The Lone Star Ranger and the Mysterious Rider

by Zane Grey

  “Wilson Moore, do you mean it?” she asked, with grave wonder. “Are you going to homestead near White Slides Ranch—and live there—when—”

  She could not finish. An overwhelming disaster, for which she had no name, seemed to be impending.

  “Yes, I am,” he replied. “Funny how things turn out, isn’t it?”

  “It’s very—very funny,” she said, dazedly, and she turned slowly away without another word.

  “Good-by, Columbine,” he called out after her, with farewell, indeed, in his voice.

  All the way home Columbine was occupied with feelings that swayed her to the exclusion of rational consideration of the increasing perplexity of her situation. And to make matters worse, when she arrived at the ranch it was to meet Jack Belllounds with a face as black as a thunder-cloud.

  “The old man wants to see you,” he announced, with an accent that recalled his threat of a few hours back.

  “Does he?” queried Columbine, loftily. “From the courteous way you speak I imagine it’s important.”

  Belllounds did not deign to reply to this. He sat on the porch, where evidently he had awaited her return, and he looked anything but happy.

  “Where is dad?” continued Columbine.

  Jack motioned toward the second door, beyond which he sat, the one that opened into the room the rancher used as a kind of office and storeroom. As Columbine walked by Jack he grasped her skirt.

  “Columbine! You’re angry?” he said, appealingly.

  “I reckon I am,” replied Columbine.

  “Don’t go in to dad when you’re that way,” implored Jack. “He’s angry, too—and—and—it’ll only make matters worse.”

  From long experience Columbine could divine when Jack had done something in the interest of self and then had awakened to possible consequences. She pulled away from him without replying, and knocked on the office door.

  “Come in,” called the rancher.

  Columbine went in. “Hello, dad! Do you want me?”

  Belllounds sat at an old table, bending over a soiled ledger, with a stubby pencil in his huge hand. When he looked up Columbine gave a little start.

  “Where’ve you been?” he asked, gruffly.

  “I’ve been calling on Mrs. Andrews,” replied Columbine.

  “Did you go thar to see her?”

  “Why—certainly!” answered Columbine, with a slow break in her speech.

  “You didn’t go to meet Wilson Moore?”

  “No.”

  “An’ I reckon you’ll say you hadn’t heerd he was there?”

  “I had not,” flashed Columbine.

  “Wal, did you see him?”

  “Yes, sir, I did, but quite by accident.”

  “Ahuh! Columbine, are you lyin’ to me?”

  The hot blood flooded to Columbine’s cheeks, as if she had been struck a blow.

  “Dad!” she cried, in hurt amaze.

  Belllounds seemed thick, imponderable, as if something had forced a crisis in him and his brain was deeply involved. The habitual, cool, easy, bold, and frank attitude in the meeting of all situations seemed to have been encroached upon by a break, a bewilderment, a lessening of confidence.

  “Wal, are you lyin’?” he repeated, either blind to or unaware of her distress.

  “I could not—lie to you,” she faltered, “even—if—I wanted to.”

  The heavy, shadowed gaze of his big eyes was bent upon her as if she had become a new and perplexing problem.

  “But you seen Moore?”

  “Yes—sir.” Columbine’s spirit rose.

  “An’ talked with him?”

  “Of course.”

  “Lass, I ain’t likin’ thet, an’ I ain’t likin’ the way you look an’ speak.”

  “I am sorry. I can’t help either.”

  “What’d this cowboy say to you?”

  “We talked mostly about his injured foot.”

  “An’ what else?” went on Belllounds, his voice rising.

  “About—what he meant to do now.”

  “Ahuh! An’ thet’s homesteadin’ the Sage Creek Valley?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you want him to do thet?”

  “I! Indeed I didn’t.”

  “Columbine, not so long ago you told me this fellar wasn’t sweet on you. An’ do you still say that to me—are you still insistin’ he ain’t in love with you?”

  “He never said so—I never believed it … and now I’m sure—he isn’t!”

  “Ahuh! Wal, thet same day you was jest as sure you didn’t care anythin’ particular fer him. Are you thet sure now?”

  “No!” whispered Columbine, very low. She trembled with a suggestion of unknown forces. Not to save a new and growing pride would she evade any question from this man upon whom she had no claim, to whom she owed her life and her bringing up. But something cold formed in her.

  Belllounds, self-centered and serious as he strangely was, seemed to check his probing, either from fear of hearing more from her or from an awakening of former kindness. But her reply was a shock to him, and, throwing down his pencil with the gesture of a man upon whom decision was forced, he rose to tower over her.

  “You’ve been like a daughter to me. I’ve done all I knowed how fer you. I’ve lived up to the best of my lights. An’ I’ve loved you,” he said, sonorously and pathetically. “You know what my hopes are—fer the boy—an’ fer you.… We needn’t waste any more talk. From this minnit you’re free to do as you like. Whatever you do won’t make any change in my carin’ fer you.… But you gotta decide. Will you marry Jack or not?”

  “I promised you—I would. I’ll keep my word,” replied Columbine, steadily.

  “So far so good,” went on the rancher. “I’m respectin’ you fer what you say.… An’ now, when will you marry him?”

  The little room drifted around in Columbine’s vague, blank sight. All seemed to be drifting. She had no solid anchor.

  “Any—day you say—the sooner the—better,” she whispered.

  “Wal, lass, I’m thankin’ you,” he replied, with voice that sounded afar to her. “An’ I swear, if I didn’t believe it’s best fer Jack an’ you, why I’d never let you marry.… So we’ll set the day. October first! Thet’s the day you was fetched to me a baby—more ’n seventeen years ago.”

  “October—first—then, dad,” she said, brokenly, and she kissed him as if in token of what she knew she owed him. Then she went out, closing the door behind her.

  Jack, upon seeing her, hastily got up, with more than concern in his pale face.

  “Columbine!” he cried, hoarsely. “How you look!… Tell me. What happened? Girl, don’t tell me you’ve—you’ve—”

  “Jack Belllounds,” interrupted Columbine, in tragic amaze at this truth about to issue from her lips, “I’ve promised to marry you—on October first.”

  He let out a shout of boyish exultation and suddenly clasped her in his arms. But there was nothing boyish in the way he handled her, in the almost savage evidence of possession. “Collie, I’m mad about you,” he began, ardently. “You never let me tell you. And I’ve grown worse and worse. To-day I—when I saw you going down there—where that Wilson Moore is—I got terribly jealous. I was sick. I’d been glad to kill him!… It made me see how I loved you. Oh, I didn’t know. But now … Oh, I’m mad for you!” He crushed her to him, unmindful of her struggles; his face and neck were red; his eyes on fire. And he began trying to kiss her mouth, but failed, as she struggled desperately. His kisses fell upon cheek and ear and hair.

  “Let me—go!” panted Columbine. “You’ve no—no—Oh, you might have waited.” Breaking from him, she fled, and got inside her room with the door almost closed, when his foot intercepted it.

  Belllounds was half laughing his exultation, half furious at her escape, and altogether beside himself.

  “No,” she replied, so violently that it appeared to awake him to the fact that there was some one besides himself to consi
der.

  “Aw!” He heaved a deep sigh. “All right. I won’t try to get in. Only listen.… Collie, don’t mind my—my way of showing you how I felt. Fact is, I went plumb off my head. Is that any wonder, you—you darling—when I’ve been so scared you’d never have me? Collie, I’ve felt that you were the one thing in the world I wanted most and would never get. But now … October first! Listen. I promise you I’ll not drink any more—nor gamble—nor nag dad for money. I don’t like his way of running the ranch, but I’ll do it, as long as he lives. I’ll even try to tolerate that club-footed cowboy’s brass in homesteading a ranch right under my nose. I’ll—I’ll do anything you ask of me.”

  “Then—please—go away!” cried Columbine, with a sob.

  When he was gone Columbine barred the door and threw herself upon her bed to shut out the light and to give vent to her surcharged emotions. She wept like a girl whose youth was ending; and after the paroxysm had passed, leaving her weak and strangely changed, she tried to reason out what had happened to her. Over and over again she named the appeal of the rancher, the sense of her duty, the decision she had reached, and the disgust and terror inspired in her by Jack Belllounds’s reception of her promise. These were facts of the day and they had made of her a palpitating, unhappy creature, who nevertheless had been brave to face the rancher and confess that which she had scarce confessed to herself. But now she trembled and cringed on the verge of a catastrophe that withheld its whole truth.

  “I begin to see now,” she whispered, after the thought had come and gone and returned to change again. “If Wilson had cared for me I—I might have—cared, too.… But I do—care—something. I couldn’t lie to dad. Only I’m not sure—how much. I never dreamed of—of loving him, or any one. It’s so strange. All at once I feel old. And I can’t understand these—these feelings that shake me.”

  So Columbine brooded over the trouble that had come to her, never regretting her promise to the old rancher, but growing keener in the realization of a complexity in her nature that sooner or later would separate the life of her duty from the life of her desire. She seemed all alone, and when this feeling possessed her a strange reminder of the hunter Wade flashed up. She stifled another impulse to confide in him. Wade had the softness of a woman, and his face was a record of the trials and travails through which he had come unhardened, unembittered. Yet how could she tell her troubles to him? A stranger, a rough man of the wilds, whose name had preceded him, notorious and deadly, with that vital tang of the West in its meaning! Nevertheless, Wade drew her, and she thought of him until the recurring memory of Jack Belllounds’s rude clasp again crept over her with an augmenting disgust and fear. Must she submit to that? Had she promised that? And then Columbine felt the dawning of realities.

  CHAPTER 7

  Columbine was awakened in the gray dawn by the barking of coyotes. She dreaded the daylight thus heralded. Never before in her life had she hated the rising of the sun. Resolutely she put the past behind her and faced the future, believing now that with the great decision made she needed only to keep her mind off what might have been, and to attend to her duty.

  At breakfast she found the rancher in better spirits than he had been for weeks. He informed her that Jack had ridden off early for Kremmling, there to make arrangements for the wedding on October first.

  “Jack’s out of his head,” said Belllounds. “Wal, thet comes only onct in a man’s life. I remember … Jack’s goin’ to drive you to Kremmlin’ an’ ther take stage fer Denver. I allow you’d better put in your best licks on fixin’ up an’ packin’ the clothes you’ll need. Women-folk naturally want to look smart on weddin’-trips.”

  “Dad!” exclaimed Columbine, in dismay. “I never thought of clothes. And I don’t want to leave White Slides.”

  “But, lass, you’re goin’ to be married!” expostulated Belllounds.

  “Didn’t it occur to Jack to take me to Kremmling? I can’t make new dresses out of old ones.”

  “Wal, I reckon neither of us thought of thet. But you can buy what you like in Denver.”

  Columbine resigned herself. After all, what did it matter to her? The vague, haunting dreams of girlhood would never come true. So she went to her wardrobe and laid out all her wearing apparel. Taking stock of it this way caused her further dismay, for she had nothing fit to wear in which either to be married or to take a trip to Denver. There appeared to be nothing to do but take the rancher’s advice, and Columbine set about refurbishing her meager wardrobe. She sewed all day.

  What with self-control and work and the passing of hours, Columbine began to make some approach to tranquillity. In her simplicity she even began to hope that being good and steadfast and dutiful would earn her a little meed of happiness. Some haunting doubt of this flashed over her mind like a swift shadow of a black wing, but she dispelled that as she had dispelled the fear and disgust which often rose up in her mind.

  To Columbine’s surprise and to the rancher’s concern the prospective bridegroom did not return from Kremmling on the second day. When night came Belllounds reluctantly gave up looking for him.

  Jack’s non-appearance suited Columbine, and she would have been glad to be let alone until October first, which date now seemed appallingly close. On the afternoon of Jack’s third day of absence from the ranch Columbine rode out for some needed exercise. Pronto not being available, she rode another mustang and one that kept her busy. On the way back to the ranch she avoided the customary trail which led by the cabins of Wade and the cowboys. Columbine had not seen one of her friends since the unfortunate visit to the Andrews ranch. She particularly shrank from meeting Wade, which feeling was in strange contrast to her former impulses.

  As she rode around the house she encountered Wilson Moore seated in a light wagon. Her mustang reared, almost unseating her. But she handled him roughly, being suddenly surprised and angry at this unexpected meeting with the cowboy.

  “Howdy, Columbine!” greeted Wilson, as she brought the mustang to his feet. “You’re sure learning to handle a horse—since I left this here ranch. Wonder who’s teaching you! I never could get you to rake even a bronc!”

  The cowboy had drawled out his admiring speech, half amused and half satiric.

  “I’m—mad!” declared Columbine. “That’s why.”

  “What’re you mad at?” queried Wilson.

  She did not reply, but kept on gazing steadily at him. Moore still looked pale and drawn, but he had improved since last she saw him.

  “Aren’t you going to speak to a fellow?” he went on.

  “How are you, Wils?” she asked.

  “Pretty good for a club-footed has-been cowpuncher.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call yourself such names,” rejoined Columbine, peevishly. “You’re not a club-foot. I hate that word!”

  “Me, too. Well, joking aside, I’m better. My foot is fine. Now, if I don’t hurt it again I’ll sure never be a club-foot.”

  “You must be careful,” she said, earnestly.

  “Sure. But it’s hard for me to be idle. Think of me lying still all day with nothing to do but read! That’s what knocked me out. I wouldn’t have minded the pain if I could have gotten about.… Columbine, I’ve moved in!”

  “What! Moved in?” she queried, blankly.

  “Sure. I’m in my cabin on the hill. It’s plumb great. Tom Andrews and Bert and your hunter Wade fixed up the cabin for me. That Wade is sure a good fellow. And say! what he can do with his hands! He’s been kind to me. Took an interest in me, and between you and me he sort of cheered me up.”

  “Cheered you up! Wils, were you unhappy?” she asked, directly.

  “Well, rather. What’d you expect of a cowboy who’d crippled himself—and lost his girl?”

  Columbine felt the smart of tingling blood in her face, and she looked from Wilson to the wagon. It contained saddles, blankets, and other cowboy accoutrements for which he had evidently come.

  “That’s a double misfortune,” she replie
d, evenly. “It’s too bad both came at once. It seems to me if I were a cowboy and—and felt so toward a girl, I’d have let her know.”

  “This girl I mean knew, all right,” he said, nodding his head.

  “She didn’t—she didn’t!” cried Columbine.

  “How do you know?” he queried, with feigned surprise. He was bent upon torturing her.

  “You meant me. I’m the girl you lost!”

  “Yes, you are—God help me!” replied Moore, with genuine emotion.

  “But you—you never told me—you never told me,” faltered Columbine, in distress.

  “Never told you what? That you were my girl?”

  “No—no. But that you—you cared—”

  “Columbine Belllounds, I told you—let you see—in every way under the sun,” he flashed at her.

  “Let me see—what?” faltered Columbine, feeling as if the world were about to end.

  “That I loved you.”

  “Oh!… Wilson!” whispered Columbine, wildly.

  “Yes—loved you. Could you have been so innocent—so blind you never knew? I can’t believe it.”

  “But I never dreamed you—you—” She broke off dazedly, overwhelmed by a tragic, glorious truth.

  “Collie!… Would it have made any difference?”

  “Oh, all the difference in the world!” she wailed.

  “What difference?” he asked, passionately.

  Columbine gazed wide-eyed and helpless at the young man. She did not know how to tell him what all the difference in the world really was.

  Suddenly Wilson turned away from her to listen. Then she heard rapid beating of hoofs on the road.

  “That’s Buster Jack,” said the cowboy. “Just my luck! There wasn’t any one here when I arrived. Reckon I oughtn’t have stayed. Columbine, you look pretty much upset.”

  “What do I care how I look!” she exclaimed, with a sharp resentment attending this abrupt and painful break in her agitation.