Dorn Of The Mountains (5 page)

“You’re not going to…all the way…to Pine?” faltered Helen, momentarily weakening.

“Nell, I’ll camp on your trail from now on,” he declared.

Then Bo sat bolt upright, with pale face and flashing eyes. “Harve Riggs, you leave Nell alone!” she burst out in a ringing brave young voice. “I’ll tell you what…I’ll bet…if you follow her and nag her any more…my Uncle Al or some cowboy will run you out of the country.”

“Hello, Pepper,” replied Riggs coolly. “I see your manners haven’t improved an’ you’re still wild about cowboys.”

“People don’t have good manners with…with….”

“Bo, hush!” admonished Helen. It was difficult to speak so to Bo just then, for that young lady had not the slightest fear of Riggs. Instead, she looked as if she could slap his face. And Helen realized that, however her intelligence had grasped the possibilities of leaving home for a wild country, and what ever her determination to be brave, the actual beginning of self-reliance had left her spirit weak. She would rise out of that. But just now this flashing-eyed little sister seemed a protector. Bo would readily adapt herself to the West, Helen thought, because she was so young, primitive, elemental.

Whereupon Bo turned her back to Riggs and looked out of the window. The man laughed. Then he stood up and leaned over Helen.

“Nell, I’m goin’ wherever you go,” he said steadily. “You can take that friendly or not, just as it pleases you. But if you’ve got any sense, you’ll not give these people out here a hunch against me. I might hurt somebody…. An’ wouldn’t it be better to act friends? For I’m goin’ to look after you whether you like it or not.”

Helen had considered this man an annoyance, and later a menace, and now she must declare open enmity with him. However disgusting the idea that he considered himself to be a factor in her new life, it was the truth. He existed, and he had control over his movements. She could not change that. She hated the need of thinking so much about him, and suddenly, she who had been only intolerant, with a hot bursting anger she hated the man.

“You’ll not look after me. I’ll take care of myself,” she said, and she turned her back upon him. She heard him mutter under his breath and slowly move away down the car. Then Bo slipped a hand in hers.

“Never mind, Nell,” she whispered. “You know what old Sheriff Haines said about Harve Riggs. ‘A four-flush would-be gunfighter. If he ever strikes a real Western town, he’ll get run out of it.’ I just wish my red-faced cowboy had got on this train!”

Helen felt a rush of gladness that she had yielded to Bo’s wild importunities to take her West. The spirit that had made Bo incorrigible at home probably would make her react happily to life out in this free country. Yet Helen with all her warmth and gratefulness had to laugh at her sister.

“Your red-faced cowboy! Why, Bo, you were scared stiff. And now you claim him.”

“I certainly could love that fellow,” replied Bo dreamily.

“Child, you’ve been saying that about fellows for a long time. And you’ve never looked twice at any of them yet.”

“He was different…. Nell, I’ll bet he comes to Pine.”

“I hope he does. I wish he was in this train. I liked his looks, Bo.”

“Well, Nell dear, he looked at
me
first and last…so don’t get your hopes up…. Oh, the train’s starting! Good bye Albuker…. What’s that awful name? Nell, let’s eat dinner. I’m starved.”

Then Helen forgot her troubles and the uncertain future, and what with listening to Bo’s chatter, and partaking again of the endless good things to eat in the huge basket, and watching the noble mountains, she drew once more into happy mood.

The valley of the Río Grande opened to view, wide, near at hand in a great gray-green gap between the bare black mountains, narrow in the distance, where the yellow river wound away, glistening under a hot sun. Bo squealed in glee at sight of naked little Mexican children that darted into the adobe huts as the train
clattered
by, and she exclaimed her plea sure in the Indians, and the mustangs, and particularly in a group of cowboys riding into town upon spirited horses. Helen saw all Bo pointed out, but it was to the wonderful rolling valley that her gaze clung longest, and to the dim purple distance that seemed to hold something from her. She had never before experienced any feeling like that; she had never seen a tenth so far. And the sight awoke something strange in her. The sun was burning hot, as she could tell when she put a hand outside the window, and a strong wind blew sheets of dry dust at the train. She gathered at once what tremendous factors in the Southwest were the sun and the dust and the wind. And her realization was to love them. It was there, the open, the wild, the beautiful, the lonely land, and she felt the poignant call of blood in her—to seek, to strive, to find, to live. One look down that yellow valley, endless between its dark iron ramparts, had given her understanding of her uncle. She must be like him in spirit as it was claimed she resembled him otherwise.

At length Bo grew tired of watching scenery that contained no life, and with her bright head upon the folded cloak she went to sleep. But Helen kept a steady far-seeing gaze out upon that land of rock and plain, and during the long hours, as she watched through clouds of dust and veils of heat, some strong and doubtful and restless sentiment seemed to change and then to fix. It was her physical acceptance—her eyes and her senses taking the West as she had already taken it in spirit.

A woman should love her home wherever fate placed her, Helen believed, and not so much from duty as from delight and romance and living. How could life ever be tedious or monotonous out here in this tremendous vastness of bare earth and open sky, where the need to achieve made thinking and pondering superficial?

It was with regret that she saw the last of the valley of the Río Grande, and then of its parallel mountain ranges. But the miles brought compensation in other valleys, other bold black upheavals of rock, and then again bare boundless yellow plains, and sparsely cedared ridges, and white dry washes, ghastly in the sunlight, and dazzling beds of alkali, and then a desert space where golden and blue flowers bloomed.

She noted, too, that the whites and yellows of earth and rock had begun to shade to red—and this she knew meant an approach to Arizona. Arizona, the wild, the lonely, the red desert, the green plateau—Arizona with its thundering rivers, its unknown spaces, its pasture lands, outlaws, wolves and lions and savages! As to a boy that name stirred and thrilled and sang to her of nameless, sweet, intangible things, mysterious, and all of adventure. But she, being a girl of twenty, who had accepted responsibilities, must conceal the depths of her heart and that which her mother had complained was her misfortune in not being born a boy.

Time passed while Helen watched and learned and dreamed. The train stopped at long intervals, at wayside stations where there seemed nothing but adobe sheds and lazy Mexicans, and dust and heat. Bo awoke and began to chatter, and to dig into the basket. She learned from the conductor that Magdalena was only two stations on. And she was full of conjectures as to whom would meet them, what would happen. So Helen was drawn back to sober realities in which there was considerable zest. Assuredly she did not know what was going to happen. Twice Riggs passed up and down the aisle, his dark face and light eyes and sardonic smile deliberately forced upon her sight. But again Helen fought a growing dread with contemptuous scorn. This fellow was not half a man. It was not conceivable what he could do, except annoy her, until she arrived at Pine. Her uncle was to meet her or send for her at Snowdrop, which place, Helen knew, was distant, a good long ride by stage from Magdalena. This stage ride was the climax and the dread of all the long journey in Helen’s considerations.

“Oh, Nell!” cried Bo with delight. “We’re nearly there! Next station, the conductor said.”

“I wonder if the stage travels at night,” said Helen thoughtfully.

“Sure it does,” replied the irrepressible Bo.

The train, though it
clattered
along as usual, seemed to Helen to fly. There the sun was setting over bleak New Mexican bluffs, Magdalena was at hand, and night, and adventure. Helen’s heart beat fast. She watched the yellow plains where the cattle grazed, and their presence, and irrigation ditches and cottonwood trees told her that the railroad part of the journey was nearly ended. Then, at Bo’s little scream, she looked across the car and out of the window there to see a line of low flat red adobe houses. The train began to slow down. Helen saw children run, white children and Mexican together, and then more houses, and high upon a hill an immense adobe church, crude and glaring, yet somehow beautiful.

Helen told Bo to put on her bonnet, and, performing a like office for herself, she was ashamed of the trembling of her fingers. There were bustle and talk in the car.

The train stopped. Helen peered out to see a straggling crowd of Mexicans and Indians, all motionless and stolid, as if trains or nothing else mattered. Next Helen saw a white man and that was a relief. He stood out in front of the others. Tall and broad, somehow striking, he drew a second glance that showed him to be a hunter, clad in gray fringed buckskin, and carrying a rifle.

Here there was no kindly brakeman to help the sisters with their luggage. Helen bade Bo take her share, and, thus burdened, they made an awkward and laborsome shift to get off the train.

Upon the platform of the car a strong hand seized Helen’s heavy bag, with which she was straining, and a loud voice called out: “Girls, we’re here…we’re out in the wild an’ woolly West!”

The speaker was Riggs and he had possessed himself of part of her baggage with action and speech meant more to impress the curious crowd than to be really kind. In the excitement of arriving Helen had forgotten him. The manner of sudden reminder—the insincerity of it made her temper flash. She almost fell, encumbered as she was, in her hurry to descend the steps. She saw the tall hunter in gray step forward close to her as she reached for the bag Riggs held.

“Mister Riggs, I’ll carry my bag,” she said.

“Let me lug this. You help Bo with hers,” he replied familiarly.

“But I want it,” she rejoined quietly, with sharp determination. No little force was needed to pull the bag away from Riggs.

“See here, Helen, you ain’t goin’ any further with that joke, are you?” he queried deprecatingly, and he still spoke quite loudly.

“It’s no joke to me,” replied Helen. “I told you I didn’t want your attention.”

“Sure. But that was temper. I’m your friend…from your home town. I ain’t goin’ to let a quarrel keep me from lookin’ after you till you’re safe at your uncle’s.”

Helen turned her back upon him. The tall hunter had just helped Bo off the car. Then Helen looked up into a smooth bronzed face and piercing gray eyes.

“Are you Helen Rayner?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“My name’s Dorn. I’ve come to meet you.”

“
Ah!
My uncle sent you?” added Helen in quick relief.

“No. I can’t say Al sent me,” began the man, “but I reckon….”

He was interrupted by Riggs, who, grasping Helen by the arm, pulled her back a step.

“Say, mister, did Auchincloss send you to meet my young friends here?” he demanded arrogantly.

Dorn’s glance turned from Helen to Riggs. She could not read his quiet gray gaze, but it thrilled her.

“No. I come on my own hook,” he answered.

“You’ll understand then…they’re in my charge,” added Riggs.

This time the steady light-gray eyes met Helen’s and, if there were not a smile in them or behind them, she was still further baffled.

“Helen, I reckon you said you didn’t want this fellow’s attention?”

“I certainly said that,” replied Helen quickly. Just then Bo stepped close to her and gave her arm a little squeeze. Probably Bo’s thought was like hers—here was a real Western man. That was her first impression and following swiftly upon it was a sensation of eased nerves.

Riggs swaggered closer to Dorn.

“Say, Buckskin, I hail from Texas….”

“You’re wastin’ our time an’ we’ve need to hurry,” interrupted Dorn. His tone seemed friendly. “An’…if you ever lived long in Texas, you wouldn’t pester a lady an’ you sure wouldn’t talk like you do.”

“What!” shouted Riggs hotly. He dropped his right hand significantly to his hip.

“Don’t throw your gun. It might go off,” said Dorn.

What ever Riggs’s intention had been—and it was probably just what Dorn evidently had read it—he now flushed an angry red and jerked at his gun.

Dorn’s hand flashed too swiftly for Helen’s eye to follow it. But she heard the
thud
as it struck. The gun went flying to the platform and scattered a group of Indians and Mexicans.

“You’ll hurt yourself someday,” said Dorn.

Helen had never heard a slow cool voice like this hunter’s. Without excitement or emotion or hurry, it yet seemed full and significant of things the words did not mean. Bo uttered a strange little exultant cry.

Riggs’s arm had dropped limply. No doubt it was numb. He stared, and his predominating expression was surprise. As the shuffling crowd began to snicker and whisper, Riggs gave Dorn a malignant glance, shifted it to Helen, and then lurched away in the direction of his gun.

Dorn did not pay any more attention to him. Gathering up Helen’s baggage, he said—“Come on.”—and shouldered a lane through the gaping crowd. The girls followed closely at his heels.

“Nell…what’d I tell you?” whispered Bo. “Oh, you’re all a-tremble.”

Helen was aware of her unsteadiness; anger and fear and relief in quick succession had left her rather weak. Once through the motley crowd of loungers she saw an old gray stagecoach and four lean horses. A grizzled sunburned man sat in the driver’s seat, whip and reins in hand. Beside him was a younger man with rifle across his knees. Another man, young, tall, lean, dark, stood holding the coach door open. He touched his sombrero to the girls. His eyes were sharp as he addressed Dorn.

“Milt, wasn’t you held up?”

“No. But some long-haired galoot was tryin’ to hold up the girls. Wanted to throw his gun at me. I was sure scared,” replied Dorn as he deposited the luggage.

Bo laughed. Her eyes, resting upon Dorn, were warm and bright. The young man at the coach door took a second look at her, and then a smile changed the dark hardness of his face.

Dorn helped the girls up the high step into the stage, and then, placing the lighter luggage in with them, he threw the heavier pieces up on top.

“Joe, climb up,” he said.

“Wal, Milt,” drawled the driver, “let’s ooze along.”

Dorn hesitated with his hand on the door. He glanced at the crowd, now edging close again, and then at Helen. “I reckon I ought to tell you,” he said, and indecision appeared to concern him.

“What!” exclaimed Helen.

“Bad news. But talkin’ takes time. An’ we mustn’t lose any.”

“There’s need of hurry?” queried Helen, sitting up sharply.

“I reckon.”

“Is this the stage to Snowdrop?”

“No. That leaves in the mornin’. We rustled this old trap to get a start to night.”

“The sooner the better. But I…I don’t understand,” said Helen, bewildered.

“It’ll not be safe for you to ride on the mornin’ stage,” returned Dorn.

“Safe! Oh, what do you mean?” exclaimed Helen. Apprehensively she gazed at him, and then back at Bo.

“Explainin’ will take time. An’ facts may change your mind. But if you can’t trust me….”

“Trust you?” interposed Helen blankly. “You mean to take us to Snowdrop?”

“I reckon we’d better go roundabout an’ not hit Snowdrop,” he replied shortly.

“Then to Pine…to my uncle…Al Auchincloss?”

“Yes, I’m goin’ to try hard.”

Helen caught her breath. She divined that some peril menaced her. She looked steadily, with all a woman’s keenness, into this man’s face. The moment was one of the fateful decisions she knew the West had in store for her. Her future and that of Bo’s were now to be dependent upon her judgments. It was a hard moment, and, although she shivered inwardly, she welcomed the initial and inevitable step. This man Dorn, by his dress of buckskin, must be either scout or hunter. His size, his action, the tone of his voice had been reassuring. But Helen must decide from what she saw in his face whether or not to trust him. And that face was clear bronze, unlined, unshadowed, like a tranquil mask, clean-cut, strong jawed, with eyes of wonderful transparent gray.

“Yes, I’ll trust you,” she said. “Get in and let us hurry. Then you can explain.”

“All ready, Bill. Send ’em along!” called Dorn.

He had to stoop to enter the stage, and, once in, he appeared to fill that side upon which he sat. Then the driver cracked his whip; the stage lurched and began to roll; the motley crowd was left behind. Helen awakened to the reality, as she saw Bo staring with big eyes at the hunter, that a stranger adventure than she had ever dreamed of had begun with the rattling roll of that old stagecoach.

Dorn laid off his sombrero and leaned forward, holding his rifle between his knees. The light shone better upon his features now that he was bareheaded. Helen had never seen a face like that, which at first glance appeared darkly bronzed and hard, and then became clear, cold, aloof, still, intense. She wished she might see a smile upon it. And now that the die was cast she could not tell why she had trusted it. There was singular force in it, but she did not recognize what kind of force. One instant she thought it was stern, and the next that it was sweet, and again that it was neither.

“I’m glad you’ve got your sister,” he said.

“How did you know she’s my sister?”

“I reckon she looks like you.”

“No one else ever thought so,” replied Helen, trying to smile.

Bo had no difficulty in smiling as she said: “Wish I was half as pretty as Nell.”

“Nell. Isn’t your name Helen?” queried Dorn.

“Yes. But my…some few call me Nell.”

“I like Nell better than Helen. An’ what’s yours?” went on Dorn, looking at Bo.

“Mine’s Bo. Just plain B-o. Isn’t it silly? But I wasn’t asked when they gave it to me,” she replied.

“Bo. It’s nice an’ short. Never heard it before. But I haven’t met many people for years.”

“Oh! We’ve left the town!” cried Bo. “Look, Nell! How bare! It’s just like desert.”

“It is desert. We’ve forty miles of that before we come to a hill or a tree.”

Helen glanced out. A flat dull green expanse waved away from the road on and on to a bright dark horizon line where the sun was setting rayless on a clear sky. Open, desolate, and lonely, the scene gave her a cold thrill.

“Did your Uncle Al ever write anythin’ about a man named Beasley?” asked Dorn.

“Indeed he did,” replied Helen with a start of surprise. “Beasley! That name is familiar to us…and detestable. My uncle complained of this man for years. Then he grew bitter…accused Beasley. But the last year or so, not a word.”

“Well, now,” began the hunter earnestly. “Let’s get the bad news over. I’m sorry you must be worried. But you must learn to take the West as it is. There’s good and bad, maybe more bad. That’s because the country’s young…so to come right out with it…this Beasley hired a gang of outlaws to meet the stage you was goin’ in to Snowdrop…tomorrow…an’ to make off with you.”

“Make off with me?” ejaculated Helen, bewildered.

“Kidnap you! Which in that gang would be worse than killin’ you,” declared Dorn grimly, and he closed a huge fist on his knee.

Helen was utterly astounded. “How horrible!” she gasped out. “Make off with me! What in heaven’s name for?”

Bo gave vent to a fierce little utterance.

“For reasons you ought to guess,” replied Dorn, and he leaned forward again. Neither his voice nor face changed in the least, but yet there was a something about him that fascinated Helen. “I’m a hunter. I live in the woods. A few nights ago I happened to be caught out in a storm an’ I took to an old log cabin. Soon as I got there, I heard horses. I hid up in the loft. Some men rode up an’ come in. It was dark. They couldn’t see me. An’ they talked. It turned out they were Snake Anson an’ his gang of sheep thieves. They expected to meet Beasley there. Pretty soon he came. He told Anson how old Al, your uncle, was on his last legs…how he had sent for you to have his property when he died…. Beasley swore he had claims on Al. An’ he made a deal with Anson to get you out of the way. He named the day you were to reach Magdalena. With Al dead an’ you not there, Beasley could get the property. An’ then he wouldn’t care if you did come to claim it. It’d be too late…. Well, they rode away that night. An’ next day I rustled down to Pine. They’re all my friends at Pine, except old Al. But they think I’m queer. I didn’t want to confide in many people. Beasley is strong in Pine, an’ for that matter I suspect Snake Anson has other friends there besides Beasley…. So I went to see your uncle. He never had any use for me because he thought I was lazy like an Indian. Old Al hates lazy men. Then we fell out…or he fell out…because he believed a tame lion of mine had killed some of his sheep. An’ now I reckon that Tom might have done it…. I tried to lead up to this deal of Beasley’s about you, but old Al wouldn’t listen. He’s cross…very cross. An’ when I tried to tell him, why he went right out of his head. Sent me off the ranch.

“Now I reckon you begin to see what a pickle I was in. Finally I went to four friends I could trust. They’re Mormon boys…brothers. That’s Joe out on top with the driver. I told them all about Beasley’s deal an’ asked them to help me. So we planned to beat Anson an’ his gang to Magdalena. It happens that Beasley is as strong in Magdalena as he is in Pine. An’ we had to go careful. But the boys had a couple of friends here…Mormons, too, who agreed to help us. They had this old stage…. An’ here you are.”

Dorn spread out his big hands and looked gravely at Helen, and then at Bo.

“You’re perfectly splendid!” cried Bo ringingly. She was white; her fingers were clenched; her eyes blazed.

Dorn appeared startled out of his gravity, and surprised, then pleased. A smile made his face like a boy’s.

Helen felt her body all rigid, yet slightly trembling. Her hands were cold. The horror of this revelation held her speechless. But in her heart she echoed Bo’s exclamation of admiration and gratitude.

“So far then,” resumed Dorn, with a heavy breath of relief. “No wonder you’re upset. I’ve a blunt way of talkin’…. Now we’ve thirty miles to ride on this Snowdrop road before we can turn off. Today, sometime, the rest of the boys…Roy, John, an’ Hal were to leave Show Down, which is a town farther on from Snowdrop. They have my horses an’ packs besides their own. Somewhere on the road we’ll meet them…tonight maybe…or tomorrow. I hope not tonight because that’d mean Anson’s gang was ridin’ in to Magdalena.”

Helen wrung her hands helplessly. “Oh, have I no courage,” she whispered.

“Nell, I’m as scared as you are,” said Bo consolingly, embracing her sister.

“I reckon that’s natural,” said Dorn, as if excusing them. “But scared or not you both brace up. It’s a bad job. But I’ve done my best. An’ you’ll be safer with me an’ the Beeman boys than you’d be in Magdalena, or anywhere else, except your uncle’s.”

“Mister…Mister Dorn,” faltered Helen, with her tears falling. “Don’t think me a coward…or…or ungrateful. I’m neither. It’s only I’m so…so shocked. After all we hoped and expected…this…this is such a…a terrible surprise.”