by Zane Grey
“Jump, dog-gone you,” said Curly, mildly, to his opponent. “Cain’t you see a jump when you have one?”
Bud reluctantly made the required move, when Curly promptly jumped three men, practically winning the game. Bud gave the home-made checker-board a shove, sending the checkers flying.
“Skunked again! Thet’s three games, without me gettin’ a king,” complained Bud, fiercely. “Of all the lucky gazabos I ever seen, you’re the dingest. … Lucky in fights—lucky in good looks—lucky at games—lucky at shenanagin out of work—an’ lucky with wimmen! It do beat hell!”
“Bud, what’s eatin’ you? I’ve got brains, which shore was left out of your make-up. I think aboot things. I don’t yell an’ run into a lot of bullets, like you do. I take care of my face, hair, teeth, an’ so on. When I play cairds or checkers I use my haid an’ figger out what the other fellar is aimin’ at. An’ it’s a damn lie aboot me gettin’ out of work. As fer the ladies—wal, I cain’t help it if they like me.”
“Go out an’ drown yourself,” shouted Bud, who plainly was angry for no reason at all, unless because he was all shot up.
“Wal, pard, you can gamble on this heah,” drawled his handsome friend. “If I turn out as unlucky as you with a certain lovely person, I shore will drown myself in drink.”
“Aw, I said wimmen. The way you talk, anyone would reckon there was no plural number of wimmen atall. Jest one woman in the world!”
“Which is correct.”
Jim broke into the argument. “Shut up, you gamecocks. Listen. I can’t write to Uncle Jim. If he doesn’t show up here in a few days I’ll have to ride to Flag.”
“An’ take Jack with you?” queried Bud, in a terrible voice.
“Yes. Jack has a wife, you know.”
“An’ leave the rest of us hyar fer Croak Malloy to wipe out, huh?”
Jim paced the floor. The matter was not easy to decide, and more than once he had convinced himself that the longing to see Molly had a good deal to do with the need to go to Flagerstown.
“Of course, if you boys think there’s a chance of Malloy coming back——”
“Wal, Jim,” interposed Curly, coolly. “As I see it you’d better wait. We’ve managed to get along without a doctor, an’ I reckon we can do the same without reportin’ to old Jim. He’ll roar, shore, but let him roar. This last few weeks hasn’t been any fun fer us. Somebody will get wind of thet fight an’ Flag will heah aboot it.”
“All right, I’ll give up the idea about going, as well as writing. It’ll be a relief,” replied Jim, and indeed the outspoken renunciation helped him. “You know one reason I wanted to go was to block Uncle Jim’s fetching Molly and Glory down here.”
“Aw!” breathed Bud, reproachfully. “An’ me dyin’ hyar by inches.”
“Let Uncle Jim fetch the girls,” rejoined Curly, stoutly.
“Curly, you’re a cold-blooded Arizonian,” declared Jim, with both irritation and admiration. “Here’s the deal. We had to take Slinger home to West Fork, shot to pieces. Bud’s on his back, full of bullets and bad temper. Lonestar hobbles about making you grind your teeth. And out there under the pines lie two of the Diamond—in their graves!”
“Wal, it’s shore sad,” replied Curly, “but the fact is we got off lucky. An’ we cain’t dodge what’s comin’ because of what’s past. I reckon thet fight aboot broke the Hash Knife fer keeps. I’m pretty shore I crippled Malloy. I was shootin’ through smoke, but I seen him fall. An’ then I couldn’t see him any more. He got away, an’ thet leaves him, Madden, an’ Jed Stone of the Hash Knife. Stone won’t stand fer the kind of rustlers Malloy has been ringin’ in of late. Thet Joe Tanner outfit, let alone such hombres as Bambridge an’ Darnell. So heah we are, not so bad off. An’ I reckon we could take care of your uncle an’ the girls.”
Cherry Winters came in at that juncture, carrying a rifle and a haunch of venison. The cool fragrance of the night and the woods accompanied him.
“Howdy, all!” he said, cheerfully.
“What kept you late, Cherry?” asked Curly.
“Nothin’. I jest ambled along. Reckon I was pretty fur up the crick. Got to watchin’ the beaver.”
“Jeff has kept supper on for you,” added Jim. “You know how sore he gets when we’re late? Rustle now.”
Jim went out on the porch. Night down in Yellow Jacket was always dark, by reason of the looming walls, which appeared so much closer and higher and blacker than by day. No air was stirring, consequently no sound in the pine and spruce tops, and the warm fragrant atmosphere of the sunny hours lingered in the canyon. The stream murmured as always, mellow and low; and the crickets were chirping. White blinking stars watched pitilessly out of the blue above.
The trouble with Jim was that he had not been weaned of his tenderfoot infancy; he had swallowed too big a dose of Arizona and he was sick. Beginning with Sonora’s ambush—which only Slinger’s timely shot had rendered futile—a series of happenings had tested Jim out to the limit. He had been found wanting, so far as stomach was concerned, and he knew it. Asleep and awake, that fight before the burning cabin had haunted him. No use to balk at the truth! He had taken cool bead with rifle at an oncoming and shooting, yelling rustler, and well he knew who had tumbled him over, like a bagged turkey. Afterward Jim had looked for a bullet-hole where he had aimed, and had found it. That was harsh enough. But the fact that he had, in common with his cowboys, turned deaf ear alike to the cursings and pleadings of the gambler Darnell, and had himself laid strong hands on that avenging rope, had like a boomerang rebounded upon him. All the arguments about rustlers, raids, self-preservation, had not been sufficient to cure him. Reality was something incalculably different from conjecture and possibility. In the Cibeque fight, rising out of the drift fence, he had been unable to take an active part; and so the killing of Jocelyn and the Haverlys by Slinger Dunn had rested rather easily upon his conscience. But now he was an Arizonian with blood on his hands. He still needed a violent and constant cue for passion.
Curly came outside presently: “Fine night, Boss. An’ it’s good to feel we can peek out an’ not be scared of bullets. I reckon, though, thet feelin’ oughtn’t be trusted fer long. We’ll heah from Croak Malloy before the summer is over.”
“Yes, it’s a fine night, I suppose,” sighed Jim. “But almost—I wish I was back in Missouri.”
“Never havin’ seen Arizona an’ Molly?” drawled the cowboy, with his cool, kindly tone.
“Even that.”
“But more special—never havin’ killed a man?”
“Curly!”
“Shore you cain’t fool me, Jim, old boy. I was aboot when it come off. I seen you bore thet rustler. Fact is I had a bead on him myself.”
“I—I didn’t dream anybody knew,” replied Jim, hoarsely. “Please don’t tell, Curly.”
“Wal, I cain’t promise fer the rest of the outfit. Bud seen it, from where he fell. An’ what’s more, he seen thet rustler shoot Hump daid.”
“He did!” cried Jim, a dark hot wave as of blood with consciousness surging to his head. A subtle change marked his exclamation.
“Shore. An’ Lonestar reckoned he seen the same. Wal, thet rustler was Ham Beard. We searched him, before we buried him. Used to be a Winslow bartender till he murdered some one. Then he took to cattle-stealin’. Sort of a lone wolf an’ shore a daid shot. If it hadn’t been fer thet smoke he an’ Croak might have done fer all of us. Though I reckon in thet case, if they’d charged us without the cover of smoke, we’d have stopped them with our rifles. … It was a mess, Jim, an’ you ought to pat yourself on the back instead of mopin’ around.”
Jim realized this clearly, and in the light of Curly’s cool illuminating talk he felt the relaxing of a gloomy shade.
“If Glory an’ Molly never hear of it—I guess I’ll stand it,” he said.
“Wal, you can bet your last pair of wool socks in zero weather thet our beloved Bud will spring it on the girls.”
“No
!”
“Shore. An’ not because of his itch to talk. It’ll be pride, Jim, unholy pride in your addition to the toll of the Diamond.”
“I’ll beg him not to, and if that’s not enough I’ll beat him.”
“Wal, Mizzouri, it cain’t be did,” drawled Curly.
The cowboys had given the brakes a wide berth for days, notwithstanding the pertinent and baffling fact that most of the Diamond stock had been driven or had stampeded as far south as Yellow Jacket. Jim was strong to ride down, at least as far as the burned cabin, and to bury the rustlers they had left hanging to the sycamore. But Curly took as strong exception to leaving crippled cowboys unprotected at the ranch-house; and as for the hanging rustlers, he said, “Let ’em sun dry an’ blow away!”
Curly was not as easy in mind as might have appeared to a superficial observer. He was restless; he walked up and down the canyon trail. Jim noted that Curly’s blue flashing eyes were ever on the alert. And when Jim finally commented about this, Curly surprised him with a whisper: “Nix on thet, Mizzouri. I don’t want Bud or Lonestar to worry. They make fuss enough. But I’ll tell you somethin’. This very day, when you were eatin’ dinner, I seen a rider’s black sombrero bobbin’ above the rim wall there. On the east rim, mind you!”
“Curly! … A black sombrero? You might have been mistaken,” replied Jim.
“Shore. It might have been a black hawk or a raven. But my eyes are pretty sharp, Jim.”
Hours of uneasiness on Jim’s part followed, and apparently casual strolling the porch on Curly’s. Nothing happened, and at length Jim forgot about the circumstance. He went back to his account-books, presently to be disturbed by the nervous Bud.
“Boss, I thought I heerd a call a little while ago, but I didn’t want to bother you. But now I shore heerd hosses.”
“You did?” Jim listened with strained ears, while he gazed around the living-room. Lonestar was asleep, and so was Cherry, while Jack, writing as usual, could not have heard the crack of doom. But Jim distinctly caught a soft thud, thud, thud of hoofs.
“Curly!” he called sharply. That jerked the sleepers wide awake, but it did not fetch Curly.
“Boys, something up. We hear horses. And Curly doesn’t answer. Grab your rifles.”
“Listen, Boss!” ejaculated Bud.
Then Jim caught a call from outside: “Jim—oh, Jim!”
“Molly!” he shouted wildly, and rushed out, to be followed by the three uninjured cowboys. No sign of horses down the trail. But under the pines in the other direction moved brown figures, now close at hand, emerging from the grove. Molly led, on a big raw-boned bay horse. Hatless, her dusky hair flying, she called again: “Jim—oh, Jim!”
Roused out of stupefaction, Jim rushed to meet her. “Molly! for Heaven’s sake, how’d you get here?” he cried as she reined in the bay. She dropped a halter of a packhorse she was leading. Then Jim saw that she was brush-covered and travel-stained. Her hair was full of pine needles, and her eyes shone unnaturally large and bright. Jim’s rapture suffered a check. He looked beyond her, to see Curly supporting Gloriana in the saddle of a third horse. Her head drooped, her hair hung in a tawny mass.
“My God! what’s happened?” he exclaimed, in sudden terror.
“Shore a lot. Don’t look so scared, Jim. We’re all right. … Help me down.”
She slid into his arms, most unresisting, Jim imagined, and for once his kisses brought blushes without protest. If she did not actually squeeze him, then he was dreaming. He set her down upon her feet, still keeping an arm around her.
“What—what’s all this?” he stammered, looking back to see Gloriana fall into Curly’s arms. As Curly carried her up the porch steps Jim caught a glimpse of Gloriana’s face. Then he dragged Molly with him into the house.
“Curly, let me down,” Gloriana was saying.
But Curly did not hear, or at least obey. “For Gawd’s sake, darlin’, tell me you—you’re not hurt or—or anythin’.”
No longer was Gloriana’s face white. “Let me down, I say,” she cried, imperiously. Whereupon Curly became aware of his behavior, and he set her down in the big armchair, to gaze at her as at a long-lost treasure found.
“Glory!—What crazy trick—have you sprung on us?” gasped Jim, striding close, still hanging to Molly. He stared incredulously at his sister. Her flimsy dress had once been light-colored. It seemed no longer a dress, scarcely a covering, and it was torn to shreds and black from contact with burned brush. But that appeared only little cause for the effect she produced upon Jim and his comrades. One arm was wholly bare, scratched and dirty and bloody; her legs were likewise. To glance over these only forced the gaze back to Gloriana’s face. The havoc of terrible mental and physical strain showed in its haggard outlines. But her eyes seemed a purple radiant blaze of rapture, or thanksgiving. They would have reassured a cynic that all was well with heart and soul—that life was good.
“Oh—Jim,” she whispered, lifting a weak hand to him, and as he clasped it, to sink on one knee beside her chair, she lay back and closed her eyes. “I’m here—I’m safe—oh, thank Heaven!”
“Glory, dear, what in the world happened?” begged Jim.
On the other side of the chair Curly lifted her hand, which clung to a battered old sombrero, full of bullet holes.
“Jim, this heah’s what I seen bobbin’ above the rim,” he said, in amazed conjecture. “Whose hat is this? Reckon it looks some familiar.”
He could not remove it from the girl’s tight clutch.
“Thet sombrero belonged to Croak Malloy,” interposed Molly, who stood back of Jim, smoothing the pine needles out of her tangled hair.
“Holy Mackeli!” burst out Curly. “I knew it. I recognized thet hat. … Jim, as shore as Gawd made little apples thet croakin’ gun-thrower is daid.”
“Daid? I should smile he is,” corroborated Molly, laconically. “Daid as a door nail.”
The tremendousness of that truth, which no one doubted, commanded profound silence. Even Curly Prentiss had no tongue.
“Jed Stone killed Malloy, an’ Madden, too,” went on Molly, bright-eyed, enjoying to the full the sensation she was creating.
Jim echoed the name of the Hash Knife leader, but Curly, to whom that name had so much more deadly significance, still could not speak.
“Molly Dunn, I’m a hurted cowpuncher,” called Bud from his bed. “An’ if you don’t tell pronto what’s come off, I’ll be wuss.”
Gloriana opened her eyes, and let them dwell lovingly upon her brother, and then Molly, after which they wandered to the standing wide-eyed cowboys, and lastly to the stricken Curly, whose adoration was embarrassingly manifest.
“Tell them, Molly,” she whispered. “I—can’t talk.”
“We planned to surprise you, Jim,” began Molly. “It took some persuadin’ to get Uncle Jim in on our job. But we did. An’ let’s see—five days ago—early mawnin’ we left Flag in the buckboard, Pedro drivin’. That night we slept at Miller’s ranch. Next mawnin’ at the fork of the road we got held up by Croak Malloy, an’ two of his pards, Madden an’ Reeves. They’d jest happened to run into us. Uncle Jim didn’t know Malloy until he shot Pedro. Malloy robbed Uncle, took our bags, an’ threw us on horses. An’ he told Uncle to go back to Flag, dig up ten thousand dollars, an’ send it by rider to Tobe’s Well, where it was to be put up in the loft by the chimney. Malloy drove us off then, into the woods, an’ along in the afternoon we reached Tobe’s Well. We’d jest been dragged in, an’ they’d hawg-tied me, an’ Malloy was tearin’ Glory’s clothes off, when in comes Jed Stone. He shore filled thet cabin. … Wal, Croak was sore at bein’ interrupted, an’ Jed raved aboot what Uncle Jim would do. Queer what stress he put on Uncle Jim! Called him Jim! … Croak got sorer at all the fuss Jed was makin’ over nothin’. Then Jed stamped up an’ down, wringin’ his hands. But when quick as a cat he turned one of them held a boomin’ gun. I shut my eyes. Jed shot two more times. I heahed one of the rustlers run out, an�
� when I looked again Malloy an’ Madden were daid, an’ Reeves had escaped.”
“Wal, of all deals I ever seen in my born days!” ejaculated Curly Prentiss as Molly paused, gradually yielding to excitement engendered by her narrative. Her big eyes glowed like coals.
“Wal, it turned out we’d only fallen out of the fryin’-pan into the fire,” went on Molly, presently. “Jed had run into Uncle Jim, an’ learnin’ aboot the hold-up, he’d trailed us, an’ he killed them men jest to have us girls all to himself. It began then. … Whew, what a desperado Jed Stone was! He had to beat me with a switch. An’ when he was fightin’ an’ kissin’ me Glory grabbed up the butcher knife to kill him. She’d been put to makin’ biscuits while Jed made love to me. He had to shoot at her, an’ she fainted again. … Wal, Glory cooked his supper, an’ afterward he made her drink whisky, an’ then dance fer him. Thet played poor Glory out. He let us alone then. Next mawnin’ we rustled off quick, without hardly any grub, an’ he rode us all over the Diamond. He got lost, he said. We had two more days of ridin’, up an’ down, through the brush, over rocks. Oh, it was bad even for me. All the time Jed made me do the work an’ near drove Glory crazy. One night he forced us to sleep in the same bed with him, an’ gave us choice of who was to lie in the middle. Glory wouldn’t let me. He had a nightmare, an’ raved aboot hydrophobia skunks an’ how we’d have to choke one off Glory’s nose. … Yesterday, late afternoon, we slid an’ rolled down into the canyon, an’ soon we rode plumb into thet place where you hanged Darnell an’ the two rustlers. … The sight near keeled me over. An’ poor Glory— But enough said aboot thet. We camped above there, an’ this mawnin’ climbed out again. Glory was all in, starved, an’ so sick after seein’ those daid men, hangin’ like sacks by their necks, thet she couldn’t sit up in her saddle. I had to hold her. We went along the rim till we came to the road. An’ there Jed said he’d located himself again, an’ we’d have to separate, as he could take only one of us with him, the other goin’ to a ranch he said was down heah. I begged him not to separate us. … an’ then Glory told Jed she would go with him, to save me! … Thet flabbergasted Jed, as you could see. He hadn’t savvied Glory. He’d been daid set to make her squeal an’ show yellow—which she shore didn’t. … An’ then what do you reckon he said?”
