Zane Grey (7 page)

Three huge corrals filled a wide curved space in the wall. In one corral
were the teams that had hauled the wagons from White Sage; in another
upward of thirty burros, drooping, lazy little fellows half asleep; in
the third a dozen or more mustangs and some horses which delighted Hare.
Snap Naab's cream pinto, a bay, and a giant horse of mottled white
attracted him most.

"Our best stock is out on the range," said Naab. "The white is Charger,
my saddle-horse. When he was a yearling he got away and ran wild for
three years. But we caught him. He's a weight-carrier and he can run
some. You're fond of a horse—I can see that."

"Yes," returned Hare, "but I—I'll never ride again." He said it
brightly, smiling the while; still the look in his eyes belied the
cheerful resignation.

"I've not the gift of revelation, yet I seem to see you on a big gray
horse with a shining mane." Naab appeared to be gazing far away.

The cottonwood grove, at the western curve of the oasis, shaded the five
log huts where August's grown sons lived with their wives, and his own
cabin, which was of considerable dimensions. It had a covered porch on
one side, an open one on the other, a shingle roof, and was a roomy and
comfortable habitation.

Naab was pointing out the school-house when he was interrupted by
childish laughter, shrieks of glee, and the rush of little feet.

"It's recess-time," he said.

A frantic crowd of tousled-headed little ones were running from the log
school-house to form a circle under the trees. There were fourteen of
them, from four years of age up to ten or twelve. Such sturdy, glad-eyed
children Hare had never seen. In a few moments, as though their happy
screams were signals, the shady circle was filled with hounds, and a
string of puppies stepping on their long ears, and ruffling
turkey-gobblers, that gobbled and gobbled, and guinea-hens with their
shrill cries, and cackling chickens, and a lame wild goose that hobbled
along alone. Then there were shiny peafowls screeching clarion calls
from the trees overhead, and flocks of singing blackbirds, and pigeons
hovering over and alighting upon the house. Last to approach were a
woolly sheep that added his baa-baa to the din, and a bald-faced burro
that walked in his sleep. These two became the centre of clamor. After
many tumbles four chubby youngsters mounted the burro; and the others,
with loud acclaim, shouting, "Noddle, Noddle, getup! getup!" endeavored
to make him go. But Noddle nodded and refused to awaken or budge. Then
an ambitious urchin of six fastened his hands in the fur of the sheep and
essayed to climb to his back. Willing hands assisted him. "Ride him,
Billy, ride him. Getup, Navvy, getup!"

Navvy evidently had never been ridden, for he began a fair imitation of a
bucking bronco. Billy held on, but the smile vanished and he corners of
his mouth drew down.

"Hang on, Billy, hang on," cried August Naab, in delight. Billy hung on
a moment longer, and then Navvy, bewildered by the pestering crowd about
him, launched out and, butting into Noddle, spilled the four youngsters
and Billy also into a wriggling heap.

This recess-time completed Hare's introduction to the Naabs. There were
Mother Mary, and Judith and Esther, whom he knew, and Mother Ruth and her
two daughters very like their sisters. Mother Ruth, August's second
wife, was younger than Mother Mary, more comely of face, and more sad and
serious of expression. The wives of the five sons, except Snap Naab's
frail bride, were stalwart women, fit to make homes and rear children.

"Now, Jack, things are moving all right," said August. "For the present
you must eat and rest. Walk some, but don't tire yourself. We'll
practice shooting a little every day; that's one thing I'll spare time
for. I've a trick with a gun to teach you. And if you feel able, take a
burro and ride. Anyway, make yourself at home."

Hare found eating and resting to be matters of profound enjoyment.
Before he had fallen in with these good people it had been a year since
he had sat down to a full meal; longer still since he had eaten whole
some food. And now he had come to a "land overflowing with milk and
honey," as Mother Ruth smilingly said. He could not choose between roast
beef and chicken, and so he waived the question by taking both; and what
with the biscuits and butter, apple-sauce and blackberry jam, cherry pie
and milk like cream, there was danger of making himself ill. He told his
friends that he simply could not help it, which shameless confession
brought a hearty laugh from August and beaming smiles from his
women-folk.

For several days Hare was remarkably well, for an invalid. He won golden
praise from August at the rifle practice, and he began to take lessons in
the quick drawing and rapid firing of a Colt revolver. Naab was
wonderfully proficient in the use of both firearms; and his skill in
drawing the smaller weapon, in which his movement was quicker than the
eye, astonished Hare. "My lad," said August, "it doesn't follow because
I'm a Christian that I don't know how to handle a gun. Besides, I like
to shoot."

In these few days Hare learned what conquering the desert made of a man.
August Naab was close to threescore years; his chest was wide as a door,
his arm like the branch of an oak. He was a blacksmith, a mechanic, a
carpenter, a cooper, a potter. At his forge and in his shop, everywhere,
were crude tools, wagons, farming implements, sets of buckskin harness,
odds and ends of nameless things, eloquent and pregnant proof of the fact
that necessity is the mother of invention. He was a mason; the levee
that buffeted back the rage of the Colorado in flood, the wall that
turned the creek, the irrigation tunnel, the zigzag trail cut on the face
of the cliff—all these attested his eye for line, his judgment of
distance, his strength in toil. He was a farmer, a cattle man, a grafter
of fruit-trees, a breeder of horses, a herder of sheep, a preacher, a
physician. Best and strangest of all in this wonderful man was the
instinct and the heart to heal. "I don't combat the doctrine of the
Mormon church," he said, "but I administer a little medicine with my
healing. I learned that from the Navajos." The children ran to him with
bruised heads, and cut fingers, and stubbed toes; and his blacksmith's
hands were as gentle as a woman's. A mustang with a lame leg claimed his
serious attention; a sick sheep gave him an anxious look; a steer with a
gored skin sent him running for a bucket of salve. He could not pass by
a crippled quail. The farm was overrun by Navajo sheep which he had
found strayed and lost on the desert. Anything hurt or helpless had in
August Naab a friend. Hare found himself looking up to a great and
luminous figure, and he loved this man.

As the days passed Hare learned many other things. For a while illness
confined him to his bed on the porch. At night he lay listening to the
roar of the river, and watching the stars. Twice he heard a distant
crash and rumble, heavy as thunder, and he knew that somewhere along the
cliffs avalanches were slipping. By day he watched the cotton snow down
upon him, and listened to the many birds, and waited for the merry show
at recess-time. After a short time the children grew less shy and came
readily to him. They were the most wholesome children he had ever
known. Hare wondered about it, and decided it was not so much Mormon
teaching as isolation from the world. These children had never been out
of their cliff-walled home, and civilization was for them as if it were
not. He told them stories, and after school hours they would race to him
and climb on his bed, and beg for more.

He exhausted his supply of fairy-stories and animal stories; and had
begun to tell about the places and cities which he had visited when the
eager-eyed children were peremptorily called within by Mother Mary. This
pained him and he was at a loss to understand it. Enlightenment came,
however, in the way of an argument between Naab and Mother Mary which he
overheard. The elder wife said that the stranger was welcome to the
children, but she insisted that they hear nothing of the outside world,
and that they be kept to the teachings of the Mormon geography—which
made all the world outside Utah an untrodden wilderness. August Naab did
not hold to the letter of the Mormon law; he argued that if the children
could not be raised as Mormons with a full knowledge of the world, they
would only be lost in the end to the Church.

Other developments surprised Hare. The house of this good Mormon was
divided against itself. Precedence was given to the first and elder
wife—Mother Mary; Mother Ruth's life was not without pain. The men were
out on the ranges all day, usually two or more of them for several days
at a time, and this left the women alone. One daughter taught the
school, the other daughters did all the chores about the house, from
feeding the stock to chopping wood. The work was hard, and the girls
would rather have been in White Sage or Lund. They disliked Mescal, and
said things inspired by jealousy. Snap Naab's wife was vindictive, and
called Mescal "that Indian!"

It struck him on hearing this gossip that he had missed Mescal. What had
become of her? Curiosity prompting him, he asked little Billy about her.

"Mescal's with the sheep," piped Billy.

That she was a shepherdess pleased Hare, and he thought of her as free on
the open range, with the wind blowing her hair.

One day when Hare felt stronger he took his walk round the farm with new
zest. Upon his return to the house he saw Snap's cream pinto in the
yard, and Dave's mustang cropping the grass near by. A dusty pack lay on
the ground. Hare walked down the avenue of cottonwoods and was about to
turn the corner of the old forge when he stopped short.

"Now mind you, I'll take a bead on this white-faced spy if you send him
up there."

It was Snap Naab's voice, and his speech concluded with the click of
teeth characteristic of him in anger.

"Stand there!" August Naab exclaimed in wrath. "Listen. You have been
drinking again or you wouldn't talk of killing a man. I warned you. I
won't do this thing you ask of me till I have your promise. Why won't
you leave the bottle alone?"

"I'll promise," came the sullen reply.

"Very well. Then pack and go across to Bitter Seeps."

"That job'll take all summer," growled Snap.

"So much the better. When you come home I'll keep my promise."

Hare moved away silently; the shock of Snap's first words had kept him
fast in his tracks long enough to hear the conversation. Why did Snap
threaten him? Where was August Naab going to send him? Hare had no
means of coming to an understanding of either question. He was disturbed
in mind and resolved to keep out of Snap's way. He went to the orchard,
but his stay of an hour availed nothing, for on his return, after
threading the maze of cottonwoods, he came face to face with the man he
wanted to avoid.

Snap Naab, at the moment of meeting, had a black bottle tipped high above
his lips.

With a curse he threw the bottle at Hare, missing him narrowly. He was
drunk. His eyes were bloodshot.

"If you tell father you saw me drinking I'll kill you!" he hissed, and
rattling his Colt in its holster, he walked away.

Hare walked back to his bed, where he lay for a long time with his whole
inner being in a state of strife. It gradually wore off as he strove for
calm. The playground was deserted; no one had seen Snap's action, and
for that he was glad. Then his attention was diverted by a clatter of
ringing hoofs on the road; a mustang and a cloud of dust were
approaching.

"Mescal and Black Bolly!" he exclaimed, and sat up quickly. The mustang
turned in the gate, slid to a stop, and stood quivering, restive, tossing
its thoroughbred head, black as a coal, with freedom and fire in every
line. Mescal leaped off lightly. A gray form flashed in at the gate,
fell at her feet and rose to leap about her. It was a splendid dog, huge
in frame, almost white, wild as the mustang.

This was the Mescal whom he remembered, yet somehow different. The
sombre homespun garments had given place to fringed and beaded buckskin.

"I've come for you," she said.

"For me?" he asked, wonderingly, as she approached with the bridle of the
black over her arm.

"Down, Wolf!" she cried to the leaping dog. "Yes. Didn't you know?
Father Naab says you're to help me tend the sheep. Are you better? I
hope so— You're quite pale."

"I—I'm not so well," said Hare.

He looked up at her, at the black sweep of her hair under the white band,
at her eyes, like jet; and suddenly realized, with a gladness new and
strange to him, that he liked to look at her, that she was beautiful.

AUGUST NAAB appeared on the path leading from his fields.

"Mescal, here you are," he greeted. "How about the sheep?"

"Piute's driving them down to the lower range. There are a thousand
coyotes hanging about the flock."

"That's bad," rejoined August. "Jack, there's evidently some real
shooting in store for you. We'll pack to-day and get an early start
to-morrow. I'll put you on Noddle; he's slow, but the easiest climber I
ever owned. He's like riding . . . What's the matter with you? What's
happened to make you angry?"

One of his long strides spanned the distance between them.

"Oh, nothing," said Hare, flushing.

"Lad, I know of few circumstances that justify a lie. You've met Snap."

Hare might still have tried to dissimulate; but one glance at August's
stern face showed the uselessness of it. He kept silent.

"Drink makes my son unnatural," said Naab. He breathed heavily as one in
conflict with wrath. "We'll not wait till to-morrow to go up on the
plateau; we'll go at once."