the cañon. Did you ever see your dad run like that? He’s scared Sue, either for himself or us.”

  Sue gave vent to a smothered sob of relief and then broke down.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Melberne amused Chane, and appeared to be a fascinating object to Chess. The leader of the outfit had returned out of breath, and if Chane was any judge of men, both frightened and furious. When he caught his breath, he blurted out many queries, but vouchsafed no information about himself. Chane’s observant eye, however, noted Melberne’s skinned and bruised wrists, and how conscious he was of them, a circumstance undoubtedly due to pain.

  Bud McPherson had lied to Chane. The outlaws had happened to run into Melberne and had tied him up. Chane grew more convinced of this as the moments passed. Besides Melberne’s telltale wrists, which he had probably skinned by working free of a tight rope, he had come back minus his gun. Moreover, his relief at sight of Sue safe and well, though pale, was so great as to approach collapse. Lastly, when Chane had pulled aside the canvas to expose Manerube and McPherson, lying so ghastly and suggestive, he had cursed them under his breath.

  But the amusing part of this sequence was the argument between Melberne and Loughbridge, and Chess’ deep concern.

  “I’m sorry, Jim, you shore have queered yourself with me,” declared Melberne for at least the tenth time. His demeanor, however, was not in harmony with his hard words. He strode to and fro nervously, as was his wont when perturbed.

  “But, Mel, this here Manerube made a damn fool of you, same as me,” persisted Loughbridge.

  “Shore I acknowledge that. But he didn’t make me double-cross you.”

  “I didn’t. You ain’t fair. We couldn’t agree, about money mostly, an’ you fired me out of your outfit. I leave it to Chess, here. You ain’t jest fair.”

  “Boss, if you’ll excuse me, I think it was more temper with you than justice,” replied Chess with immense gravity.

  “Huh! Wal, I’ll be darned!” quoth Melberne, surveying the boy in great disfavor. “I reckon you’d like to see Loughbridge homestead with us over there at Nightwatch Spring.”

  “That’d be fair and square of you,” returned Chess, losing his dignity of a judge.

  “An’ fetch Ora along to live with him, huh?” Melberne went on ironically.

  “I should smile,” answered Chess with an anticlimax of weakness.

  “See heah, young man, you’ve got good stuff, but you talk too much. I’ve a mind to fire you.”

  “Aw now … boss,” appealed Chess abjectly.

  “Wal, if you don’t marry Ora before spring I will fire you,” growled Melberne. Then he turned to his former partner. “Jim, I reckon I’ve no call to crow over you. I’ve had my lesson. An’ if you’ve had yours, mebbe we’ll both profit by it. My fault is temper, an’ yours is a little too much fondness for money … Let’s begin over again, each for himself. It’s a new country. You’re welcome to homestead in my cañon. There’s room for another rancher. Someday before long there’ll be a settlement west of Lund. An’ that’ll make our problem easier.”

  * * * * *

  Panguitch startled Chane, and all the others, with one of his ringing neighs, and with head, ears, and mane erect he faced up the cañon.

  Shrill whistles answered him. Chane espied a troop of wild horses coming out of the shadow.

  “By golly, there’s Panguitch’s band,” said Chane, pointing. “They’re looking for him. They’ll pass us … Everybody lie low.”

  Chane crouched behind a rock with Sue, who whispered that Panguitch should be free to go with them. It did seem to Chane that the straining stallion would free himself from Manerube’s ropes. For some moments the wild horses could not be seen, owing to the fact that Chane and Sue were low down. At last, however, they came in sight, trotting cautiously, wary as always, but not yet having caught scent of the camp. Only a faint breeze stirred and that came down the cañon. The whistling of Panguitch must have been a factor in their cautious approach. At the junction of the cañons the space was fully a hundred yards wide, and, owing to the stream bed, somewhat lower on the side opposite the camp. The wild horse band worked down this side, trotting, with heads erect, until they caught scent of the camp, then burst into headlong flight, and in a dusty cloud, with a clattering roar they sped by, and down the cañon to disappear.

  “Sue, wasn’t it great?” Chane queried as he got up.

  But Sue had not been looking at the fleet band of wild horses; her startled gaze was fixed on Panguitch. “Oh, Chane, look! He’s broken one of the ropes!” cried Sue.

  Chane wheeled in time to see the remnant of broken lasso fall off the superb tawny shoulder. The other lasso was around the noble arched neck of the stallion and had now become taut. Panguitch reared and lunged back with all his weight. As luck would have it, the rope broke at the noose. The stallion fell heavily, then raised on his forehoofs, with mouth open. The broken noose hung loose. He was not yet sure of freedom.

  Chess broke the silence with a wailing, “Oh, the ropes were rotten! They broke. He’ll get away … Gimme a rope. A rope! A rope!”

  “Boy, keep still!” shouted Chane sternly. “Can’t you see Panguitch was never born to be roped?”

  The stallion painfully got to his feet. As the broken noose slipped from his neck he jumped as if stung. Then he walked through camp. He shied at the canvas covering the dead men, and, breaking into a trot, he headed down the cañon.

  “Wal, I cain’t pretend to savvy you, Chane,” observed Melberne, scratching his head in his perplexity. “But shore I will say this. Somehow I’m glad you let him go.”

  “Damn it! So’m I!” yelled Chess, suddenly red of face, as if he had been unjustly accused. “But I … I was so crazy to keep him!”

  Chane turned to Sue with a smile.

  “He’s gone, my dear. Suppose we ride down to the slope where he’ll climb up to the mesa. There’s work to do here that I’d rather you didn’t see.”

  Melberne approved of that idea for Sue. “An’ when you come back we’ll be packed to change camp.”

  * * * * *

  Not until Sue had ridden at quite a brisk trot, keeping up with Brutus, all the way down to the oval break in the cañon, did her blood warm and beat out the dark blot of horror in her mind.

  But at the foot of the beautiful slope of wavy rock all that turgid emotion fell away from her, as if it had never been. She had grown weak, but now she was strong. The purple heights above, gold-rimmed under the sun, inspired her as before, only now with something added to the wild joy of freedom.

  “Follow me close, sweetheart!” called Chane. “I see Panguitch far above. If we hurry we can reach the top and watch him climb the mesa.”

  “Ah, Chane, you’ll never lose me now, on any kind of trails!” called Sue in reply, and urged her horse close to Brutus.

  To and fro, across and around, up and down, far to this side, and back to the other, onward and upward they rode over the smooth waves and hollows of red sandstone. As they climbed, the purple and amber lights grew brighter, and the shadows of the cañons below grew deeper. They reached the zone of cream and yellow rock, crumbling like baked clay under the hoofs of the horses. Out of the dark depths they rose to the sunset-flushed heights.

  “Oh, wher
e is Panguitch?” Sue kept calling. But he had always just gone over a wave of rock.

  All above the corrugated world of wind-worn stone streamed fan-shaped bars and bands of light, centering toward and disappearing over the height of ridge they had almost attained. Broken massed clouds floated in the west, dark-purple, silver-rimmed, golden-edged, in a sea of azure blue. The lights of sunset were intensifying. Sue felt that she rode up the last curved wave of an opal sea. She saw Chane shade his eyes from the fires of the sun. Like a god of the riders he seemed to her, bareheaded, his face alight, his sharp profile against the background of gold. Then she mounted to Chane’s side, and it was as if in one step she had surmounted a peak.

  All the forces of Nature seemed to have united in one grand spectacle—the rugged cañon country of colored rock waved level with the setting sun, and above it, from west to north, loomed the cloud-piercing bulk of Wild Horse Mesa.

  “Panguitch! I see him, Sue,” said Chane, his voice ringing deep. “He’s all alone. His band has gone up … Look, the fold in the wall! It could never be seen except when the sun shines as now. What a trail! Even the Paiutes do not know it. Hard smooth rock over the bench, and then the zigzag up that crack … See, he shines gold and black in the sun!”

  At last Sue’s straining gaze was rewarded by clear sight of Panguitch climbing, apparently the very wall of the mesa. With abated breath Sue watched him, conscious of more in the moment than just the climbing freedom of a wild horse. But it was beyond her. It led her thoughts beyond emotions, deep into the dim past of her inheritance. But she had loved Panguitch or some creature like him in a world before this.

  The intense flare of gold changed as the sun began to sink behind cloud and rim. It yielded to the wondrous lilac haze. Sue cried out in a transport. Panguitch, too, seemed less a wild horse, more of an unreal creature, giving life to the grandeur and desolation of the naked rock ribs of the earth.

  “He’s almost on top,” said Chane joyfully. He clung to the physical thing—to the flesh and blood Panguitch, to his pursuit and capture and release, to his recapture and escape, to the long winding mysterious and hidden trail in and out of the cañons, to the wonderful wall of Wild Horse Mesa.