Zane Grey (18 page)

The gray, never before spurred, broke down the road into his old wild
speed.

Men were crossing from the corner of the green square. One, a compact
little fellow, swarthy, his dark hair long and flowing, with jaunty and
alert air, was Dene, the outlaw leader. He stopped, with his companions,
to let the horse cross.

Hare guided the thundering stallion slightly to the left. Silvermane
swerved and in two mighty leaps bore down on the outlaw. Dene saved
himself by quickly leaping aside, but even as he moved Silvermane struck
him with his left fore-leg, sending him into the dust.

At the street corner Hare glanced back. Yelling men were rushing from
the saloon and some of them fired after him. The bullets whistled
harmlessly behind Hare. Then the corner house shut off his view.

Silvermane lengthened out and stretched lower with his white mane flying
and his nose pointed level for the desert.

TOWARD the close of the next day Jack Hare arrived at Seeping Springs. A
pile of gray ashes marked the spot where the trimmed logs had lain.
Round the pool ran a black circle hard packed into the ground by many
hoofs. Even the board flume had been burned to a level with the glancing
sheet of water. Hare was slipping Silvermane's bit to let him drink when
he heard a halloo. Dave Naab galloped out of the cedars, and presently
August Naab and his other sons appeared with a pack-train.

"Now you've played bob!" exclaimed Dave. He swung out of his saddle and
gripped Hare with both hands. "I know what you've done; I know where
you've been. Father will be furious, but don't you care."

The other Naabs trotted down the slope and lined their horses before the
pool. The sons stared in blank astonishment; the father surveyed the
scene slowly, and then fixed wrathful eyes on Hare.

"What does this mean?" he demanded, with the sonorous roll of his angry
voice.

Hare told all that had happened.

August Naab's gloomy face worked, and his eagle-gaze had in it a strange
far-seeing light; his mind was dwelling upon his mystic power of
revelation.

"I see—I see," he said haltingly.

"Ki—yi-i-i!" yelled Dave Naab with all the power of his lungs. His head
was back, his mouth wide open, his face red, his neck corded and swollen
with the intensity of his passion.

"Be still—boy!" ordered his father. "Hare, this was madness—but tell me
what you learned."

Briefly Hare repeated all that he had been told at the Bishop's, and
concluded with the killing of Martin Cole by Dene.

August Naab bowed his head and his giant frame shook under the force of
his emotion. Martin Cole was the last of his life-long friends.

"This—this outlaw—you say you ran him down?" asked Naab, rising haggard
and shaken out of his grief.

"Yes. He didn't recognize me or know what was coming till Silvermane was
on him. But he was quick, and fell sidewise. Silvermane's knee sent him
sprawling."

"What will it all lead to?" asked August Naab, and in his extremity he
appealed to his eldest son.

"The bars are down," said Snap Naab, with a click of his long teeth.

"Father," began Dave Naab earnestly, "Jack has done a splendid thing.
The news will fly over Utah like wildfire. Mormons are slow. They need
a leader. But they can follow and they will. We can't cure these evils
by hoping and praying. We've got to fight!"

"Dave's right, dad, it means fight," cried George, with his fist clinched
high.

"You've been wrong, father, in holding back," said Zeke Naab, his lean
jaw bulging. "This Holderness will steal the water and meat out of our
children's mouths. We've got to fight!"

"Let's ride to White Sage," put in Snap Naab, and the little flecks in
his eyes were dancing. "I'll throw a gun on Dene. I can get to him.
We've been tolerable friends. He's wanted me to join his band. I'll
kill him."

He laughed as he raised his right hand and swept it down to his left
side; the blue Colt lay on his outstretched palm. Dene's life and
Holderness's, too, hung in the balance between two deadly snaps of this
desert-wolf's teeth. He was one of the Naabs, and yet apart from them,
for neither religion, nor friendship, nor life itself mattered to him.

August Naab's huge bulk shook again, not this time with grief, but in
wrestling effort to withstand the fiery influence of this unholy fighting
spirit among his sons.

"I am forbidden."

His answer was gentle, but its very gentleness breathed of his battle
over himself, of allegiance to something beyond earthly duty. "We'll
drive the cattle to Silver Cup," he decided, "and then go home. I give
up Seeping Springs. Perhaps this valley and water will content
Holderness."

When they reached the oasis Hare was surprised to find that it was the
day before Christmas. The welcome given the long-absent riders was like
a celebration. Much to Hare's disappointment Mescal did not appear; the
homecoming was not joyful to him because it lacked her welcoming smile.

Christmas Day ushered in the short desert winter; ice formed in the
ditches and snow fell, but neither long resisted the reflection of the
sun from the walls. The early morning hours were devoted to religious
services. At midday dinner was served in the big room of August Naab's
cabin. At one end was a stone fireplace where logs blazed and crackled.

In all his days Hare had never seen such a bountiful board. Yet he was
unable to appreciate it, to share in the general thanksgiving.
Dominating all other feeling was the fear that Mescal would come in and
take a seat by Snap Naab's side. When Snap seated himself opposite with
his pale little wife Hare found himself waiting for Mescal with an
intensity that made him dead to all else. The girls, Judith, Esther,
Rebecca, came running gayly in, clad in their best dresses, with bright
ribbons to honor the occasion. Rebecca took the seat beside Snap, and
Hare gulped with a hard contraction of his throat. Mescal was not yet a
Mormon's wife! He seemed to be lifted upward, to grow light-headed with
the blessed assurance. Then Mescal entered and took the seat next to
him. She smiled and spoke, and the blood beat thick in his ears.

That moment was happy, but it was as nothing to its successor. Under the
table-cover Mescal's hand found his, and pressed it daringly and gladly.
Her hand lingered in his all the time August Naab spent in carving the
turkey—lingered there even though Snap Naab's hawk eyes were never far
away. In the warm touch of her hand, in some subtle thing that radiated
from her Hare felt a change in the girl he loved. A few months had
wrought in her some indefinable difference, even as they had increased
his love to its full volume and depth. Had his absence brought her to
the realization of her woman's heart?

In the afternoon Hare left the house and spent a little while with
Silvermane; then he wandered along the wall to the head of the oasis, and
found a seat on the fence. The next few weeks presented to him a
situation that would be difficult to endure. He would be near Mescal,
but only to have the truth forced cruelly home to him every sane moment—
that she was not for him. Out on the ranges he had abandoned himself to
dreams of her; they had been beautiful; they had made the long hours seem
like minutes; but they had forged chains that could not be broken, and
now he was hopelessly fettered.

The clatter of hoofs roused him from a reverie which was half sad, half
sweet. Mescal came tearing down the level on Black Bolly. She pulled in
the mustang and halted beside Hare to hold out shyly a red scarf
embroidered with Navajo symbols in white and red beads.

"I've wanted a chance to give you this," she said, "a little Christmas
present."

For a few seconds Hare could find no words.

"Did you make it for me, Mescal?" he finally asked. "How good of you!
I'll keep it always."

"Put it on now—let me tie it—there!"

"But, child. Suppose he—they saw it?"

"I don't care who sees it."

She met him with clear, level eyes. Her curt, crisp speech was full of
meaning. He looked long at her, with a yearning denied for many a day.
Her face was the same, yet wonderfully changed; the same in line and
color, but different in soul and spirit. The old sombre shadow lay deep
in the eyes, but to it had been added gleam of will and reflection of
thought. The whole face had been refined and transformed.

"Mescal! What's happened? You're not the same. You seem almost happy.
Have you—has he—given you up?"

"Don't you know Mormons better than that? The thing is the same—so far
as they're concerned."

"But Mescal—are you going to marry him? For God's sake, tell me."

"Never." It was a woman's word, instant, inflexible, desperate. With a
deep breath Hare realized where the girl had changed.

"Still you're promised, pledged to him! How'll you get out of it?"

"I don't know how. But I'll cut out my tongue, and be dumb as my poor
peon before I'll speak the word that'll make me Snap Naab's wife."

There was a long silence. Mescal smoothed out Bolly's mane, and Hare
gazed up at the walls with eyes that did not see them.

Presently he spoke. "I'm afraid for you. Snap watched us to-day at
dinner."

"He's jealous."

"Suppose he sees this scarf?"

Mescal laughed defiantly. It was bewildering for Hare to hear her.

"He'll—Mescal, I may yet come to this." Hare's laugh echoed Mescal's as
he pointed to the enclosure under the wall, where the graves showed bare
and rough.

Her warm color fled, but it flooded back, rich, mantling brow and cheek
and neck.

"Snap Naab will never kill you," she said impulsively.

"Mescal."

She swiftly turned her face away as his hand closed on hers.

"Mescal, do you love me?"

The trembling of her fingers and the heaving of her bosom lent his hope
conviction. "Mescal," he went on, "these past months have been years,
years of toiling, thinking, changing, but always loving. I'm not the man
you knew. I'm wild— I'm starved for a sight of you. I love you! Mescal,
my desert flower!"

She raised her free hand to his shoulder and swayed toward him. He held
her a moment, clasped tight, and then released her.

"I'm quite mad!" he exclaimed, in a passion of self-reproach. "What a
risk I'm putting on you! But I couldn't help it. Look at me— Just
once—please— Mescal, just one look. . . . Now go."

The drama of the succeeding days was of absorbing interest. Hare had
liberty; there was little work for him to do save to care for Silvermane.
He tried to hunt foxes in the caves and clefts; he rode up and down the
broad space under the walls; he sought the open desert only to be driven
in by the bitter, biting winds. Then he would return to the big
living-room of the Naabs and sit before the burning logs. This spacious
room was warm, light, pleasant, and was used by every one in leisure
hours. Mescal spent most of her time there. She was engaged upon a new
frock of buckskin, and over this she bent with her needle and beads.
When there was a chance Hare talked with her, speaking one language with
his tongue, a far different one with his eyes. When she was not present
he looked into the glowing red fire and dreamed of her.

In the evenings when Snap came in to his wooing and drew Mescal into a
corner, Hare watched with covert glance and smouldering jealousy.
Somehow he had come to see all things and all people in the desert glass,
and his symbol for Snap Naab was the desert-hawk. Snap's eyes were as
wild and piercing as those of a hawk; his nose and mouth were as the beak
of a hawk; his hands resembled the claws of a hawk; and the spurs he
wore, always bloody, were still more significant of his ruthless nature.
Then Snap's courting of the girl, the cool assurance, the unhastening
ease, were like the slow rise, the sail, and the poise of a desert-hawk
before the downward lightning-swift swoop on his quarry.

It was intolerable for Hare to sit there in the evenings, to try to play
with the children who loved him, to talk to August Naab when his eye
seemed ever drawn to the quiet couple in the corner, and his ear was
unconsciously strained to catch a passing word. That hour was a
miserable one for him, yet he could not bring himself to leave the room.
He never saw Snap touch her; he never heard Mescal's voice; he believed
that she spoke very little. When the hour was over and Mescal rose to
pass to her room, then his doubt, his fear, his misery, were as though
they had never been, for as Mescal said good-night she would give him one
look, swift as a flash, and in it were womanliness and purity, and
something beyond his comprehension. Her Indian serenity and mysticism
veiled yet suggested some secret, some power by which she might yet
escape the iron band of this Mormon rule. Hare could not fathom it.
In that good-night glance was a meaning for him alone, if meaning ever
shone in woman's eyes, and it said: "I will be true to you and to myself!"

Once the idea struck him that as soon as spring returned it would be an
easy matter, and probably wise, for him to leave the oasis and go up into
Utah, far from the desert-canyon country. But the thought refused to
stay before his consciousness a moment. New life had flushed his veins
here. He loved the dreamy, sleepy oasis with its mellow sunshine always
at rest on the glistening walls; he loved the cedar-scented plateau where
hope had dawned, and the wind-swept sand-strips, where hard out-of-door
life and work had renewed his wasting youth; he loved the canyon winding
away toward Coconina, opening into wide abyss; and always, more than all,
he loved the Painted Desert, with its ever-changing pictures, printed in
sweeping dust and bare peaks and purple haze. He loved the beauty of
these places, and the wildness in them had an affinity with something
strange and untamed in him. He would never leave them. When his blood
had cooled, when this tumultuous thrill and swell had worn themselves
out, happiness would come again.