by Zane Grey
“Maybe. I want to be sure who’s there. We’ll leave the trail and slip down through the woods to the left. I wish we could get down on the home side of the spring. But we can’t . . . we’ve got to pass it.”
With many a pause to peer through openings in the pines, Hare traversed a diagonal course down the slope, crossed the line of cedars, and reached the edge of the valley a mile or more above Silver Cup. Then he turned toward it, still cautiously leading Silvermane under cover of the fringe of cedars.
“Mescal, there are too many cattle in the valley,” he said, looking at her significantly.
“They can’t all be ours, that’s sure,” she replied. “What do you think?”
“Holderness!” With the word a cold shade overshadowed Hare’s face. He continued to advance, guardedly leading the horse under the cedars, careful to avoid breaking brush or rattling stones, occasionally whispering to Wolf, and so worked his way along the curved margin of the woody slope till further progress was checked by the bulging wall of rock.
“Only cattle in the valley, no horses,” he said. “I’ve a good chance to cut across this curve and reach the trail. If I take time to climb up and see who’s at the spring, maybe the chance will be gone. I do not believe Dave and the boys are there.”
He pondered a moment, then climbed up in front of Mescal, and directed the gray out upon the valley. Soon he was among the grazing cattle and felt no surprise to see the H brand on their flanks.
“Jack, look at that brand,” said Mescal, pointing to a white-flanked steer. “There’s an old brand like a cross . . . Father Naab’s cross . . . and a new brand, a single bar. Together they make an H.”
“Mescal! You’ve hit it. I remember that steer. He was a very devil to brand. He’s the property of August Naab, and Holderness has added the bar, making a clumsy H. What a rustler’s trick. It wouldn’t deceive a child.”
They had reached the cedars and the trail when Wolf began to sniff suspiciously at the wind.
“Look,” whispered Mescal, calling Hare’s attention from the dog. “Look. A new corral.”
Bending back to get in line with her pointing finger, Hare looked through a network of cedar boughs to see a bright fence of yellow stripped pines. Farther up were piles of unstripped logs, and close by the spring a large new cabin, with blue smoke curling from a stone chimney. Hare guided Silvermane off of the trail to softer ground and once more advanced, climbed the gentle slope, passed the old pool, now a mud puddle, and crossed the dry wash to be brought suddenly to a halt. Wolf had made an uneasy stand with his nose pointing to the left, and Silvermane shot up his ears. Presently Hare heard the soft stamp of hoofs off in the cedars, and before he had fully determined the direction from which the sound came, three horses and a man stepped from the shade into a sunlit space.
As luck would have it, Hare happened to be well screened by a low, thick cedar, and, as there was a possibility that he might remain unseen, he chose to take it. Silvermane and Wolf stood still in their tracks. Hare felt Mescal’s hands tighten on his coat and he pressed them to reassure her. Peeping out from his covert, he saw a man in his shirt sleeves leading the horses. A slender, clean-faced, dark-haired man—Dene! The blood beat hotly in Hare’s temples and he gripped the handle of his Colt. What fatal chance sent the outlaw toward that trail. He was whistling; he had two halters in one hand and with the other he led his bay horse by the mane. Then Hare saw that he wore no belt; he was unarmed; on the horses were only the halters and clinking hobbles. Hare dropped his Colt back into its holster.
Dene sauntered on, whistling a Dixie tune, and, when he reached the trail, instead of crossing it, as Hare hoped, he turned into it and came down.
Hare swung the switch he had broken from an aspen and struck Silvermane a stinging blow on the flanks. The gray leaped forward as if slung from a catapult.
The crash of brush and thump of hoofs stampeded Dene’s horses in a twinkling. But the outlaw paled to a ghastly white and seemed rooted to the trail.
“Dene’s spy!” yelled Hare.
It was not fear of a man or a horse that held Dene fixed; in his starting, black eyes was the terror of the supernatural.
The shoulder of the charging stallion struck Dene and sent him spinning out of the trail. In a backward glance Hare saw the outlaw fall, then rise unhurt to wave his fists wildly and, with loud yells, start running in the direction of the cabin.
Chapter Seventeen
Zack, the saddle’s slipping!” cried Mescal, clinging closer to him. “What luck,” Hare muttered through clinched teeth, and pulled hard on the bridle. But the mouth of the stallion was iron; he minded not at all the sawing bit, galloped on. Hare called steadily— “Whoa there, Silver! Whoa . . . slow now . . . whoa . . . easy!”—and finally got him halted. Hare swung down, and, as he lifted Mescal off, the saddle slipped to the ground with a flop.
“Lucky we are not to get a spill. The girth snapped. It was wet, and dried out.” Hare hurriedly began to repair the break with buckskin thongs that he found in a saddlebag.
“Listen! Hear the yells? Oh, hurry!” cried Mescal.
“I’ve never ridden bareback. Suppose you go ahead with Silver, and I’ll hide in the cedars till dark, then walk home?”
“No . . . No. There’s time, but hurry.”
“It’s got to be strong,” muttered Hare, holding the strap over his knee and pulling the laced knot with all his strength, “for we’ll have to ride some. If it comes loose . . . good bye.”
Silvermane’s broad chest muscles rippled and he stamped restlessly. The dog whined and looked back. Mescal had the blanket smooth on the gray when Hare threw the saddle over him. The yells had ceased, but clattering hoofs on the stony trail were a greater source for anxiety. While Hare’s brown hands worked swiftly over buckle and strap, Mescal climbed to a seat behind the saddle.
“Get into the saddle,” said Hare, leaping astride and pressing forward over the pommel. “Slip down . . . there . . . and hold to me. Go, Silver!”
The rapid pound of the stallion’s hoofs drowned the clatter coming up the trail. A backward glance relieved Hare, for dust clouds some few hundred yards in the rear located the position of the pursuing horsemen. He held Silvermane to a steady gallop. The trail was uphill, and steep enough to wind even a desert racer, if put to his limit.
“Look back!” cried Mescal. “Can you see them? Is Snap with them?”
“I can’t see for trees,” replied Hare over his shoulder. “There’s dust . . . we’re far in the lead . . . never fear, Mescal. The lead’s all we want.”
Cedars grew thickly all the way up the steeper part of the divide, and ended abruptly at the edge of scaly stone, where the ascent became so gradual that it was noticeable only in long distances. When Silvermane struck out of the grove upon this slope, Hare kept turning keen glances rearward. The dust cloud rolled to the edge of the cedars, and out of it trooped half a dozen horsemen who began to fire their rifles as they got into the open. Bullets zipped along the red stone, cutting little puffs of red dust, and whistled through the air.
“Good God!” ejaculated Hare. “They’re firing on us! They’d shoot a woman!”
“Has it taken you so long to learn that?”
The reply, almost a rebuke, acted upon Hare as powerfully as the fact it portended. How doggedly his nature had struggled against the acceptance of this bloody desert truth. He slashed his steed with the switch. But Silvermane needed no goad or spur; he had been shot at before, and the sing of one bullet was sufficient to stretch his gallop into a run. When he began to run, the distance between him and his pursuers widened so materially that he was soon out of range. The shrill yells the rustlers suddenly emitted were taken by Hare to be signals of baffled rage, but Mescal’s quick startled cry showed him where he was wrong. Other horsemen appeared ahead and to the right of him, tearing down the ridge to the divide. Evidently they had been returning from the western curve of Coconina.
The direction in which Silv
ermane was stretching lower and lower was the only possible one for Hare. If he swerved off the trail to the left, it would be upon rough rising ground. Not only must he beat this second band of rustlers to the point where the trail went down on the other side of the divide, but, also, he must get beyond it before they came within rifle range.
There was a tight band around Hare’s waist that was Mescal’s arms. There was an oppression around his breast that was fear for the girl.
“Now! Silver! Go! Go!” Fast as the noble stallion was speeding, he answered to the call. He was in the open now, free of stones and brush with the spang of rifles in the air. The wind rushed into Hare’s ears, filling them with a hollow roar and rhythmic fast beat of hoofs; the ground blurred by in reddish sheets. The horsemen cut down the half mile to a quarter, lessened that, swept closer and closer, till Hare recognized Chance and Culver, and Snap Naab on his cream-colored pinto, then, seeing that they could not head the invincible stallion, they sheered more to the right. But Silvermane thundered on, crossing the line ahead of them at a full three hundred yards, and went over the divide, drawing them in behind him.
Then, with the sharp crack and spang of carbines, leaden messengers whizzed high in the air over horse and riders, and skipped along the red shale in front of the running dog.
“Oh, Silvermane!” cried Hare. It was just a call, as if the horse were human, and could appreciate what that coursing fleet pace meant to his master. The stern business of the race had ceased to rest on Hare. Silvermane was out to the front! He was like a levelrushing thunderbolt. Hare felt the instantaneous pause between his long low leaps, the gather of mighty muscles, the strain, the tension, then the quivering expulsion of force. It was a perilous ride down that red slope, not so much from the hissing bullets as from the washes and gullies that Silvermane sailed over in magnificent leaps. Hare thrilled with savage delight in the wonderful prowess of his desert king, in the primal instinct of joy at escaping with the woman he loved.
“Outrun!” he cried, with blazing eye on Snap Naab, the foremost pursuer. Mescal’s white face was pressed close to his shoulder and he smiled. “Dear, Silver has beaten them. They’ll hang on till we reach the sand strip, hoping the slow-down will let them come up in time. But they’ll be far too late.”
The rustlers continued on the trail, firing desultorily, till Silvermane so far outdistanced them that even the necessary lapse into a walk in the red sand placed him beyond range when they arrived at the strip.
“They’ve turned back, Mescal. We’re safe. Why, you look as you did the day the bear ran for you.”
“I’d rather a bear got me than Snap. Jack, did you see him?”
“See him? Rather! I’ll bet he nearly killed his pinto. Mescal, what do you think of Silvermane now? Can he run? Can he outrun Bolly?”
“Yes . . . yes. Oh, Jack, how I’ll love him! Look back again. Are we safe? Will we ever be safe?”
It was still daylight when they rounded the buttress of the oasis and entered the lane with the familiar wall on one side, the peeled fence pickets on the other. Wolf dashed on ahead, and presently a chorus of barks announced that he had been met by the other dogs. Silvermane vented his shrill neigh, and the horses and mustangs in the corrals trooped noisily to the lower sides and hung inquisitive heads over the top bars.
A Navajo who Hare remembered stood leaning on his axe by the woodpile, and Judith Naab dropped a bundle of sticks and with a cry of gladness ran from the house. Before Silvermane had come to a full stop, Mescal was off and she put her arms around his neck and kissed him, then she darted toward the corral where a little black mustang had begun to whistle and stamp and try to climb over the bars.
August Naab, bareheaded, with gray shaggy locks shaking at every step, strode off the porch and his great hands lifted Hare from the saddle.
“Everyday I’ve watched the river for you,” he said. His eyes were warm and his grasp like a vise.
“Mescal . . . child,” he continued, as she came running to him. “Safe and well. He’s brought you back. Thank the Lord!” He took her to his breast and bent his gray head over her.
Then the crowd of big and little Naabs burst noisily from the house and came under the cottonwoods to circle Hare and Mescal in welcome.
“Jack, you look done up,” said Dave Naab solicitously, when the first greetings had been spoken and Mother Ruth had led Mescal indoors. “Silvermane, too . . . he’s wet and winded. He’s been running?”
“Yes, a little,” replied Hare as he removed the saddle from the weary horse.
“Ah! What’s this?” questioned August Naab, with his hand on Silvermane’s flank. He rubbed his fingers over a raw red welt causing the stallion to flinch. “Hare, a bullet made that!”
“Yes.”
“Then you didn’t ride in by the Navajo crossing?”
“No. I came by Silver Cup.”
“Silver Cup? How on earth did you get down there?”
“We climbed out of the cañon up over Coconina, and so made the spring.”
Naab whistled his surprise and he passed another keen glance over Hare and his horse. “Your story can wait. I know about what it is . . . after you reached Silver Cup. Come in, come in . . . Dave will have a care for the stallion.”
But Hare would not allow Dave or anyone else to attend to Silvermane. That was his own work, his duty, his pleasure. He rubbed the tired gray, gave him a drink at the trough, led him to the corral, and took leave of him with a caress similar to Mescal’s. Then he went to his room and bathed himself and changed his clothes, afterward presenting himself at the supper table to eat like one famished. It did not take him long, nor was he surprised to discover that gloom pervaded the Naab household. Mescal and he ate alone, as they had been too late for the regular hour. The womenfolk waited upon them as if they could not do enough for them; pleasant words and smiles were not wanting, but in spite of these manifestations something somber attended the meal. There was a shadow in each face, and each step was slow, and each voice subdued. Naab and his sons were waiting for Hare when he entered the sitting room, and after his entrance the door was closed. They were all quiet and stern, especially the father. Never before had Hare so strongly felt the inflexibility of these men, nor had he ever felt their relationship to him as it seemed now.
“Tell us all,” said Naab simply.
While Hare was narrating his adventures not a word or a move interrupted him till he spoke of Silvermane’s running Dene down.
“That’s the second time,” rolled out Naab. “The stallion will kill him yet.”
Hare then concluded his story.
“What you owe that great whirlwind of a horse!” exclaimed Dave Naab. No other comment on Hare or Silvermane was offered by the Naabs.
“You knew Holderness had taken in Silver Cup?” inquired Hare.
August Naab nodded gloomily.
“I guess we knew it,” replied Dave for him. “While I was in White Sage and the boys were here at home, Holderness rode to the spring and took possession. I called to see him on my way back, but he wasn’t around. Snap was there, the boss of a bunch of riders. Dene, too, was there.”
“Did you go right into camp?” asked Hare.
“Sure. I was looking for Holderness. There were eighteen or twenty riders in the bunch. I talked to several of them, Mormons, good fellows, they used to be. Also had some words with Dene. He said . . . ‘I shore was sorry Snap got to my spy first. I wanted him bad, an’ I’m shore goin’ to have his white horse.’ Snap and Dene, all of them, thought you were number thirty-one in Dad’s cemetery.”
“Not yet,” said Hare. “Dene certainly looked as if he saw a ghost when Silvermane jumped and I yelled at him. Well, he’s at Silver Cup now. They’re all there. What’s to be done about it? They’re openly thieves. The new brand on all your stock proves that.”
“Such a trick we never heard of,” replied August Naab. “If we had, we might have spared ourselves the labor of branding the stock.”
> “But that new brand of Holderness’s upon yours proves his guilt.”
“It’s not now a question of proof. It’s one of right, of possession. Holderness has stolen my water and my stock.”
“They are worse than rustlers . . . firing on Mescal and me proves that.”
“Why didn’t you unlimber the long rifle?” interposed Dave curiously.
“I got it full of water and sand. That reminds me . . . I must be about cleaning it. I never thought of shooting back. Silvermane was running too fast.”
“Hare, you can see I am in the most serious position of my life,” said August Naab. “My sons have persuaded me that I was pushed off my ranges too easily. I’ve come to believe Martin Cole . . . certainly his prophecy has come true. Dave brought news from White Sage, and it’s almost unbelievable. Holderness has proclaimed himself or has actually got himself elected sheriff. He holds office over the Mormons from whom he steals. Scarcely a day goes by in the village without a killing. The Mormons north of Lund finally banded together, hanged some rustlers, and drove the others out. Many of them have come down into our country, and Holderness now has a strong force. But the Mormons will rise against him. I know it . . . I see it. I am waiting for it. We are God-fearing, life-loving men, slow to wrath. But . . . .”
The deep rolling burr in his voice denoted emotion that denied him words.
“They need a leader,” replied Hare sharply.
August Naab rose with haggard face and his eyes had the look of a man accused.
“Dad figures this way,” put in Dave. “On the one hand we lose our water and stock without bloodshed. We have a living in the oasis. There’s little here to attract rustlers, so we may live in peace if we give up our rights. On the other hand, suppose Dad gets the Navajos down here and we join them and go after Holderness and his gang. There’s going to be an all-fired bloody fight. Of course we’d wipe out the rustlers, but some of us would get killed . . . and there are the wives and kids. See.”
The force of August Naab’s argument for peace, entirely aside from his Christian repugnance to the shedding of blood, was plainly unassailable.
