The Deer Stalker

by Zane Grey

  “Patricia, you must have a home. Why, even the birds have nests and the beasts have holes. You’ll love Arizona. You must have a home—and a man, too.”

  “The first, perhaps, but hardly the other.”

  “Isn’t there someone back East?” whispered Sue. “Someone you care for?”

  “No.”

  “Then shore there was”

  “Not if you mean a man.”

  Sue nestled close to Patricia and took a long, hesitating moment before whispering, “Then, isn’t there a wee little bit of a chance for Thad Eburne?”

  The whisper, loving, insidious, tender, brought before her eyes again the scene at sunset beneath the ancient pine on the canyon’s rim when a man had humbly told her of his love, and when she, knowing of her own unworthiness, had listened to his avowal in silence. And now the young girl beside her, in her happiness wishing those she loved to be happy too, was asking if there was no chance for Thad Eburne. But Patricia had no power to answer.

  “Thad Eburne loves you,” went on the temptress softly. “I said when he saw you it’d be all day with him. Well, it shore was…. Patricia, he’s an easterner, he’s educated, he comes from a good family. He’s a poor ranger, I know, but what would that matter to you? He’s fine, clean, strong. I wouldn’t say he is wasting his life in this forest stalking deer, because he loves the woods and wild creatures. And he does good. But all the same he has no future heah. You could advance him, perhaps put him at the haid of the forest service. Or better, help him devote his life to conservation, independent of any petty little authorities. If Thad had the means to travel and study, in foreign countries as well as ours, he would do something big. All over the West the timber, the water, the game, are being stolen and destroyed by greedy men. It shore will take big men, not selfish ones, to save the West for our children. There’s a future for Thad. And a wonderful one for you. Aren’t you the least bit interested in that, Patricia?”

  “You eloquent little matchmaker,” exclaimed Patricia, trying to laugh. “You’d turn the tables on me, wouldn’t you? Throw me at your ranger friend!”

  “No, Patricia, I’m talking sense,” declared Sue spiritedly. “Didn’t I weaken when you talked sense to me? Am I not the happiest girl in the world?”

  “Yes, it seems so,” murmured Patricia, more afraid of Sue’s logic than she dared to confess. This girl rang true. She had no false sophistication; she saw things clearly.

  “You’ve told me a little about yourself,” went on Sue. “I don’t want to pry or to hurt you, but please tell me one thing. Are you free to marry?”

  “Certainly I’m free. That is if not being married or engaged or promised to any man means free.”

  “That’s enough confidence for me, Patricia,” continued Sue in relieved earnestness. “Western folks are not curious. You stand or fall by what you say and do. The whole West is full of people who have come from east, south, north. Nobody out heah cares a whoop what they were back there where they came from. It’s what they are heah…. Well, I’ve been close to you, and in spite of the democratic spirit I just bragged about—in westerners—I’ve thought and figured over your case. You’ve had trouble. It’s in your eyes. You’ve the sweetest, saddest mouth I ever saw on a woman…. Listen to this. One day Thad, when I asked him if he’d noticed how sad your mouth was, jerked up and said: ‘Great Scott! Yes. I’ve had the longing to kiss it once and jump into the canyon.’ So you can see Thad’s no mollycoddle, and he knows you’ve suffered…. Patricia, I never asked Thad, but I’ll bet he figures as I do that something terrible has happened in your life, but it’s not your fault. No one can tell me otherwise. If it’s misfortune or disgrace—or—or dishonor, it’s not from any sin in you. I know. Any woman would know if she could live with you a while. Well, you’re young, beautiful, rich. What difference does it make what has happened? You’re alive and your heart is not broken. If there’s any chance of your caring for this ranger, tell him what your trouble was, then forget it and let yourself go. That is what I’d do, or what any western girl would do.”

  “But suppose to tell would violate my deepest sense of honor—my conviction of what I believe myself to be?” whispered Patricia.

  “That wouldn’t happen if you loved Thad,” replied the girl simply. “Patricia, I always had a hunch that the shadow in your eyes came from some great sacrifice. Share your secret with Thad. Then it’ll be as if it had never been.”

  “Oh, Sue, disgrace has a long arm,” cried Patricia, torn by conflicting emotions. “A ruined woman, whether by sin or misfortune or—or sacrifice, can never change the mind or memory of the world. If I married Thad or any man, sooner or later the story would trail me down.”

  “Shore, that wouldn’t make any difference if it did,” returned Sue bluntly. “If you confided in the man you loved and he knew and understood what you’d been through, then nothing would matter. Western people would take you as Thad took you. It’s a new country, Patricia, memories of the past seem to fade out heah. We do not ponder and weigh. Shore we get out and do things. With our hands! We don’t have time for much social life. People are scarce and live far apart. If some woman would come to me, like that Hilton woman did, and try to gossip about you, I’d tell her to keep her nose to herself. If some man would speak ill of you to Thad or in his presence, he would knock him down. Shore. That’s the West, Patricia.”

  Long after Sue had fallen asleep, the older girl lay there in the blackness of the cabin, wide-eyed and thoughtful. The storm had passed away with its roar and crash in the pines, and now only the usual gentle soughing of the wind broke the forest silence. There seemed to be no end to this rending of her spirit, the tearing away of old beliefs, fears, doubts. How ineradicable and monstrous the past had seemed! Yet this clear-eyed, clear-souled western girl had shaken the very foundations of her sense of values, of her perception of things, of her ideas of truth.

  What had seemed crude in Sue Warren was only simplicity, a straightforward outlook upon life, an honesty of soul. Patricia faced the truth that if she could hold to the illuminating flashes of light which Sue had shed upon her morbid mood they would lead her to happiness. But life was not as simple as this western girl had stated it. One’s old life could not be shucked off as easily, even in the West.

  Hours passed. The moan of the night wind and the rustle of branches died away. When the first gray of dawn showed at the window, Patricia still lay awake. The long night beside the sleeping Sue had brought no relief for the strife in her soul. The long hours of probing and analyzing had only added to her confusion of mind. For in her heart she realized now that she could not have prayed for any greater happiness than to live here in this little cabin as the beloved and honored wife of Thad Eburne.

  Next day, Sue seemed to have been reborn. She was the incarnation of joy, radiant where she had been only smiling, and where she had been but pretty she was now beautiful. She was haughty and coy to Nels by turns, gentle and indifferent, angry and pleased. The poor fellow was in a daze, for the instant he realized and accepted a certain mood, then, in a flash, she had changed to another.

  Patricia stood it as long as she could and then she declared, “You tease, you roguish little gal. Tell him or I shall!”

  “Tonight, I promise,” pleaded Sue.

  At supper time Tine Higgenbottom manifested a sudden keen interest in Sue. He watched her dubiously; he shook his head; he nodded it with profundity. Then suddenly he attacked a high pile of firewood that Nels had stacked. He kicked it down and sent the billets flying. Nels burst out in a most unusual fit of temper.

  “Say, you pie-faced, lantern-jawed, bowlegged cowpuncher, what you mean by that?” he demanded.

  “Nels, there’s something screwy going on here,” Tine roared.

  “I don’t get you, pard,” rejoined Nels resignedly, but he straightway became thoughtful.

  Patricia took the opportunity to tell Sue that Tine had come pretty close to guessing something of the truth and advised again
st letting the cowboys be alone together. Several times Tine tried unobtrusively to get Nels away from the campfire circle, but all of these attempts Sue frustrated. In desperation, Tine deliberately attempted to drag Nels away.

  “Where you goin’, Nels?” asked Sue, with her sweetest voice and smile.

  Nels became as immovable as one of the giant pines. “I reckon I’ll be goin’ crazy pretty soon.”

  “I’m not flattered. Are you forgettin’ tonight is full moon and you have a date with me to see it rise over the canyon?” returned Sue.

  Patricia knew from Nels’s face that there had been no arrangement of the kind and that he was struggling with a complexity beyond him, and a possibility of bliss too good to be true.

  “I—we—you—’course I didn’t forget,” he floundered, valiantly trying to rise to the occasion, “but I thought you had.”

  “Get my heavy coat, please. We’ll go now,” she answered calmly.

  As they walked away together toward the rim, Tine Higgen-bottom gazed after them with an expression upon his homely face that Patricia found utterly indescribable. She burst into a peal of laughter.

  “Hang it all!” he muttered under his breath. “Gurls are wild cattle.”

  Patricia and Eburne also took the trail for the rim, and reached the canyon at dusk. The chasm was filled with shadow; the ragged line of timber showed black above the pale gleam of cliff; the sky was dull blue, except where a silvery brightening along the horizon heralded the advent of the moon.

  They walked to a promontory, upon the point of which, indistinct in the gloom, Sue and Nels sat close together. Eburne appeared unusually quiet, even for him, and Patricia had no desire to talk. The canyon air seemed laden with its old fragrance, its mingled aroma rising from dry pine-needled capes and grassy, flower-dotted slopes.

  The bright glow above the black fringe of forest lifted and spread. Soon a radiant disk of silver slipped out of the dark. It moved, it rose, it slid up into the blue—a blazing silver moon, grandly soaring, transforming that vague forest and dim canyon into beautiful realities.

  Suddenly Patricia’s absorbed attention was rudely broken by sounds of a scuffle, a scream from Sue, and a wild whoop from Nels. In the clear moonlight the cowboy could be seen enveloping Sue in a bearish embrace.

  Then, to Patricia’s amazement, Nels came bounding back over the promontory, straight toward her and Eburne. He took great, long leaps. Bearing down upon Patricia, he seized her, gave her a mighty hug, and followed it with a hearty smacking kiss on the cheek. Then, quickly as he had grasped her, he released her and made for Eburne.

  “You big deer chaser!” he shouted, pounding the ranger on the back. “You Indian! You biscuit slinger! You sad old bachelor! Listen. I gotta beat you up. I owe you somethin’. A million dollars! This canyon chuck full of gold! You first, an’ then this Patrescia!”

  Eburne at last managed to get away from this onslaught.

  “Nels, I gather that you are to be congratulated,” he said, his voice rich with emotion.

  “You said it, pard. Shake,” returned Nels, and he wrung the ranger’s hand. Then turning to Patricia, with less of violence and more of dignity, he continued, “Miss Patrescia, it’s somethin’ grand for a man to be loved by a girl like Sue an’ trusted by friends like you an’ Thad. So help me God, I will never fail none of you. An’ the blessedest good I could hope for you both is that you could feel what I feel now.”

  Another morning dawned, the last for Patricia on the North Rim. The food supplies were exhausted, the grain for horses was gone, the snowbanks had melted away.

  “Wal,” drawled Tine, “you all may live on love, but me an’ the cook an’ the horses have to have a little more sustenance. We’re breakin’ camp. Reckon my work’s done, an’ it was a very good job, if I do say it myself.”

  The summer morning was balmy, sweet-scented, and the rosy sunlight tinted the silver spruces. Deer and squirrels and birds appeared in unusual numbers in the surrounding forest.

  Patricia avoided gazing directly at Eburne, lest she betray what she had reserved for the very last moment. He rode beside her through the forest to the head of Bright Angel trail, a goodly distance from his cabin, and not once did he break the silence. They reached the rim. Tine and the cook drove the pack train down the trail, whistling and singing. Nels and Sue bade the ranger good-by.

  Patricia gazed into the canyon. For the thousandth time the stupendous yawn of it, the black and blue and gold and red, the glory and might of it, seemed flung into her face. If she watched and listened there forever, it would be always to see more of the beauty and mystery of nature, to hear more silent voices in the rushing of the winds, to feel more of the meaning of life.

  “You must not get far behind Nels,” said Eburne. “The trail is bad—and it’s time to say good-by.”

  “Not really good-by,” she returned, gazing straight into his eyes. If he could but know it now, her heart was in her eyes. She sat tense and quiet upon her horse. Her face was very pale. “You will come to see me at the El Tovar when next month’s work is done?”

  He stared up at her, his lean dark face slowly turning white.

  “Patricia, I will come, if you ask me,” he said huskily.

  “I do ask you,” she replied.

  Then she urged her horse into the trail and down. She slackened the bridle to let the horse pick his way, and for the same reason she did not look back. It would have been of no use, for she was suddenly blinded by tears.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  LATE one afternoon, Patricia returned to the hotel after a long ride along the rim. The mail clerk handed her a bulky envelope addressed to her in a bold handwriting. The postmark was dim and obscured, and the envelope was wrinkled and badly soiled, as though it had been carried in a man’s pocket for some time. Wonderingly the girl removed her glove and opened the envelope. The letter was written on report sheets of the forestry service. Patricia’s heart began to beat more quickly as she read:

  Dear Miss Clay:

  I had a chance to send this out by a tourist, and I don’t know when it will reach you or in what condition, but I want to explain why you have not seen me on your side of the rim, especially after the gracious invitation you extended to me the day you left the North Rim with Sue and the boys.

  The following week a message was brought in from the committee on wild life conservation informing me that I had been delegated to guide the group in their tour of the Buckskin Preserve. Since you seemed to be keenly interested in the problem of what is to be done with the great deer herd when you were camping in my cabin at Big Spruce in the early summer, I thought you might like to hear what progress is being made.

  I met the commission (at the last moment my friend Blakener came down with a touch of fever and could not accompany me) on the evening of the sixteenth at the Big Springs range station, below the northwestern rim of the Kaibob Plateau. There were twenty-some men in the party, and I am glad to say that nearly all of them were serious-minded, competent, and practical men. A few of them were the usual visionary type, but as a group they were honestly prepared to get at the true conditions in the preserve and to report them as they saw them to the U. S. Department of Agriculture. I don’t think they realized how much ground we were to cover in ten days’ time nor what a rough trip it was going to be.

  That evening we were briefed as to exactly what information the report to Washington was to contain.

  (1) We were to arrive at a more accurate estimate than that contained in the old Biological Survey, of more than a year ago, of the number of deer comprising the Kaibob or Buckskin Mountain herd.

  (2) We were to determine just how big a herd can be maintained in a thrifty condition in view of the available forage and taking into consideration the local physical conditions and the frequent occurrence of seasons of limited rainfall.

  (3) We were to try to find out whether the government would be justified in reducing the number of domestic livestock grazing in the
preserve to assure the safety of the deer.

  (4) We were to give our recommendation, if we were convinced that a reduction in the size of the deer herd was inevitable, as to just how that reduction most effectively could be made.

  As you will recall, Miss Clay, from our talks this summer, all of the answers to these problems are pretty obvious. Even a tourist driving through the preserve knows that the herd has increased at least 50 per cent, due to a number of reasons, that there is only enough forage for about half the present deer population, that livestock grazing already has been limited if the service would enforce the restrictions, and that the only sure way to prevent the deer on the preserve from starving is by mass migration of half the herd to some other range, where grazing and browsing is plentiful.

  But mine was not to reason why. Orders are orders. And I was expected to guide the expedition, twenty-some strong on horseback, with a pack train and camp supplies, from Big Springs to Indian Hollow to Quaking Asp Canyon, through the Big and Little Saddle regions, up Parishawampitts Canyon, and out on Greenland Plateau. We were to stop at Little Park, V. T. Park, Pleasant Valley, Jacob’s Lake, Powell’s Plateau, the Cocks Combs, Houserock Valley, and North Canyon.

  On the twenty-fifth there is to be a hearing at the Rust Hotel in V. T. Park, where I hope there will be a showdown.

  We have had some adventures. Some day I hope to tell you of them. Most of the men are enjoying the outdoor life and seem appreciative of our efforts to make them comfortable. I think that some of the commission were surprised to learn that grass is a very secondary source of deer food. They were under the impression that deer grazed just as horses and cattle do. But, as you know, deer are largely browsers. Their natural diet is composed of the leaves, twigs, and tender shoots of trees and shrubs. The only grazing they will do when their normal food supply is abundant is limited to certain tender weeds and grasses in the spring and a few of the more palatable plants like clover.