The Second Zane Grey MEGAPACK®

by Zane Grey

  One day from a north slope Tappan saw afar a wonderful country of black timber, above which zigzagged for many miles a yellow, winding rampart of rock. This he took to be the rim of the Mogollon Mesa, one of Arizona’s freaks of nature. Something called Tappan. He was forever victim to yearnings for the unattainable. He was tired of heat, glare, dust, bare rock, and thorny cactus. The Lost Dutchman gold mine was a myth. Besides, he did not need any more gold.

  Next morning Tappan packed Jenet and worked down off the north slopes of the Superstition Range. That night about sunset he made camp on the bank of a clear brook, with grass and wood in abundance—such a camp site as a prospector dreamed of but seldom found.

  Before dark Jenet’s long ears told of the advent of strangers. A man and a woman rode down the trail into Tappan’s camp. They had poor horses, and led a pack animal that appeared too old and weak to bear up under even the meager pack he carried.

  “Howdy!” said the man.

  Tappan rose from his task to his lofty height and returned the greeting. The man was middle-aged, swarthy, and rugged, a mountaineer, with something about him that Tappan instinctively distrusted. The woman was under thirty, comely in a full-blown way, with rich brown skin and glossy dark hair. She had wide-open black eyes that bent a curious possession-taking gaze upon Tappan.

  “Care if we camp with you?” she inquired, and she smiled.

  That smile changed Tappan’s habit and conviction of a lifetime.

  “No indeed. Reckon I’d like a little company,” he said.

  Very probably Jenet did not understand Tappan’s words, but she dropped one ear, and walked out of camp to the green bank.

  “Thanks, stranger,” replied the woman. “That grub shore smells good.” She hesitated a moment, evidently waiting to catch her companion’s eye, then she continued. “My name’s Madge Beam. He’s my brother Jake...Who might you happen to be?”

  “I’m Tappan, lone prospector, as you see,” replied Tappan.

  “Tappan! What’s your front handle?” she queried, curiously.

  “Fact is, I don’t remember,” replied Tappan, as he brushed a huge hand through his shaggy hair.

  “Ahuh? Any name’s good enough.”

  When she dismounted, Tappan saw that she had a tall, lithe figure, garbed in rider’s overalls and boots. She unsaddled her horse with the dexterity of long practice. The saddlebags she carried over to the spot the man Jake had selected to throw the pack.

  Tappan heard them talking in low tones. It struck him as strange that he did not have his usual reaction to an invasion of his privacy and solitude. Tappan had thrilled under those black eyes. And now a queer sensation of the unusual rose in him. Bending over his camp-fire tasks he pondered this and that, but mostly the sense of the nearness of a woman. Like most desert men, Tappan knew little of the other sex. A few that he might have been drawn to went out of his wandering life as quickly as they had entered it. This Madge Beam took possession of his thoughts. An evidence of Tappan’s preoccupation was the fact that he burned his first batch of biscuits. And Tappan felt proud of his culinary ability. He was on his knees, mixing more flour and water, when the woman spoke from right behind him.

  “Tough luck you burned the first pan,” she said. “But it’s a good turn for your burro. That shore is a burro. Biggest I ever saw.”

  She picked up the burned biscuits and tossed them over to Jenet. Then she came back to Tappan’s side, rather embarrassingly close.

  “Tappan, I know how I’ll eat, so I ought to ask you to let me help,” she said, with a laugh.

  “No, I don’t need any,” replied Tappan. “You sit down on my roll of beddin’ there. Must be tired, aren’t you?”

  “Not so very,” she returned. “That is, I’m not tired of ridin’.” She spoke the second part of this reply in lower tone.

  Tappan looked up from his task. The woman had washed her face, brushed her hair, and had put on a skirt—a singularly attractive change. Tappan thought her younger. She was the handsomest woman he had ever seen. The look of her made him clumsy. What eyes she had! They looked through him. Tappan returned to his task, wondering if he was right in his surmise that she wanted to be friendly.

  “Jake an’ I drove a bunch of cattle to Maricopa,” she volunteered. “We sold ‘em, an’ Jake gambled away most of the money. I couldn’t get what I wanted.”

  “Too bad! So you’re ranchers. Once thought I’d like that. Fact is, down here at Globe a few weeks ago I came near buyin’ some rancher out an’ tryin’ the game.”

  “You did?” Her query had a low, quick eagerness that somehow thrilled Tappan. But he did not look up.

  “I’m a wanderer. I’d never do on a ranch.”

  “But if you had a woman?” Her laugh was subtle and gay.

  “A woman! For me? Oh, Lord, no!” ejaculated Tappan, in confusion.

  “Why not? Are you a woman hater?”

  “I can’t say that,” replied Tappan, soberly. “It’s just—I guess—no woman would have me.”

  “Faint heart never won fair lady.”

  Tappan had no reply for that. He surely was making a mess of the second pan of biscuit dough. Manifestly the woman saw this, for with a laugh she plumped down on her knees in front of Tappan, and rolled her sleeves up over shapely brown arms.

  “Poor man! Shore you need a woman. Let me show you,” she said, and put her hands right down upon Tappan’s. The touch gave him a strange thrill. He had to pull his hands away, and as he wiped them with his scarf he looked at her. He seemed compelled to look. She was close to him now, smiling in good nature, a little scornful of man’s encroachment upon the housewifely duties of a woman. A subtle something emanated from her—a more than kindness or gayety. Tappan grasped that it was just the woman of her. And it was going to his head.

  “Very well, let’s see you show me,” he replied, as he rose to his feet.

  Just then the brother Jake strolled over, and he had a rather amused and derisive eye for his sister.

  “Wal, Tappan, she’s not overfond of work, but I reckon she can cook,” he said.

  Tappan felt greatly relieved at the approach of this brother. And he fell into conversation with him, telling something of his prospecting since leaving Globe, and listening to the man’s cattle talk. By and by the woman called, “Come an’ get it!” Then they sat down to eat, and, as usual with hungry wayfarers, they did not talk much until appetite was satisfied. Afterward, before the camp fire, they began to talk again, Jake being the most discursive. Tappan conceived the idea that the rancher was rather curious about him, and perhaps wanted to sell his ranch. The woman seemed more thoughtful, with her wide black eyes on the fire.

  “Tappan, what way you travelin’?” finally inquired Beam.

  “Can’t say. I just worked down out of the Superstitions. Haven’t any place in mind. Where does this road go?”

  “To the Tonto Basin. Ever heard of it?”

  “Yes, the name isn’t new. What’s in this Basin?”

  The man grunted. “Tonto once was home for the Apache. It’s now got a few sheep an’ cattlemen, lots of rustlers. An’ say, if you like to hunt bear an’ deer, come along with us.” >

  “Thanks. I don’t know as I can,” returned Tappan, irresolutely. He was not used to such possibilities as this suggested.

  Then the woman spoke up. “It’s a pretty country. Wild an’ different. We live up under the rim rock. There’s mineral in the canyons.”

  Was it that about mineral which decided Tappan or the look in her eyes?

  Tappan’s world of thought and feeling underwent as great a change as this Tonto Basin differed from the stark desert so long his home. The trail to the log cabin of the Beams climbed many a ridge and slope and foothill, all covered with manzanita, mescal, cedar, and juniper, at last to reach the canyons of the Rim, where lofty pines and spruces lorded it over the under forest of maples and oaks. Though the yellow Rim towered high over the site of the cabin, the altitude was still
great, close to seven thousand feet above sea level.

  Tappan had fallen in love with this wild wooded and canyoned country. So had Jenet. It was rather funny the way she hung around Tappan, mornings and evenings. She ate luxuriant grass and oak leaves until her sides bulged.

  There did not appear to be any flat places in this landscape. Every bench was either up hill or down hill. The Beams had no garden or farm or ranch that Tappan could discover. They raised a few acres of sorghum and corn. Their log cabin was of the most primitive kind, and outfitted poorly. Madge Beam explained that this cabin was their winter abode, and that up on the Rim they had a good house and ranch. Tappan did not inquire closely into anything. If he had interrogated himself, he would have found out that the reason he did not inquire was because he feared something might remove him from the vicinity of Madge Beam. He had thought it strange the Beams avoided wayfarers they had met on the trail, and had gone round a little hamlet Tappan had espied from a hill. Madge Beam, with woman’s intuition, had read his mind, and had said: “Jake doesn’t get along so well with some of the villagers. An’ I’ve no hankerin’ for gun play.” That explanation was sufficient for Tappan. He had lived long enough in his wandering years to appreciate that people could have reasons for being solitary.

  This trip up into the Rim Rock country bade fair to become Tappan’s one and only adventure of the heart. It was not alone the murmuring, clear brook of cold mountain water that enchanted him, nor the stately pines, nor the beautiful silver spruces, nor the wonder of the deep, yellow-walled canyons, so choked with verdure, and haunted by wild creatures. He dared not face his soul, and ask why this dark-eyed woman sought him more and more. Tappan lived in the moment.

  He was aware that the few mountaineer neighbors who rode that way rather avoided contact with him. Tappan was not so dense that he did not perceive that the Beams preferred to keep him from outsiders. This perhaps was owing to their desire to sell Tappan the ranch and cattle. Jake offered to let it go at what he called a low figure. Tappan thought it just as well to go out into the forest and hide his bags of gold. He did not trust Jake Beam, and liked less the looks of the men who visited this wilderness ranch. Madge Beam might be related to a rustler, and the associate of rustlers, but that did not necessarily make her a bad woman. Tappan sensed that her attitude was changing, and she seemed to require his respect. At first, all she wanted was his admiration. Tappan’s long unused deference for women returned to him, and when he saw that it was having some strange softening effect upon Madge Beam, he redoubled his attentions. They rode and climbed and hunted together. Tappan had pitched his camp not far from the cabin, on a shaded bank of the singing brook. Madge did not leave him much to himself. She was always coming up to his camp, on one pretext or another. Often she would bring two horses, and make Tappan ride with her. Some of these occasions, Tappan saw, occurred while visitors came to the cabin. In three weeks Madge Beam changed from the bold and careless woman who had ridden down into his camp that sunset, to a serious and appealing woman, growing more careful of her person and adornment, and manifestly bearing a burden on her mind.

  October came. In the morning white frost glistened on the split-wood shingles of the cabin. The sun soon melted it, and grew warm. The afternoons were still and smoky, melancholy with the enchantment of Indian summer. Tappan hunted wild turkey and deer with Madge, and revived his boyish love of such pursuits. Madge appeared to be a woman of the woods, and had no mean skill with the rifle.

  One day they were high on the Rim, with the great timbered basin at their feet. They had come up to hunt deer, but got no farther than the wonderful promontory where before they had lingered.

  “Somethin’ will happen to me to-day,” Madge Beam said, enigmatically.

  Tappan never had been much of a talker. But he could listen. The woman unburdened herself this day. She wanted freedom, happiness, a home away from this lonely country, and all the heritage of woman. She confessed it broodingly, passionately. And Tappan recognized truth when he heard it. He was ready to do all in his power for this woman and believed she knew it. But words and acts of sentiment came hard to him.

  “Are you goin’ to buy Jake’s ranch?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Is there any hurry?” returned Tappan.

  “I reckon not. But I think I’ll settle that,” she said, decisively.

  “How so?”

  “Well, Jake hasn’t got any ranch,” she answered. And added hastily, “No clear title, I mean. He’s only homesteaded one hundred an’ sixty acres, an’ hasn’t proved up on it yet. But don’t you say I told you.”

  “Was Jake aimin’ to be crooked?”

  “I reckon...An’ I was willin’ at first. But not now.”

  Tappan did not speak at once. He saw the woman was in one of her brooding moods. Besides, he wanted to weigh her words. How significant they were! To-day more than ever she had let down. Humility and simplicity seemed to abide with her. And her brooding boded a storm. Tappan’s heart swelled in his broad breast. Was life going to dawn rosy and bright for the lonely prospector? He had money to make a home for this woman. What lay in the balance of the hour? Tappan waited, slowly realizing the charged atmosphere.

  Madge’s somber eyes gazed out over the great void. But, full of thought and passion as they were, they did not see the beauty of that scene. But Tappan saw it. And in some strange sense the color and wildness and sublimity seemed the expression of a new state of his heart. Under him sheered down the ragged and cracked cliffs of the Rim, yellow and gold and gray, full of caves and crevices, ledges for eagles and niches for lions, a thousand feet down to the upward edge of the long green slopes and canyons, and so on down and down into the abyss of forested ravine and ridge, rolling league on league away to the encompassing barrier of purple mountain ranges.

  The thickets in the canyons called Tappan’s eye back to linger there. How different from the scenes that used to be perpetually in his sight! What riot of color! The tips of the green pines, the crests of the silver spruces, waved about masses of vivid gold of aspen trees, and wonderful cerise and flaming red of maples, and crags of yellow rock, covered with the bronze of frostbitten sumach. Here was autumn and with it the colors of Tappan’s favorite season. From below breathed up the low roar of plunging brook; an eagle screeched his wild call; an elk bugled his piercing blast. From the Rim wisps of pine needles blew away on the breeze and fell into the void. A wild country, colorful, beautiful, bountiful. Tappan imagined he could quell his wandering spirit here, with this dark-eyed woman by his side. Never before had Nature so called him. Here was not the cruelty or flinty hardness of the desert. The air was keen and sweet, cold in the shade, warm in the sun. A fragrance of balsam and spruce, spiced with pine, made his breathing a thing of difficulty and delight. How for so many years had he endured vast open spaces without such eye-soothing trees as these? Tappan’s back rested against a huge pine that tipped the Rim, and had stood there, stronger than the storms, for many a hundred years. The rock of the promontory was covered with soft brown mats of pine needles. A juniper tree, with its bright green foliage and lilac-colored berries, grew near the pine, and helped to form a secluded little nook, fragrant and somehow haunting. The woman’s dark head was close to Tappan, as she sat with her elbows on her knees, gazing down into the basin. Tappan saw the strained tensity of her posture, the heaving of her full bosom. He wondered, while his own emotions, so long darkened, roused to the suspense of that hour.

  Suddenly she flung herself into Tappan’s arms. The act amazed him. It seemed to have both the passion of a woman and the shame of a girl. Before she hid her face on Tappan’s breast he saw how the rich brown had paled, and then flamed.

  “Tappan!...Take me away...Take me away from here—from that life down there,” she cried, in smothered voice.

  “Madge, you mean take you away—and marry you?” he replied.

  “Oh, yes—yes—marry me, if you love me...I don’t see how you can—but you do, don’t y
ou?—Say you do.”

  “I reckon that’s what ails me, Madge,” he replied, simply.

  “Say so, then,” she burst out.

  “All right, I do,” said Tappan, with heavy breath. “Madge, words don’t come easy for me...But I think you’re wonderful, an’ I want you. I haven’t dared hope for that, till now. I’m only a wanderer. But it’d be heaven to have you—my wife—an’ make a home for you.”

  “Oh—Oh!” she returned, wildly, and lifted herself to cling round his neck, and to kiss him. “You give me joy...Oh, Tappan, I love you. I never loved any man before. I know now...An’ I’m not wonderful—or good. But I love you.”

  The fire of her lips and the clasp of her arms worked havoc in Tappan. No woman had ever loved him, let alone embraced him. To awake suddenly to such rapture as this made him strong and rough in his response. Then all at once she seemed to collapse in his arms and to begin to weep. He feared he had offended or hurt her, and was clumsy in his contrition. Presently she replied:

  “Pretty soon—I’ll make you—beat me. It’s your love—your honesty—that’s shamed me...Tappan, I was party to a trick to—sell you a worthless ranch...I agreed to—try to make you love me—to fool you—cheat you...But I’ve fallen in love with you.—An’ my God, I care more for your love—your respect—than for my life. I can’t go on with it. I’ve double-crossed Jake, an’ all of them...Now, am I worth lovin’? Am I worth havin’?”

  “More than ever, dear,” he said.

  “You will take me away?”

  “Anywhere—any time, the sooner the better.”

  She kissed him passionately, and then, disengaging herself from his arms, she knelt and gazed earnestly at him. “I’ve not told all. I will some day. But I swear now on my soul—I’ll be what you think me.”