by Zane Grey
“I’d like you to read that,” he said, and went on to hold a little colloquy with the porter about dinner, which he ordered brought to him.
Upon his return one of the young men sat beside her, quite protectively, and he glared at Forrest, as he held out the book.
“Did you like the poem?” asked Forrest of the girl, while he took the book from her companion.
“Thank you. I—I didn’t read it,” she replied, with what he construed as coldness, and she averted a troubled face.
Forrest resumed his seat more shaken by the incident than he would admit, even to himself. But he was at the mercy of his emotions. Ruefully he opened the book and read the poem he had indicated. Surely there could not be anything in it to offend the most fastidious taste. Perhaps his intimation that her graciousness permitted him to grow sentimental and personal was accountable for the change. He withdrew into his shell and the strange radiancy which had opposed his realistic moods slowly turned to dead ashes. He had made a blunder, for which, however, he did not see the necessity of asking pardon. He did not probe into the nature of his error. Of what avail? How bitter to receive such a lesson amid such new and uplifting thoughts as she had aroused! He had been relegated to his lonely place.
He wondered if the sleek handsome young man beside her—surely an Easterner—had been in any way responsible for the snub. It was quite possible, considering his air of proprietorship. Also he wondered if that languid, prosperous-looking chap had been in the war. A little keen observation convinced Forrest that this fellow had never helped dig a trench.
Nor did Forrest require further observation to insure the fact that the girl with the chestnut hair studiously avoided looking in his direction. His resentment, however, did not augment to the point where he was oblivious to the absence of pride or vanity in her demeanor. Merely she had lost her warmth. Something had blunted her receptiveness. Well, what did it matter? What was one hurt more or less? He had no time to sentimentalize over a woman, however bewilderingly charming she chose to be. He closed the book upon the page where long ago he had written his name. Had she seen that? But the unfortunate circumstance was closed.
The sun set red over the level land; dusk fell to shroud the flying farms and wooded lowlands. He watched the shadows over the fields, the pale gleams of light on ponds and streams, the bright windows of farmhouses that flashed by. Then the waiter brought in Forrest’s dinner.
The next event was one of momentous importance—crossing the Mississippi.
Forrest could only faintly see the rolling waters of the great river. But he knew from the sound of the train when it passed off the bridge on to Missouri land. West of the Mississippi!
Forrest lay awake that night while the train passed through Lawrence, Kansas, where five years before his brief college career had ended so ignominiously. What sleep he got was fitful. Next morning when he raised his head to look out of the window he saw the long gray gradual slopes of the plains.
Propping himself on pillows, he lay there watching. The brown ploughed fields, the gray bleached pasturelands, the ranches few and far between, the dry washes, the gradual heave and break of continuity, the absence of trees or green growths, the tumbleweeds before the wind, the dust-devils rising in yellow funnels, the scampering long-legged, long-eared jack rabbits—all these were incense to Forrest’s lifting spirit.
The porter roused him. He got up, to find the morning half spent. While he was in the dressing-room, slow and careful about his ablutions, the train crossed into Colorado. The day then went like a dream. Twice that he noted, though he never raised his eyes, the girl across the aisle passed him. She was still on the train. What was it that had happened? But nothing could intrude into his obsession with the mountains. And all the rest of that day he watched the multitudinous aspects of the approach to and the ascent of the great Continental Divide. Such a sunset he had not seen since he had left the West. There was a rare blue sky, deep azure, cut by the white notched peaks, and above, some clouds of amber, purple, and rose, rich as the hearts of flowers and intense with the transparency of smokeless dustless skies.
His dinner he enjoyed. That night he slept and dreamed of his mother. Next morning the sage benches, the boulder-strewn arroyos, the bleached gramma-grassed open slopes rising to cedars and piñons, the black-fringed ranges of New Mexico!
For hours he pored tenderly over the infinite variety of landscape, which yet always held the same elements of rock and grass and timber and range. New Mexico in the spring was somberly gray, monotonously gray over the lowlands, black and white, wild, broken, and grand over the battlements of the heights. He had forgotten all except the color, the loneliness, the far-flung wandering lines, the solitude of the steely peaks. Raton! Lamy! Wagonmound!
There was Old Baldy, the mountain god of his boyhood, lofty, bleak as of old, white-streaked in its high canyons, capped with a crown of black timber, frowning down, unchangeable to the transient present. Forrest trembled and his heart contracted. Almost the little for which he had prayed had been granted. When the train pulled into Las Vegas, stopping before the Castaneda, Forrest sat stockstill, unmindful of the bustling important porter, not even surprised or interested to see that this also was where the girl with the chestnut hair disembarked.
He had to moisten his lips to thank the porter, and then he was almost wordless. There was a dry constriction in his throat. As he stepped down, the last passenger to leave the train, he gazed wildly about, as if he expected to see persons he knew. But there was no one familiar among the many Indians, Mexicans, railroad men, and others present. Forrest stood beside his luggage, seeing, hearing, feeling, though not believing. Almost he wished he had telegraphed his parents to meet him at the station. But he had clung to a reluctance to let them see the wreck of him until the very last unavoidable moment.
A chauffeur accosted him: “Car for hire, sir?”
“Do you know where Cottonwoods is?” asked Forrest, coming to himself eagerly.
“You mean the big ranch out heah?”
“Yes. On the road to Old Baldy, twelve miles out.”
“Shore do. Can I take you out?”
“Grab my bags.” Forrest followed the driver out to a line of cars. “Put them in the back seat. I’ll ride in front.”
“Reckon you ain’t keen on bumps,” returned the chauffeur, with a grin. “Wal, out a ways the road ain’t any too good.”
“It used to be plumb bad, before the days of autos,” said Forrest, as he got in. He had quite forgotten his condition. Indeed, he had no sense of incapacity whatever. He seemed full of pleasant whirling thoughts.
“You ain’t no stranger, then?”
“Not exactly. But I don’t remember you.”
“Wal, I’m new in these parts.”
So far as Forrest could see there was not one single change in the business section of Las Vegas. On the outskirts, however, he observed unfamiliar buildings and cottages.
“How’s the cattle business?” asked Forrest.
“Ain’t any. Thet’s why I’m punchin’ this heah car.”
Forrest concluded he would not ask any more questions. Besides, he wanted to see with all his faculties and all his strength.
The road began to climb. Out there, in front, the gray benches rose. Behind them frowned the mountains, steel-black, forbidding.
Away to the west stretched the magnificent desert, sweeping in noble lines down from the mountains, range after range of ridges that disappeared in the purple distance. Southward, far away, a gate opened in the wall of rock, and well Forrest knew how that led out to the wild country of sage and sand. Straight ahead the mountain blunted the view. It was too close, yet as Forrest remembered, began its foothill rise over forty miles away.
The higher the car got, and it was climbing fairly fast and steeply, the better could Forrest gaze out over that Western land of alternate waste and range. Here began the change of monotonous New Mexican gray to a hint of red and cream and mauve, that gathere
d strength over the leagues until it burst into the blaze of colorful Arizona.
Forrest could not get his fill of gazing. The car sped on, and soon it entered a zone which gripped Forrest’s heart and brought a dimness to his eyes that he had to rub away, and that continually returned. He saw a wide valley, triangular in shape, with the apex closing far ahead, where grand gnarled cottonwood trees, centuries old, brightly glistening in their first green spring dress, stood far apart, as if there were not enough water and sunlight for a closer communion. There were hundreds of them, and it seemed Forrest knew every one. The road wound along a beautiful stream that slid between green and flowered banks on its way to the famous Pecos, historic river of the West. Quail and doves, hawks and ravens, cottontails and jack rabbits, deer and coyotes, gladdened Forrest’s absorbing gaze. No change here! Wild and beautiful still! No fences, no fires, no ranches, no progressive improvements! Cottonwood Valley belonged to his father, who held on to the old West.
At last Forrest espied the white-walled, vine-covered, red-roofed rambling house. It had the same beauty against the green and bronze background. Forrest clenched his moist palms. This was home. The unreal and impossible had become a fact. He would soon be in his mother’s arms and be gripped by the hand of that great Westerner, his father, whom he had feared and loved, and looked up to with all a boy’s admiration for the pioneer, the fighter of early days. Surely they would be home, well, perhaps expecting him some time. For his mother’s letter was scarcely more than a month old.
Thus he eased the doubts of a straining heart, and gave himself over again to the joy of physical sight in beloved things. There, across the valley, where a branch creek ran down, nestled the adobe house that added another sweet thrill to his home-coming. Lundeen lived there, an enemy of his father, a nester who of all those who had squatted on the Forrest broad acres could not be dislodged. Forrest recalled Lundeen’s lass, a girl of fourteen, red-haired and pretty, whom he might once have liked but for the enmity of the families. She would be grown now. He wondered. Married to a cow-puncher, probably, and not interested in crippled soldiers!
Forrest lost sight of the picturesque little house, that disappeared behind trees, and likewise the stately home on the knoll which guarded the apex of the triangular valley. It was high, and the driver now swung his car under the blunt, rocky, vine-covered face of the knoll. On the far side, the knoll sloped easily back to the level, and here, spread out across the neck of the valley, where the stream came tearing white and noisy over a rocky bed, were situated barns, sheds, corrals, bunk houses, lime kiln, blacksmith shop, store, and quarters of the Mexicans.
Forrest stared. The picturesque confusion in his memory did not include all of these landmarks. Some were new. Where, too, was the old leisurely atmosphere? What had come over his father, always a stickler for old things and ways? But Forrest scarcely caught a glimpse of the improvements, for the driver whirled him up the gray-walled road, under the flowered arches, out upon the sunlit level, and up to the house, with its many-arched veranda.
What the driver said Forrest did not catch. The moment was insupportably full. He got out, shaking in every limb. A big white automobile was backing down the courtyard. Forrest heard the murmur of gay voices, laughter. His heart lifted, ready to burst. He stepped forward.
Then a girl appeared in the arched doorway. She wore a long coat, and had her arms lifted to remove her hat. As she freed it from her hair she espied Forrest, and suddenly the hat dropped from her hand. Voice and smile froze on her lips. Dark red flooded neck, cheek, temple.
For Clifton Forrest a vague unreality cleared to a sense of calamity. Removing his hat, he bowed and strove to speak. But the whitening face of this girl—her eyes, that were telling him something too stunning to grasp—made his speech difficult and incoherent.
“What—are you—doing here?”
“This is my home,” she replied, and horror gathered dark in her eyes.
“Who—are—you?” he went on, hoarsely, and his hand groped for support.
“My God! Is it possible you cannot know?” she cried.
“Know—what?”
“That this is no longer your home.”
“But it is—my home,” he persisted, in bewilderment.
“Oh, why were you not told!” she burst out, in growing distress. Her face had grown a pearly dead white. “I hate—I hate to have to tell you. . . . But this is not your home.”
“I’ve come all the way from France,” he said, faintly.
“Clifton Forrest, it is a pitiful homecoming for you,” she wailed, wringing her hands.
Forrest no longer saw her distinctly. The murmur of voices had ceased. Another girl came quickly out of the shadow, with startled face.
“You know—my name?” queried Forrest, astounded.
“I saw it in your book. I thought I knew you on the ship, but I couldn’t place you. . . . Oh, if I could only spare you!”
“Spare me? . . . My mother!—My father!” gasped Forrest.
“I know nothing of them. I’ve been away two years. . . . But before I left they lived—where I used to live.”
“Who—are—you?”
“I am Virginia Lundeen.”
“Lundeen?—Lundeen! . . . Not that red-headed kid I used to tease?”
“Yes, the same.”
“You! . . . Have I lost my mind? . . . But she had red hair!”
“You remember, indeed. Well, it changed color with my changed fortunes.”
“Then—my father—has lost—our old home?”
“Clifton, it is true, I regret to say.”
Her face faded then, and her shape dimmed in the archway. A black tide swept away sight and thought.
Chapter Three
VIRGINIA, with sudden distress added to her agitation, was not quick-witted enough to keep the young man from falling. He sank at her feet; his hat slipped out of a nerveless hand. For a moment his white face struck her dumb.
“Oh, poor fellow!” cried Ethel. “Ginia, what can we do?”
Virginia’s father stepped out from the doorway, followed by others. He was a stalwart man past middle age, whose handsome lined face showed the vicissitudes of a hard life in the open.
“Hello! Who’s this?” he queried, in astonishment, espying the prostrate form at Virginia’s feet.
“Father!” she replied, recovering with a gasp. “Something dreadful has happened.”
“Is he drunk or what? Who is it? . . . Strikes me I’ve seen him before.”
“No, he’s not drunk,” rejoined Virginia, hurriedly. “Dad, it’s Clifton Forrest, who used to live here. I saw him on the Berengaria, but didn’t recognize him then. He was returning from France. He must have been badly wounded in the war. He did not know me. . . . He didn’t know I lived here . . . that this was not his home. . . . When I told him—he fainted.”
Lundeen’s features clouded and set. “Young Forrest!—Home from the war! Shore he looks it!”
“Father, let us take him in—and do what we can,” suggested Virginia, faltering.
“What? Take a Forrest in my house? I reckon not,” returned Lundeen, harshly. He made a sharp gesture, beckoning the chauffeur who had just deposited Forrest’s luggage on the flagstones. “Take those bags back to your car, an’ pack this fellow out of heah.”
“All right, sir, but where’ll I pack him?” returned the chauffeur.
“He’s a son of Clay Forrest, who lives down the west road. ’Dobe shack. You can’t miss it,” replied Lundeen, and stamped back upon the porch.
“Ethel, we must think of his mother, too,” said Virginia, in a low voice. “Some one must prepare her. Will you go with me?”
The chauffeur laid hold of Forrest, to be checked by Virginia’s swift hand.
“Careful! He has been badly wounded,” she warned.
“Shore, Miss. . . . Gee! he ain’t very heavy.”
Virginia did not release her hold on Forrest’s arm, as the driver carried him. Ethel ran to
open the door of the car.
“You get in first, Ethel. . . . We must avoid any jar. . . . I remember—Oh, driver, be careful! Don’t let him slip! . . . There. Now hold him, Ethel, until——”
“You girls needn’t bother,” spoke up the young man who had followed them from the porch.
“We will bother, thank you, Richard. . . . Driver, is there room for his bags in front?”
“I’ll take care of them.”
Lundeen appeared again, striding out with manner unmistakable. Virginia saw her mother trying to detain him.
“Virginia, what are you aboot?”
“Dad, I’m going to prepare his mother for—for this.”
“You stay out of thet car,” he ordered, furiously.
“Why, dad,” she protested, keeping her temper, “I must go. It’s the very least we can do.”
“No. Let Dick go.”
“But he might be awkward breaking it to his mother—shock her.”
“Wal, I won’t have you goin’, an’ thet’s all.”
“Dad, I’ve been away two years, and now I’m over twenty-one. I knew I’d have to tell you, but I didn’t think it’d come during the very first ten minutes of my return.”
Whereupon Virginia, her ears tingling at her father’s profanity, stepped into the car. Ethel was holding Forrest, whose head swayed to and fro. Virginia slipped her arm round his neck.
“Let go, Ethel,” she said, and gently drew Forrest to her until his head rested upon her breast. “Now, driver, we’re ready. But don’t hurry. And stop at the brook.”
Virginia did not look out as they entered the driveway, so she did not know or care about what consternation she had left behind. At the moment she was concerned with the strangest sensation she had ever experienced. Had it to do with the pressure of this young man’s head upon her bosom? Ethel’s eyes were wide as they encountered hers.
