Nevada (1995) (2 page)

The moment came when Hettie Ide's face appeared clearly in the gol
d
and red embers. It shone there, her youthful face crowned by fai
r
hair, with its earnest gray eyes and firm sweet lips. It looke
d
more mature than the face of a sixteen-year-old girl--brave an
d
strong and enduring.

Strange and terrible to recall--Nevada had kissed those sweet lip
s
and had been kissed by them! That face had lain upon his breas
t
and the fair hair had caressed his cheek. They would haunt hi
m
now, always, down the trails of the future, shining from every cam
p
fire.

"Hettie--Hettie," he whispered, brokenly, "you're only a kid an'
s
hore you'll forget. I'm glad Ben never knew aboot us. It'll al
l
come out now after my gunplay of to-day. An' you an' Ben will kno
w
I am Jim Lacy! . . . Oh, if only I could have kept it secret, s
o
you'd never have known I was bad! An', oh--there'll never be an
y
one to tell you I cain't be bad no more!"

Thus Nevada mourned to himself while the shadow face in the fir
e
softened and glowed with sweetness and understanding. It was a
n
hour when Nevada's love mounted to the greatness of sacrifice, whe
n
he cast forever from him any hope of possession, when he realize
d
all that remained was the glory and the dream, and the changed sou
l
which must be true to the girl who had loved him and believed i
n
him.

Beside that first camp fire Nevada's courage failed. He had never
,
until now, realized the significance of that moment when Hettie an
d
he, without knowing how it had come to pass, found themselves i
n
each other's arms. What might have been! But that, too, had onl
y
been a dream. Still, Nevada knew he had dreamed it, believed i
n
it, surrendered to it. And some day he might have buried the past
,
even his name, and grasped the happiness Hettie's arms ha
d
promised. Ben would have joyfully accepted him as a brother. Bu
t
in hiding his real name, in living this character Nevada, could h
e
have been true to the soul Ben and Hettie had uplifted in him?

Nevada realized that he could no longer have lived a lie. An
d
though he would not have cared so much about Ben, he had not wante
d
Hettie to learn that he had been Jim Lacy, notorious from Linevill
e
across the desert wastes of Nevada clear to Tombstone.

"Reckon it's better so," muttered Nevada to the listening cam
p
fire. "If only Hettie never learns aboot the real me!"

The loss of Hettie was insupportable. He had been happy withou
t
realizing it. On the steps of friendship and love and faith he ha
d
climbed out of hell. He had been transformed. Never could he g
o
back, never minimize the bloody act through which he had saved hi
s
friend from the treachery of a ruthless and evil man. That act, a
s
well, had saved the Blaines and the Ides from ruin, and no doub
t
Ina and Hettie from worse. For that crafty devil, Setter, had lai
d
his plans well.

Nevada bowed his bare head over his camp fire, and a hard so
b
racked him.

"Shore--it's losin' her--that kills me!" he ground out between hi
s
teeth. "I cain't--bear it."

When he crawled into his blankets at midnight it was only becaus
e
the conflict within him had exhausted his strength. Slee
p
mercifully brought him oblivion. But with the cold dawn his ordea
l
returned, and the knowledge that it would always abide with him.

The agony was that he could not be happy without Hettie Ide's love--
w
ithout sight of her, without her smile, her touch. He wanted t
o
seek some hidden covert, like a crippled animal, and die. H
e
wanted to plunge into the old raw life of the border, dealing deat
h
and meeting death among those lawless men who had ruined him.

But he could not make an end to it all, in any way. The inferna
l
paradox was that in thought of Ben's happiness, which he had made
,
there was an ecstasy as great as the agony of his own loss.

Furthermore, Hettie's love, her embraces, her faith had lifted hi
m
to some incredible height and fettered him there, forever to figh
t
for the something she had created in himself. He owed himself
a
debt greater than that which he had owed Ben. Not a debt to love
,
but to faith! Hettie had made him believe in himself--in tha
t
newborn self which seemed now so all-compelling and so inscrutable.

"Baldy, I've shore got a fight on my hands," he said to his horse
,
as he threw on the saddle. "We've got to hit the back trails.

We've got to eat an' sleep an' find some place where it's safe t
o
hide. Maybe, after a long while, we can cross over the desert t
o
Arizona an' find honest work. But, by Heaven! if I have to hid
e
all my life, an' be Jim Lacy to the bloody end, I'll be true t
o
this thing in my heart--to the name Ben Ide gave me--Nevada--th
e
name an' the man Hettie Ide believed in!"

Nevada traveled far that day, winding along the cattle trails u
p
the valleys and over the passes. He began to get into hig
h
country, into the cedars and pi+-ons. Far above him the blac
k
timber belted the mountains, and above that gleamed the snow line.

He avoided the few cattle ranches which nestled in the larger gras
s
valleys. Well-trodden trails did not know the imprint of hi
s
tracks that day; and dusk found him camped in a lonely gulch, wit
h
high walls and grassy floor, where a murmuring stream made music.

Endless had been the hours and miles of the long day's ride. Cam
p
was welcome to weary man and horses. The mourn of a wolf, terribl
e
in its haunting prolonged sadness and wildness, greeted Nevada b
y
his camp fire. A lone gray wolf hungering for a mate! The cr
y
found an echo in the cry of Nevada's heart. He too was a lon
e
wolf, one to whom nature had been even more cruel.

And once again a sweet face with gray questioning eyes gleamed an
d
glowed and changed in the white-red heart of the camp fire.

On the following day Nevada climbed the divide that separated th
e
sage and forest country from the desert beyond. It was a low wid
e
pass through the range, easily surmountable on horseback, thoug
h
the trail was winding and rough. The absence of cattle track
s
brought a grim smile to Nevada's face. He knew why there were non
e
here, and where, to the south through the rocky fastness of anothe
r
and very rough pass, there were many. But few ranchers who bough
t
or traded cattle ever crossed that divide.

From a grassy saddle, where autumn wild flowers still bloome
d
brightly, he gazed down the long uneven slope of the range, to th
e
canyoned and cedared strip of California, and on to the border o
f
Nevada, bleak, wild, and magnificent. The gray-and-yellow deser
t
stretched away illimitably, with vast expanse of hazy levels an
d
endless barren ranges. The prospect in some sense resemble
d
Nevada's future, as he imagined it.

As he gazed mournfully out over this tremendous and monotonou
s
wasteland a powerful antagonism to its nature and meaning swep
t
over him. How he had learned to love the fragrant sage countr
y
behind him! But this desert was hard, bitter, cruel, like the me
n
it developed. He hated to go back to it. Could he not find
a
refuge somewhere else--surely in far-off sunny Arizona? Ye
t
strange to tell, this wild Nevada called to something deep in him
,
something raw and deadly and defiant.

"Reckon I'll hide out a while in some canyon," he reflected.

Then he began the descent from the divide, and soon the grea
t
hollow and the upheaval of land beyond were lost to his sight. Th
e
trail zigzagged down and up, under the brushy banks, throug
h
defiles of weathered rock, over cedar ridges, on and on down out o
f
the heights.

Before Nevada reached the end of that long mountain slope he hear
d
the dreamy hum of a tumbling stream, and turning off the trail h
e
picked his way over the roughest of ground to the rim of a shallo
w
canyon, whence had come the sound of falling water. He walked
,
leading his horses for a mile or more before he found a break i
n
the canyon wall where he could get down.

Here indeed was a lonely retreat. Grass and wood were abundant
,
and tracks of deer and other game assured him he could kill meat.

A narrow sheltered reach of the canyon, where the cottonwood tree
s
still were green and gold and the grass grew rich along the stream
,
appeared a most desirable place to camp.

So he unpacked his horses, leisurely and ponderingly, as if tim
e
were naught, and set about making a habitation in the wilds. Fro
m
earliest boyhood this kind of work had possessed infinite charm.

No time in his life had he needed solitude as now.

Nevada did not count the days or nights. These passed as in
a
dream. He roamed up and down the canyon with his rifle, though h
e
used it only when he needed meat. He spent hours sitting in sunn
y
spots, absorbed in memory. His horses grew fat and lazy. Day
s
passed into weeks. The cottonwoods shed their leaves to spread
a
golden carpet underneath. The nights grew cold and the wind moane
d
in the trees.

The time came when solitude seemed no longer endurable. Nevad
a
knew that if he lingered there he would go mad. For ther
e
encroached upon his dream of Hettie Ide and Ben, and that one shor
t
beautiful and ennobling period of his life, a strange dark mood i
n
which the men he had killed came back to him. Nevada ha
d
experienced this before. The only cure was drink, work, action,
a
mingling with humankind, the sound of voices. Even a community o
f
the most evil of men and women could save him from that hauntin
g
shadow in his mind.

Somberly he thought it all out. Though he had deemed he was self-
s
ufficient, he found his limitations. He could no longer dwel
l
alone in this utter solitude, starving his body, falling day by da
y
deeper into melancholy and mental aberration. There seemed to b
e
relief even in the thought of old associations. Yet Nevad
a
shuddered in his soul at the inevitable which would force him bac
k
into the old life.

"Reckon now it's aboot time for me to declare myself," he muttered.

"I cain't lie to myself, any more than I could to Hettie. I'v
e
changed. I change every day. Shore I don't know myself. An' thi
s
damned life I face staggers me. What am I goin' to do? I say fin
d
honest work somewhere far off. Arizona, perhaps, where I'd b
e
least known. That's what Hettie would expect of me. She'd hav
e
faith I'd do it. . . . An', by Gawd! I WILL do it! . . . But fo
r
her sake an' Ben's, never mindin' my own, I've got to hole up til
l
that last gun-throwin' of mine is forgotten. If I were found an'
r
ecognized as Jim Lacy it'd be bad. An' if anyone did, it'd thro
w
the light on some things I'd rather die than have Hettie Ide know."