by Zane Grey
They climbed a slope, scaring squirrels, rabbits, and deer on the way, and came out on top of a ridge where the forest made Jim ache with its wildness and beauty. Towering yellow pines and stately silver spruces lorded it over the green-gold aspens and the scarlet maples. The ground was soft with pine needles and moss and decaying wood. Everywhere lay logs and windfalls, which had to be climbed over or avoided. The setting sun lent a glamour to the dry, sweet wilderness. Here were thickets of young pine, impossible to penetrate, and there was a long shade-barred aisle down the forest. They came to an open oak glade, and here Molly pointed to turkey scratches on the ground.
“Fresh tracks. They’re after acorns. Now, Jim, when we see turkeys, you shoot pronto,” she said.
Jim’s four months in the West had been productive of numberless experiences, of late merging upon breath-arresting agitation, but he counted high among them this slipping through the forest, close at the stealthy heels of little Molly Dunn. She was a wood-mouse, as Slinger called her. Not the slightest sound did she make. When Jim cracked a twig or brushed against a bush she admonished him with finger to her red lips and a dark disapproving glance. Then when Jim nearly fell over a log, she whispered, “You big clodhopper!”
Nevertheless, despite his awkwardness, she led him within sixty yards of a flock of turkeys that appeared to Jim to cover a half-acre in extent. They were of all sizes, from that of a large chicken to gobblers as large round as a barrel.
Molly cocked her rifle. “Get ready, Mizzourie. When I count three—shoot. But only once. … Ready. One—two—three!”
Both rifles cracked in unison. Jim seemed deafened by the crash of wings. The gobbler he had fired at bounced straight up, ten feet, and went lumbering through the woods, hard put to it to get into flight—then he flew as fast as the bullet that had missed him. When he disappeared Jim sought the others. Gone! And also the uproar had ceased. Far off he heard heavy wings crash through foliage. In the middle of the glade lay a dead turkey, feathers ruffled. Jim hurried to fetch it.
“Two-year-old,” said Molly, as she surveyed the fine young gobbler. “Jim, that flock’s made up of old birds, hens, a lot of two year olds an’ yearlin’s. We’re shore lucky. Now come heah.”
She led him to a log just on the edge of the glade. “We’ll set down heah, an’ I’ll call.”
A few thin bushes partially screened them from the glade. Molly sat down beside Jim, and slipping a hand under his arm leaned her head on his shoulder. “Oh, but this’s goin’ to be fun. I’m just tickled. We’ll shore make Bud an’ Curly crawl. Now, Jim, the way to do it is to wait a little. Listen! … There. That’s a hen squawkin’. An’ there’s a yearlin’ yelpin’.”
Jim not only heard these clear sounds out in the forest, but a deep gobble-gobble, farther away. He agreed with Molly about the fun of it; and whatever else it might be to her it was absolute bliss for him to have her so close, to feel her hand squeeze his arm, her head against his shoulder, her hair touching his cheek. And only a half year back he had been at odds with life!
Molly produced a short thing that looked like a quill to Jim, but which, upon examination, proved to be the small wing bone of a turkey, with a hole through its length.
“Listen, now, you boss of the Diamond,” she whispered, gayly. “First I’ll call the yearlin’.”
Sitting up, she put the bone in her mouth, keeping the other end partly covered in the hollow of her hand. Then she sucked air through it, and the result was a perfect imitation of the yelp of the young turkey. It was answered immediately, not once but several times, and each reply sounded nearer.
“He’s shore comin’. Now I’ll call that fussy hen out there.” And she produced a high-pitched, prolonged squawk, likewise a perfect counterfeit. Answers came from all sides, one of which was a deep gobble.
“Get your gun ready, Jim. Shoot restin’ on your knee. Take lots of time. It’s murder, shore, but we have to eat. … Look! There’s the yearlin’. But don’t shoot him. … Look! Over heah! A whole bunch—mixed.”
Cluck-cluck, put-put, all around him! Then he saw turkeys coming on a run, from this side and that.
“Heah’s the gobbler. Knock him, Jim,” whispered Molly, as she leaned back away from him. “Wait till he stops. An’ after you shoot look sharp, you may get a crack at another.”
The gobbler entered the glade, stalked out majestically, and suddenly stood motionless, head up, not forty feet from where Jim sat. He scarcely had to move the rifle. Even as he aimed carefully, quivering as he put pressure on the trigger, he could not help seeing the glossy beauty and superb wildness of that giant bird. He shot, and the turkey appeared to pile up with a great feathery roar.
“Quick,” whispered Molly, pointing. “Knock this young gobbler. Heah. He’s crazy, standin’ still there.”
Jim located this one and killed it. The others had vanished.
“Drag in the game, Mizzourie,” directed Molly.
Hurrying to comply, Jim lifted the smaller turkey, and then lay hold of the giant gobbler. It was huge, and so heavy that indeed he did have to drag.
“You didn’t do so bad, then,” said Molly, when he returned. “That big gobbler is an old bird. We don’t often fool one like him. Set down now, an’ I’ll call again.”
“But, Molly, surely you can’t call them up again?” queried Jim, in amaze.
“Cain’t I? The show’s just begun. Arch an’ I used to call half a day on a big mixed flock like this. But I reckon no more old gobblers will come.”
In excitement just as tingling as before Jim listened, and heard, and watched, under precisely the same thrilling circumstances. Molly called to the turkeys and whispered to him. No doubt his delight was infectious. Presently a string of yearling turkeys came cluck-clucking into the grove, and Jim, out of three shots, got two.
Then again Molly began to call, and confining herself to the yelp of the yearling, she gave it a wailing note. Answers came from near and far, closer and closer. But it was long before Molly lifted a hand to indicate she had espied one.
“I’ve been callin’ too fast an’ often,” she explained to Jim. “But I was shore so anxious to have you heah an’ see them. We’ll wait a little.”
It turned out she did not need to call again, for a fine hen turkey followed on the heels of a yearling into the glade. Yet they did not come close. Put-put. Put-put-put. Jim made a capital shot on the suspicious hen, but missed the yearling.
“That’ll be aboot all we can pack to camp,” said Molly. “Heah’s a string. We’ll tie their feet together an’ run a stout pole through.”
“What a load! Gee! but won’t Bud an’ Curly be sick? … Molly, this has been just glorious. I always loved to hunt. But there was never any game except rabbits and squirrels, and sometimes a partridge. And to think—all this grand sport with you Molly!”
“I’m glad, Jim. Shore I never felt so good aboot huntin’ before.”
“Would you mind kissing me?” he asked.
“Jim, you put such store on my kisses,” she replied, wistfully. “I reckon they’re not—not so precious as you imagine.”
“Yes, they are, Molly.”
“I told you once—I—I’d been kissed a lot,” she went on, shamefaced, yet brave. “Not that I was willin’. … An’ now I know what love is I—I wish my lips had been for you alone, Jim.”
“No, Molly. You were a child. That you can feel as you do now is enough for me, regarding the past. You are a dear, good girl, and I couldn’t begin to tell you how I love and respect you.”
She kissed him, then, absorbed with the seriousness of it, rather than the sweetness of surrender.
“I reckon I’ll let myself go, pronto, an’ eat you up,” she said.
Resting often, they packed the string of turkeys down through the forest, across the park, into camp. Somebody whooped, and there stood Bud and Curly, transfixed and staring. Neither came out of his trance until Jim and Molly halted under the cabin shed, breathing fast, and gl
ad to lay down their burden.
“For the land’s sake!” ejaculated Bud, which speech, considering his proclivity for profanity, merely attested to his mental aberration.
“Didn’t I heah you boys talkin’ aboot how Jim couldn’t hit the side of a barn?” inquired Molly.
“Wal, I reckon you might of—sumthin’ like,” replied Curly.
“He’s a daid-center shot.”
“Ahuh. So it ’pears. But what you mean? At gurls’ hearts or turkeys?”
“I reckon both,” replied Molly, and she fled.
Much was made of the turkey-hunt at supper-time. It appeared apropos inasmuch as the meal consisted of roast turkey, gravy, and mashed potatoes. Jim was really concerned over the gastronomic feats of the cowboys, especially of Bud and Curly. And the result of talk and supper was to inspire the two cowboys to get up before daylight to hunt for more wild turkeys. Molly and Jim left an hour after that, and returned with three fine birds before Curly and Bud got back. At length when they arrived, tired from much climbing on foot—which certainly was not their forte—empty-handed, with all kinds of excuses that implicated each other, they were allowed to talk some before being shown what Jim had bagged. Presently Jim directed their attention to the three fine gobblers hanging in bronze and purple splendor on the cabin wall.
“Dog-gone!” said Bud, sagging.
“Huh! Turkeys walked right in camp, so you could knock them over with a club?” queried Curly, snorting fire.
“Nope. I went out for half an hour.”
“This heah mawnin’?”
“Yes, after you left. You’ll observe they are all shot high up in the neck. I got them coming and going. Straight, you know.”
Curly let out a feeble groan. Bud had submitted abjectly.
“Boys, I hope this will be a lesson to you,” went on Jim, eloquently, impressive before all the listeners. “Don’t go out with an old hunter, and when he kills birds claim you did it. And brag about your prowess!”
“Jim, was you onto us—aboot them two turks, the other mawnin’?” asked Curly, in misery.
“Yes, I’ve long known of your perfidy.”
“Aw! Aw!” yelled Curly, in pain. “Bud, this heah is too much. Jim has dun fer us.”
“Yes,” ripped out his partner in shame, “but we can lay it to the root of all sorrow fer cowboys—a gurl!”
On the following day Slinger Dunn had improved so materially that Jim began to hope it would be safe to move him at the end of another week, perhaps sooner. That forced him to consider the coming situation. Mrs. Dunn had been sent word by Boyd Flick that Molly was safe, and her brother mending favorably. Jim began to incline to a plan to take Molly also into town. The very good excuse of a wounded brother would suffice. How about the Flagerstown feminine contingent when they scented this romance? Jim indulged in a gleeful laugh. Uncle Jim might be destined to have his heartfelt desire fulfilled long before he anticipated any hope of it. But Molly was so young—only sixteen!
Another more perturbing question, for the moment, was the continued failure of Hump and Uphill to appear. Probably they would show up soon with Jack and Cherry. Jim dismissed that, too, as something to be combated another and perhaps more favorable day.
Early in the afternoon he slipped off alone with one of the requisitioned rifles, but not to hunt. He wished to have a long, lonely walk in the forest. It turned out, however, that he did not go far, hardly out of range of Jeff’s ringing ax on a dead aspen log.
He took a peep into the old log cabin where Hack Jocelyn had planned to hide Molly. It was full of debris, leaves, pine cones, woodmice, and insects. The place showed evidence of having once been lived in by human creatures. What had happened there? Perhaps once the very thing Jocelyn had wanted! Jim felt a haunting story in that lonely cabin.
Then he followed the draw, up under the spreading silver branches, to a spot where he simply had to stop. Frost had turned the aspens gold. The wondrous hue blazed against sky and forest. All the tranquil little glade appeared to have absorbed light from the aspen leaves, that quivered so delicately and silently, each separate one fluttering like a golden moth.
Jim sat down and gloated over these quaking aspens, and the towering pines and spruces. A hawk sailed across the blue opening above. A dreamy hum pervaded the forest. He did not wonder at a backwoodsman. Here was strange, full, strength-giving life. Molly Dunn seemed a composite of all that he saw and felt there.
Deep in his soul, now that he had time and place to face it, he thanked the God of chance, and the higher divinity to whom all events were subservient, for her love and her promise. The West had dealt harshly with him, yet made greater amends. He had served his apprenticeship under these fire-spirited cowboys; and he sensed more and yet more hardships, problems, pangs, of that elemental range life.
He had had his eye teeth cut. In the future he might hide his stern acceptance of labor and duty under a guise such as that of Curly Prentiss, if he could aspire to this prince of cowboys’ mask. But recklessness and boyish desire for adventure for adventure’s sake, carelessness and loss of temper, deliberate seeking of trouble—all these must not only be suppressed, but done away with. His responsibility had quadrupled.
Jim wrought over his many failings like a blacksmith hammering malleable iron. If he must build drift fences, he would do well to add something of Slinger Dunn to his conception of Curly Prentiss, in his intelligent acceptance of that which made a Westerner.
That was the clearest of his many hours of self-teaching.
Late afternoon found Jim descending the slope toward camp. He espied a curling column of blue smoke after he had smelled a camp fire. Saddle-horses in camp, grazing with dragging bridles! He quickened his pace. Probably the cowboys had returned. He made sure of this when he saw Cherry’s pinto horse hobbling up the park.
Approaching from behind the cabin, he could not see anyone until he turned the corner. But he had heard a merry voice and a deep laugh. There outside the cabin on a bench sat his uncle, holding Molly’s hand Jim was thunderstruck.
“Uncle! … Where’d you come from?” he exploded.
“Howdy, son! I rode in with Locke a while ago,” replied Traft, his keen eyes sweeping Jim from head to toe. “I haven’t been lonesome, as you see.”
“I do see,” replied Jim, and he could have shouted to the skies the good of what he saw. Molly did not look as if she wanted to run from Uncle Jim. A blush slowly rose under tearstained cheeks.
Traft exposed the back of Molly’s little supple brown hand, on a finger of which the diamond sparkled, as if in gay and treacherous betrayal.
“Son, I see you’ve been goin’ in debt for diamonds,” drawled Traft.
“One. Has Molly—told you?” replied Jim, and it was his turn to blush.
“Wal, she only said you gave it to her.”
Molly gently disengaged her hand. “If you’ll excuse me I—I’ll run back to Arch,” she said, shyly, and fled.
Traft looked up at Jim. “You pie-eatin’, soft-spoken, hard-fisted Mizzourie son-of-a-gun!” he ejaculated.
“Yes?” returned Jim, hopefully.
“Doc Shields told me first of these doin’s,” went on the rancher. “So Locke an’ I hooked up the buckboard an’ dragged a couple of saddle-horses along. We left the team at Keech’s where … but that’ll wait. Curly told me the whole business. So did Bud. I had a little talk with Slinger. An’ then I got hold of Molly. … Jim, you’ve done it. Winnin’ the Diamond was a real job, but nothin’ to that girl. It took me a minute to fall in love with her myself, an’ a whole hour to get the story out of her. Son, she’s real Western stuff.”
“I—I’m awful glad you like her—Uncle Jim,” said Jim, and weak in the knees, he sat down.
“So much for that. We can come back to it later. … I’ve got tough news for you.”
“Uncle, I can stand anything now,” replied Jim, and indeed felt that he could.
“Hump Stevens is at Keech’s, all shot up
, but I reckon not so bad as Slinger,” went on Traft. “I had him hauled to Flag. Up Frost got to town night before last, an’ he’s crippled. The darn fool reported to me before he went to a doctor.”
“Oh! I’m more relieved than surprised. I was worried. Who shot them, Uncle?”
“Up told me he an’ Hump run plumb into some of the Hash Knife outfit, cuttin’ your drift fence, an’ there was a bit of a fight. Hump thinks he killed one of the gang. There was five of them, an’ they rode off with one hangin’ across a saddle. Then Up packed Hump across to Keech’s an’ come on in to town.”
“Hash Knife outfit!” ejaculated Jim, thoughtfully. “The boys used to argue. Curly always said: ‘Wait till the Cibeque falls down on the job. Then see!’ … Uncle, who and what is this Hash Knife outfit?”
“Humph! They’re a heap, son. The Hash Knife used to be the king-pin cow outfit of central Arizona. That was twenty years ago. Now, it’s got the Cibeque beat to a frazzle for hard-nut hombres, exceptin’ Slinger. Old-timer named Jed Stone runnin’ the Hash Knife. He used to ride for me, years ago. Killed one of the best foremen I ever had. An’ I’d hate to say how many men he’s shot since. … Wal, Jed an’ his bunch haven’t any boss or ranch, or even a homestead. They ride from camp to camp, like Injuns, an’ believe me they eat more beef than this Cibeque outfit stole.”
“Their own beef or somebody else’s?” asked Jim, gruffly.
“Haw! Haw! I’ll tell that one on you, if I get hard up. … Jim, listen to the worst! The last nine miles of your drift fence is down. An’ some of the aspen trees are fresh decorated with Jed’s trade-mark, a plain old hash-knife cut in deep.”
“Well, the nerve of him!”
“Jim, that outfit drinks six cups of coffee a meal, to keep their nerve quiet, Jed bragged to me once. … Now you’re up against a far worse crowd than the Cibeque. Old cowboys, gunmen, rustlers!—Wal, you’ve still got up sixty miles or more of fence. An’ that’ll have to do for this year. Fact is, I’m more than satisfied. I’m darn proud of you, Jim.”
“Thank you, Uncle. But soon as I see what’s to be done about Slinger and—and Molly, we’ll go right back to fence-building.”
