The Lone Star Ranger and the Mysterious Rider

by Zane Grey

  Lem dropped his head, evidently to hide his expression. “Wal, dog-gone me!” he ejaculated. “Thet’s too bad.”

  Columbine left the cowboy and rode up the lane toward Wade’s cabin. She did not analyze her deliberate desire to tell the truth about that fight, but she would have liked to proclaim it to the whole range and to the world. Once clear of the house she felt free, unburdened, and to talk seemed to relieve some congestion of her thoughts.

  The hounds heralded Columbine’s approach with a deep and booming chorus. Sampson and Jim lay upon the porch, unleashed. The other hounds were chained separately in the aspen grove a few rods distant. Sampson thumped the boards with his big tail, but he did not get up, which laziness attested to the fact that there had been a lion chase the day before and he was weary and stiff. If Wade had been at home he would have come out to see what had occasioned the clamor. As Columbine rode by she saw another fresh lion-pelt pegged upon the wall of the cabin.

  She followed the brook. It had cleared since the rains and was shining and sparkling in the rough, swift places, and limpid and green in the eddies. She passed the dam made by the solitary beaver that inhabited the valley. Freshly cut willows showed how the beaver was preparing for the long winter ahead. Columbine remembered then how greatly pleased Wade had been to learn about this old beaver; and more than once Wade had talked about trapping some younger beavers and bringing them there to make company for the old fellow.

  The trail led across the brook at a wide, shallow place, where the splashing made by Pronto sent the trout scurrying for deeper water. Columbine kept to that trail, knowing that it led up into Sage Valley, where Wilson Moore had taken up the homestead property. Fresh horse tracks told her that Wade had ridden along there some time earlier. Pronto shied at the whirring of sage-hens. Presently Columbine ascertained they were flushed by the hound Kane, that had broken loose and followed her. He had done so before, and the fact had not displeased her.

  “Kane! Kane! come here!” she called. He came readily, but halted a rod or so away, and made an attempt at wagging his tail, a function evidently somewhat difficult for him. When she resumed trotting he followed her.

  Old White Slides had lost all but the drabs and dull yellows and greens, and of course those pale, light slopes that had given the mountain its name. Sage Valley was only one of the valleys at its base. It opened out half a mile wide, dominated by the looming peak, and bordered on the far side by an aspen-thicketed slope. The brook babbled along under the edge of this thicket. Cattle and horses grazed here and there on the rich, grassy levels. Columbine was surprised to see so many cattle and wondered to whom they belonged. All of Belllounds’s stock had been driven lower down for the winter. There among the several horses that whistled at her approach she espied the white mustang Belllounds had given to Moore. It thrilled her to see him. And next, she suffered a pang to think that perhaps his owner might never ride him again. But Columbine held her emotions in abeyance.

  The cabin stood high upon a level terrace, with clusters of aspens behind it, and was sheltered from winter blasts by a gray cliff, picturesque and crumbling, with its face overgrown by creeping vines and colorful shrubs. Wilson Moore could not have chosen a more secluded and beautiful valley for his homesteading adventure. The little gray cabin, with smoke curling from the stone chimney, had lost its look of dilapidation and disuse, yet there was nothing new that Columbine could see. The last quarter of the ascent of the slope, and the few rods across the level terrace, seemed extraordinarily long to Columbine. As she dismounted and tied Pronto her heart was beating and her breath was coming fast.

  The door of the cabin was open. Kane trotted past the hesitating Columbine and went in.

  “You son-of-a-hound-dog!” came to Columbine’s listening ears in Wade’s well-known voice. “I’ll have to beat you—sure as you’re born.”

  “I heard a horse,” came in a lower voice, that was Wilson’s.

  “Darn me if I’m not gettin’ deafer every day,” was the reply.

  Then Wade appeared in the doorway.

  “It’s nobody but Miss Collie,” he announced, as he made way for her to enter.

  “Good morning!” said Columbine, in a voice that had more than cheerfulness in it.

  “Collie!… Did you come to see me?”

  She heard this incredulous query just an instant before she saw Wilson at the far end of the room, lying under the light of a window. The inside of the cabin seemed vague and unfamiliar.

  “I surely did,” she replied, advancing. “How are you?”

  “Oh, I’m all right. Tickled to death, right now.… Only, I hate to have you see this battered mug of mine.”

  “You needn’t—care,” said Columbine, unsteadily. And indeed, in that first glance she did not see him clearly. A mist blurred her sight and there was a lump in her throat. Then, to recover herself, she looked around the cabin.

  “Well—Wils Moore—if this isn’t fine!” she ejaculated, in amaze and delight. Columbine sustained an absolute surprise. A magic hand had transformed the interior of that rude old prospector’s abode. A carpenter and a mason and a decorator had been wonderfully at work. From one end to the other Columbine gazed; from the big window under which Wilson lay on a blanketed couch to the open fireplace where Wade grinned she looked and looked, and then up to the clean, aspen-poled roof and down to the floor, carpeted with deer hides. The chinks between the logs of the walls were plastered with red clay; the dust and dirt were gone; the place smelled like sage and wood-smoke and fragrant, frying meat. Indeed, there were a glowing bed of embers and a steaming kettle and a smoking pot; and the way the smoke and steam curled up into the gray old chimney attested to its splendid draught. In each corner hung a deer-head, from the antlers of which depended accoutrements of a cowboy—spurs, ropes, belts, scarfs, guns. One corner contained a cupboard, ceiling high, with new, clean doors of wood, neatly made; and next to it stood a table, just as new. On the blank wall beyond that were pegs holding saddles, bridles, blankets, clothes.

  “He did it—all this inside,” burst out Moore, delighted with her delight. “Quicker than a flash! Collie, isn’t this great? I don’t mind being down on my back.… And he says they call him Hell-Bent Wade. I call him Heaven-Sent Wade!”

  When Columbine turned to the hunter, bursting with her pleasure and gratitude, he suddenly dropped the forked stick he used as a lift, and she saw his hand shake when he stooped to recover it. How strangely that struck her!

  “Ben, it’s perfectly possible that you’ve been sent by Heaven,” she remarked, with a humor which still held gravity in it.

  “Me! A good angel? That’d be a new job for Bent Wade,” he replied, with a queer laugh. “But I reckon I’d try to live up to it.”

  There were small sprigs of golden aspen leaves and crimson oak leaves on the wall above the foot of Wilson’s bed. Beneath them, on pegs, hung a rifle. And on the window-sill stood a glass jar containing columbines. They were fresh. They had just been picked. They waved gently in the breeze, sweetly white and blue, strangely significant to the girl.

  Moore laughed defiantly.

  “Wade thought to fetch these flowers in,” he explained. “They’re his favorites as well as mine. It won’t be long now till the frost kills them … and I want to be happy while I may!”

  Again Columbine felt that deep surge within her, beyond her control, beyond her understanding, but now gathering and swelling, soon to be reckoned with. She did not look at Wilson’s face then. Her downcast gaze saw that his right hand was bandaged, and she touched it with an unconscious tenderness.

  “Your hand! Why is it all wrapped up?”

  The cowboy laughed with grim humor.

  “Have you seen Jack this morning?”

  “No,” she replied, shortly.

  “Well, if you had, you’d know what happened to my fist.”

  “Did you hurt it on him?” she asked, with a queer little shudder that was not unpleasant.

  “Coll
ie, I busted that fist on his handsome face.”

  “Oh, it was dreadful!” she murmured. “Wilson, he meant to kill you.”

  “Sure. And I’d cheerfully have killed him.”

  “You two must never meet again,” she went on.

  “I hope to Heaven we never do,” replied Moore, with a dark earnestness that meant more than his actual words.

  “Wilson, will you avoid him—for my sake?” implored Columbine, unconsciously clasping the bandaged hand.

  “I will. I’ll take the back trails. I’ll sneak like a coyote. I’ll hide and I’ll watch.… But, Columbine Belllounds, if he ever corners me again—”

  “Why, you’ll leave him to Hell-Bent Wade,” interrupted the hunter, and he looked up from where he knelt, fixing those great, inscrutable eyes upon the cowboy. Columbine saw something beyond his face, deeper than the gloom, a passion and a spirit that drew her like a magnet. “An’ now, Miss Collie,” he went on, “I reckon you’ll want to wait on our invalid. He’s got to be fed.”

  “I surely will,” replied Columbine, gladly, and she sat down on the edge of the bed. “Ben, you fetch that box and put his dinner on it.”

  While Wade complied, Columbine, shyly aware of her nearness to the cowboy, sought to keep up conversation.

  “Couldn’t you help yourself with your left hand?” she inquired.

  “That one’s worse,” he answered, taking it from under the blanket, where it had been concealed.

  “Oh!” cried Columbine, in dismay.

  “Broke two bones in this one,” said Wilson, with animation. “Say, Collie, our friend Wade is a doctor, too. Never saw his beat!”

  “And a cook, too, for here’s your dinner. You must sit up,” ordered Columbine.

  “Fold that blanket and help me up on it,” replied Moore.

  How strange and disturbing for Columbine to bend over him, to slip her arms under him and lift him! It recalled a long-forgotten motherliness of her doll-playing days. And her face flushed hot.

  “Can’t you move?” she asked, suddenly becoming aware of how dead a weight the cowboy appeared.

  “Not—very much,” he replied. Drops of sweat appeared on his bruised brow. It must have hurt him to move.

  “You said your foot was all right.”

  “It is,” he returned. “It’s still on my leg, as I know darned well.”

  “Oh!” exclaimed Columbine, dubiously. Without further comment she began to feed him.

  “It’s worth getting licked to have this treat,” he said.

  “Nonsense!” she rejoined.

  “I’d stand it again—to have you come here and feed me.… But not from him.”

  “Wilson, I never knew you to be facetious before. Here, take this.”

  Apparently he did not see her outstretched hand.

  “Collie, you’ve changed. You’re older. You’re a woman, now—and the prettiest—”

  “Are you going to eat?” demanded Columbine.

  “Huh!” exclaimed the cowboy, blankly. “Eat? Oh yes, sure. I’m powerful hungry. And maybe Heaven-Sent Wade can’t cook!”

  But Columbine had trouble in feeding him. What with his helplessness, and his propensity to watch her face instead of her hands, and her own mounting sensations of a sweet, natural joy and fitness in her proximity to him, she was hard put to it to show some dexterity as a nurse. And all the time she was aware of Wade, with his quiet, forceful presence, hovering near. Could he not see her hands trembling? And would he not think that weakness strange? Then driftingly came the thought that she would not shrink from Wade’s reading her mind. Perhaps even now he understood her better than she understood herself.

  “I can’t—eat any more,” declared Moore, at last.

  “You’ve done very well for an invalid,” observed Columbine. Then, changing the subject, she asked, “Wilson, you’re going to stay here—winter here, dad would call it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are those your cattle down in the valley?”

  “Sure. I’ve got near a hundred head. I saved my money and bought cattle.”

  “That’s a good start for you. I’m glad. But who’s going to take care of you and your stock until you can work again?”

  “Why, my friend there, Heaven-Sent Wade,” replied Moore, indicating the little man busy with the utensils on the table, and apparently hearing nothing.

  “Can I fetch you anything to eat—or read?” she inquired.

  “Fetch yourself,” he replied, softly.

  “But, boy, how could I fetch you anything without fetching myself?”

  “Sure, that’s right. Then fetch me some jam and a book—to-morrow. Will you?”

  “I surely will.”

  “That’s a promise. I know your promises of old.”

  “Then good-by till to-morrow. I must go. I hope you’ll be better.”

  “I’ll stay sick in bed till you stop coming.”

  Columbine left rather precipitously, and when she got outdoors it seemed that the hills had never been so softly, dreamily gray, nor their loneliness so sweet, nor the sky so richly and deeply blue. As she untied Pronto the hunter came out with Kane at his heels.

  “Miss Collie, if you’ll go easy I’ll ketch my horse an’ ride down with you,” he said.

  She mounted, and walked Pronto out to the trail, and slowly faced the gradual descent. It was really higher up there than she had surmised. And the view was beautiful. The gray, rolling foothills, so exquisitely colored at that hour, and the black-fringed ranges, one above the other, and the distant peaks, sunset-flushed across the purple, all rose open and clear to her sight, so wildly and splendidly expressive of the Colorado she loved.

  At the foot of the slope Wade joined her.

  “Lass, I’m askin’ you not to tell Belllounds that I’m carin’ for Wils,” he said, in his gentle, persuasive way.

  “I won’t. But why not tell dad? He wouldn’t mind. He’d do that sort of thing himself.”

  “Reckon he would. But this deal’s out of the ordinary. An’ Wils’s not in as good shape as he thinks. I’m not takin’ any chances. I don’t want to lose my job, an’ I don’t want to be hindered from attendin’ to this boy.”

  They had ridden as far as the first aspen grove when Wade concluded this remark. Columbine halted her horse, causing her companion to do likewise. Her former misgivings were augmented by the intelligence of Wade’s sad, lined face.

  “Ben, tell me,” she whispered, with a hand going to his arm.

  “Miss Collie, I’m a sort of doctor in my way. I studied some medicine an’ surgery. An’ I know. I wouldn’t tell you this if it wasn’t that I’ve got to rely on you to help me.”

  “I will—but go on—tell me,” interposed Columbine trying to fortify herself.

  “Wils’s foot is all messed up. Buster Jack kicked it all out of shape. An’ it’s a hundred times worse than ever. I’m afraid of blood-poisonin’ an’ gangrene. You know gangrene is a dyin’ an’ rottin’ of the flesh.… I told the boy straight out that he’d better let me cut his foot off. An’ he swore he’d keep his foot or die!… Well, if gangrene does set in we can’t save his leg, an’ maybe not his life.”

  “Oh, it can’t be as bad as all that!” cried Columbine. “Oh, I knew—I knew there was something.… Ben, you mean even at best now—he’ll be a—” She broke off, unable to finish.

  “Miss Collie, in any case Wils’ll never ride again—not like a cowboy.”

  That for Columbine seemed the worst and the last straw. Hot tears blinded her, hot blood gushed over her, hot heartbeats throbbed in her throat.

  “Poor boy! That’ll—ruin him,” she cried. “He loved—a horse. He loved to ride. He was the—best rider of them all. And now he’s ruined! He’ll be lame—a cripple—club-footed!… All because of that Jack Belllounds! The brute—the coward! I hate him! Oh, I hate him!… And I’ve got to marry him—on October first! Oh, God pity me!”

  Blindly Columbine reeled out of her saddle and slowl
y dropped to the grass, where she burst into a violent storm of sobs and tears. It shook her every fiber. It was hopeless, terrible grief. The dry grass received her flood of tears and her incoherent words.

  Wade dismounted and, kneeling beside her, placed a gentle hand upon her heaving shoulder, but he spoke no word. By and by, when the storm had begun to subside, he raised her head.

  “Lass, nothin’ is ever so bad as it seems,” he said softly. “Come, sit up. Let me talk to you.”

  “Oh, Ben, something terrible has happened,” she cried. “It’s in me! I don’t know what it is. But it’ll kill me.”

  “I know,” he replied, as her head fell upon his shoulder. “Miss Collie, I’m an old fellow that’s had everythin’ happen to him, an’ I’m livin’ yet, tryin’ to help people along. No one dies so easy. Why, you’re a fine, strong girl—an’ somethin’ tells me you was made for happiness. I know how things turn out. Listen—”

  “But, Ben—you don’t know—about me,” she sobbed. “I’ve told you—I—hate Jack Belllounds. But I’ve—got to marry him!… His father raised me—from a baby. He brought me up. I owe him—my life.… I’ve no relation—no mother—no father! No one loves me—for myself!”

  “Nobody loves you!” echoed Wade, with an exquisite tone of repudiation. “Strange how people fool themselves! Lass, you’re huggin’ your troubles too hard. An’ you’re wrong. Why, everybody loves you! Lem an’ Jim—why you just brighten the hard world they live in. An’ that poor, hot-headed Jack—he loves you as well as he can love anythin’. An’ the old man—no daughter could be loved more.… An’ I—I love you, lass, just like—as if you—might have been my own. I’m goin’ to be the friend—the brother you need. An’ I reckon I can come somewheres near bein’ a mother, if you’ll let me.”

  Something, some subtle power or charm, stole over Columbine, assuaging her terrible sense of loss, of grief. There was tenderness in this man’s hands, in his voice, and through them throbbed strong and passionate life and spirit.