by Zane Grey
“Wal, you’ve sure been down the Old Trail, Buff,” replied Carson. “The Trail of Lost Wagons! . . . An’ now whar you bound?”
Then Clint told of the revelation made by Charley Bent before his death. This communication had a profound effect upon Kit Carson. He seemed to fade away. It was then Clint remembered how dearly Carson had loved his Mexican wife.
“So your sweetheart is alive?” he said, at length, with a beautiful light coming to his eyes. “I remember her. . . . Bell—little May Bell. I was at Maxwell’s ranch when you damn near killed Charley Bent. . . . Buff, all’s well that ends well. Don’t lose any time gettin’ to little May.”
It was late when Clint got back to Taos, his mind full of the great frontiersman whose days were surely numbered. And he thought that perhaps only the West of his day would ever give Kit Carson the glory due him. For all the old plainsmen, the frontiersmen, knew full well that Kit Carson was the Pathfinder.
At Taos Clint fell in with a wagon-train bound for Las Vegas. When he arrived there he felt almost himself again. He outfitted with pack and saddle horses; and in company with Texans and Mexicans who were the way south he set out on the last leg of his momentous journey. They were west of the Rockies, far out of the zone of desperadoes who preyed on the caravans, and the savages who rode and fought and burned.
All day long Clint sat his horse and watched the varying aspects of scenery—green and flowery, or rugged and drear, according to the presence or absence of water.
On that ride he seemed to grow both old and young, but toward the end youth resurged and held. He lived over all the long-past precious hours he had spent with May Bell. How few, considering the fifteen years since he had met her beside the brook!
Summer had come to the valley of Las Cruces. It was far south and close to El Paso, at that period a rapidly growing town. White and red adobe houses shone brightly from the green. Level farms, well watered, spread out to the dark hills. Far from Indian trails!
A Mexican kept a store and a tavern. There Clint removed the stains of travel and the beard that had made him so dark and fierce. Would she know him? Could he not relax that stern, intent face?
The first thing he had ascertained was that May Bell really lived in Las Cruces with Mrs. Clement, on a ranch they owned, just out of town. They were rich, the tavern-keeper avowed, and blessed of the saints, for they helped the poor and employed the Mexicans.
Clint walked out, and that was the saddest and happiest walk of all his life.
If May still loved him—had lived and waited for him, despite all—then the future might almost make up for the past.
The white adobe house was set down from the road in a grove of cottonwood trees. There were evidences of Southern influence everywhere. No doubt Mrs. Clement had not forgotten Texas.
With his heart in his throat Clint knocked at the open door. A gray-haired, pleasant-faced, sad-eyed woman appeared. She gasped.
“Mrs. Clement, don’t you remember me?” asked Clint.
“Oh, I do—I do!” she cried. “You are Clint Belmet.”
“Yes, I’m Clint. . . . Is she here?”
“Thank God, she is—well and still faithful to you. But she believes you dead. I always thought you might come to life. I have seen so many strange things on the frontier.”
“Where is she?” asked Clint, strangely calm.
“Out in the garden. She loves to dig around and plant.”
“You say she is—well?”
“Yes, very well, now. For a long time after our terrible experience in that caravan she was ill. In fact, the whole year we lived with the settler Bennet.”
“You left Santa Fé in a caravan under Jim Blackstone.”
“Yes, the monster! We were no sooner out on the Dry Trail when Indians appeared and attacked the freighters who had joined us. Blackstone’s gang took sides with the Indians. We would have been lost but for a caravan of emigrants on the way to Texas. They drove the Indians off. Blackstone fled, leaving his wagons. The emigrants took us along with them. Baxter, the boss, was an old scout. He knew we were followed. One night he took us down into a valley where a settler named Bennet lived. He was friendly with all Indians. Well, Bennet took us in, and he hid us there for a year. We seldom went out except at night. Then when a big caravan came along we got out. We trailed you to Kansas City and back to Santa Fé. And again we passed you on the way. That nearly killed poor May. Then your death was reported the second time. We saw it in the Kansas City papers. We went back to Texas. I had some property there. I sold it and we went to El Paso, and finally here. May loves the West, but not the plains.”
“So she passed me again on the Old Trail!” sighed Clint. “Life seems cruel sometimes. . . . You said she was out in the garden?”
“Come,” replied Mrs. Clement, softly.
She led him round the white house to the rear, where cottonwoods were shedding their fluffy cottonlike seeds, and green grass shone, and water gurgled somewhere unseen, and blackbirds sang in the trees.
“There she is. But hadn’t I better go first—prepare her?” asked Mrs. Clement, anxiously.
Clint saw something blue out in the garden. It moved. It was a woman of slight form, bending over. Then she stood erect. A sunbonnet hung over her shoulders. Clint recognized that bonny dark head, and all the agony of the years was as if it had never been.
“Mrs. Clement, you say she has—has not forgotten me?” he asked, hesitatingly.
“She believes you dead. But no living man could be more wonderfully loved.”
“Aw! . . . It’ll not—hurt her—then. I—I want to see her face—when she sees me!”
Mrs. Clement pressed his hand and mutely turned back to the house.
Clint moved out from under the cottonwoods to the edge of the garden. There he halted, not because he wanted to, but because May had turned round toward him. She came walking between the rows, looking down. Her sleeves were rolled up. She held a trowel in her hand.
She grew closer, humming a little tune. When she looked up, twenty short paces did not separate them. A shock caught her in a step, making her a statue. Wide dark staring eyes shook Clint to his depths. He tried to call out.
She dropped the trowel. Her hands flashed to her breast. She swayed a little, her eyes shutting tight and opening wide. Will was stronger than terror. She uttered a wild and rapturous cry and broke toward him, flinging out her arms, running while yet she was stumbling, with glorious light of recognition. “Clint!—Clint! CLINT!”
Sunset! They sat under a cottonwood, strangely like the spreading giant in the valley below Maxwell’s Ranch, and watched the western sky. Her head lay on his shoulder and her hand in his.
“God is good. I had almost lost faith in Him and life,” she said.
“When will you marry me?” he asked, for the tenth time.
“You will never cross the plains again?” she entreated. “I could not bear that.”
“Darlin’, I will never go back.”
She kissed him gratefully. “Oh, I know how you feel! I shall never forget the prairie land. Endless gray—oh, so far, so lonely, so monotonous—gray and terribly beautiful. Oh, how I loved and hated it!”
“I have had enough, May. I’ve done my share. . . . Will you marry me?”
“Si, señor,” she replied, shyly.
“When?”
“Sometime. It’s very sudden.”
“But my longin’ for you is as old as the ages.”
“Oh, Clint, and mine for you. Promise me you’ll never leave me again for a single minute so long as we both shall live.”
“I promise, little May.”
“You will stay away from trading-posts and forts and trails and Indians and desperadoes?”
“I shall indeed,” he laughed.
“Oh, you can laugh! . . . Clint, I’m so happy I shall die. Squeeze me! . . . Kiss me!—You great, calm, cold frontiersman!—And, oh, forgive me again for that one damnable wickedness of my life—when I drove y
ou away at Maxwell’s Ranch?”
“I will—when you marry me.”
She was silent for a long moment, surrendering.
“There’s a padre here at Las Cruces. . . . He will do—yes?”
“Is that last a question—or a consent?”
“Both. . . . Well, Buff, if the padre is good enough for you—you may have me ——”
“When?” he gasped.
“Tomorrow—at the very latest,” she concluded, merrily.
Clint gathered her into his arms as if he never meant to let her go again. Presently she freed herself with a gasp. “Heavens! Did—I call you—a great, calm, cold frontiersman? . . . But I should have told you sooner. . . . Listen, Clint dear. Let me be serious one moment. I shall marry you tomorrow and all will be well. Ours has been a strange, sad story. But we are both young still. We love the West. We are pioneers and we will be true to that. Let us settle here in this beautiful valley and make our home with Mrs. Clement. She has been a mother to me.”
“Anythin’ you say, little May,” he replied, in quiet joy. “I have money to buy a ranch an’ stock it. My own, Uncle Jim’s, an’ poor old Hatcher’s. I’m quiet rich, May, an’ can give you every comfort.”
“Why, you wonderful man! I shall coax you to take me to San Antonio—some day,” she cried, gaily.
“You won’t need to coax. Just one kiss.”
“There!” she flashed. “It’s paid.” And she lay quiet in his arms. Twilight fell. The bees ceased humming. The tinkle of a cow bell lingered musically on the quiet air. A coyote yelped wildly from the hill. And the golden afterglow faded in the west.
THE END
