Zane Grey (26 page)

"An' it's been all my life, since she wasn't higher 'n my knee. There
was a time when I might hev been closer to you than I am now. But I
was a mad an' bloody Injun hater, so I never let her know till I seen
it was too late. Wal, wal, no more of me. I only told it fer you."

Jonathan was silent.

"An' now to come back where we left off," continued Wetzel. "Let's
take a more hopeful look at this comin' fight. Sure I said it was my
last trail, but mebbe it's not. You can never tell. Feelin' as we do,
I imagine they've no odds on us. Never in my life did I say to you,
least of all to any one else, what I was goin' to do; but I'll tell it
now. If I land uninjured amongst thet bunch, I'll kill them all."

The giant borderman's low voice hissed, and stung. His eyes glittered
with unearthly fire. His face was cold and gray. He spread out his
brawny arms and clenched his huge fists, making the muscles of his
broad shoulders roll and bulge.

"I hate the thought, Lew, I hate the thought. Ain't there no other
way?"

"No other way."

"I'll do it, Lew, because I'd do the same for you; because I have to,
because I love her; but God! it hurts."

"Thet's right," answered Wetzel, his deep voice softening until it was
singularly low and rich. "I'm glad you've come to it. An' sure it
hurts. I want you to feel so at leavin' me to go it alone. If we both
get out alive, I'll come many times to see you an' Helen. If you live
an' I don't, think of me sometimes, think of the trails we've crossed
together. When the fall comes with its soft, cool air, an' smoky
mornin's an' starry nights, when the wind's sad among the bare
branches, an' the leaves drop down, remember they're fallin' on
my grave."

Twilight darkened into gloom; the red tinge in the west changed to
opal light; through the trees over a dark ridge a rim of silver
glinted and moved.

The moon had risen; the hour was come.

The bordermen tightened their belts, replaced their leggings, tied
their hunting coats, loosened their hatchets, looked to the priming of
their rifles, and were ready.

Wetzel walked twenty paces and turned. His face was white in the
moonlight; his dark eyes softened into a look of love as he gripped
his comrade's outstretched hand.

Then he dropped flat on the ground, carefully saw to the position of
his rifle, and began to creep. Jonathan kept close at his heels.

Slowly but steadily they crawled, minute after minute. The hazel-nut
bushes above them had not yet shed their leaves; the ground was clean
and hard, and the course fatefully perfect for their deadly purpose.

A slight rustling of their buckskin garments sounded like the rustling
of leaves in a faint breeze.

The moon came out above the trees and still Wetzel advanced softly,
steadily, surely.

The owl, lonely sentinel of that wood, hooted dismally. Even his night
eyes, which made the darkness seem clear as day, missed those gliding
figures. Even he, sure guardian of the wilderness, failed the savages.

Jonathan felt soft moss beneath him; he was now in the woods under the
trees. The thicket had been passed.

Wetzel's moccasin pressed softly against Jonathan's head. The first
signal!

Jonathan crawled forward, and slightly raised himself.

He was on a rock. The trees were thick and gloomy. Below, the little
hollow was almost in the wan moonbeams. Dark figures lay close
together. Two savages paced noiselessly to and fro. A slight form
rolled in a blanket lay against a tree.

Jonathan felt his arm gently squeezed.

The second signal!

Slowly he thrust forward his rifle, and raised it in unison with
Wetzel's. Slowly he rose to his feet as if the same muscles guided
them both.

Over his head a twig snapped. In the darkness he had not seen a low
branch.

The Indian guards stopped suddenly, and became motionless as stone.

They had heard; but too late.

With the blended roar of the rifles both dropped, lifeless.

Almost under the spouting flame and white cloud of smoke, Jonathan
leaped behind Wetzel, over the bank. His yells were mingled with
Wetzel's vengeful cry. Like leaping shadows the bordermen were upon
their foes.

An Indian sprang up, raised a weapon, and fell beneath Jonathan's
savage blow, to rise no more. Over his prostrate body the borderman
bounded. A dark, nimble form darted upon the captive. He swung high a
blade that shone like silver in the moonlight. His shrill war-cry of
death rang out with Helen's scream of despair. Even as he swung back
her head with one hand in her long hair, his arm descended; but it
fell upon the borderman's body. Jonathan and the Indian rolled upon
the moss. There was a terrific struggle, a whirling blade, a dull blow
which silenced the yell, and the borderman rose alone.

He lifted Helen as if she were a child, leaped the brook, and plunged
into the thicket.

The noise of the fearful conflict he left behind, swelled high and
hideously on the night air. Above the shrill cries of the Indians, and
the furious yells of Legget, rose the mad, booming roar of Wetzel. No
rifle cracked; but sodden blows, the clash of steel, the threshing of
struggling men, told of the dreadful strife.

Jonathan gained the woods, sped through the moonlit glades, and far on
under light and shadow.

The shrill cries ceased; only the hoarse yells and the mad roar could
be heard. Gradually these also died away, and the forest was still.

Next morning, when the mist was breaking and rolling away under the
warm rays of the Indian-summer sun, Jonathan Zane beached his canoe on
the steep bank before Fort Henry. A pioneer, attracted by the
borderman's halloo, ran to the bluff and sounded the alarm with shrill
whoops. Among the hurrying, brown-clad figures that answered this
summons, was Colonel Zane.

"It's Jack, kurnel, an' he's got her!" cried one.

The doughty colonel gained the bluff to see his brother climbing the
bank with a white-faced girl in his arms.

"Well?" he asked, looking darkly at Jonathan. Nothing kindly or genial
was visible in his manner now; rather grim and forbidding he seemed,
thus showing he had the same blood in his veins as the borderman.

"Lend a hand," said Jonathan. "As far as I know she's not hurt."

They carried Helen toward Colonel Zane's cabin. Many women of the
settlement saw them as they passed, and looked gravely at one another,
but none spoke. This return of an abducted girl was by no means a
strange event.

"Somebody run for Sheppard," ordered Colonel Zane, as they entered his
cabin.

Betty, who was in the sitting-room, sprang up and cried: "Oh! Eb! Eb!
Don't say she's—"

"No, no, Betts, she's all right. Where's my wife? Ah! Bess, here, get
to work."

The colonel left Helen in the tender, skilful hands of his wife and
sister, and followed Jonathan into the kitchen.

"I was just ready for breakfast when I heard some one yell," said he.
"Come, Jack, eat something."

They ate in silence. From the sitting-room came excited whispers, a
joyous cry from Betty, and a faint voice. Then heavy, hurrying
footsteps, followed by Sheppard's words of thanks-giving.

"Where's Wetzel?" began Colonel Zane.

The borderman shook his head gloomily.

"Where did you leave him?"

"We jumped Legget's bunch last night, when the moon was about an hour
high. I reckon about fifteen miles northeast. I got away with
the lass."

"Ah! Left Lew fighting?"

The borderman answered the question with bowed head.

"You got off well. Not a hurt that I can see, and more than lucky to
save Helen. Well, Jack, what do you think about Lew?"

"I'm goin' back," replied Jonathan.

"No! no!"

The door opened to admit Mrs. Zane. She looked bright and cheerful,
"Hello, Jack; glad you're home. Helen's all right, only faint from
hunger and over-exertion. I want something for her to eat—well! you
men didn't leave much."

Colonel Zane went into the sitting-room. Sheppard sat beside the couch
where Helen lay, white and wan. Betty and Nell were looking on with
their hearts in their eyes. Silas Zane was there, and his wife, with
several women neighbors.

"Betty, go fetch Jack in here," whispered the colonel in his sister's
ear. "Drag him, if you have to," he added fiercely.

The young woman left the room, to reappear directly with her brother.
He came in reluctantly.

As the stern-faced borderman crossed the threshold a smile, beautiful
to see, dawned in Helen's eyes.

"I'm glad to see you're comin' round," said Jonathan, but he spoke
dully as if his mind was on other things.

"She's a little flighty; but a night's sleep will cure that," cried
Mrs. Zane from the kitchen.

"What do you think?" interrupted the colonel. "Jack's not satisfied to
get back with Helen unharmed, and a whole skin himself; but he's going
on the trail again."

"No, Jack, no, no!" cried Betty.

"What's that I hear?" asked Mrs. Zane as she came in. "Jack's going
out again? Well, all I want to say is that he's as mad as a
March hare."

"Jonathan, look here," said Silas seriously. "Can't you stay home
now?"

"Jack, listen," whispered Betty, going close to him. "Not one of us
ever expected to see either you or Helen again, and oh! we are so
happy. Do not go away again. You are a man; you do not know, you
cannot understand all a woman feels. She must sit and wait, and hope,
and pray for the safe return of husband or brother or sweetheart. The
long days! Oh, the long sleepless nights, with the wail of the wind in
the pines, and the rain on the roof! It is maddening. Do not leave us!
Do not leave me! Do not leave Helen! Say you will not, Jack."

To these entreaties the borderman remained silent. He stood leaning on
his rifle, a tall, dark, strangely sad and stern man.

"Helen, beg him to stay!" implored Betty.

Colonel Zane took Helen's hand, and stroked it. "Yes," he said, "you
ask him, lass. I'm sure you can persuade him to stay."

Helen raised her head. "Is Brandt dead?" she whispered faintly.

Still the borderman failed to speak, but his silence was not an
affirmative.

"You said you loved me," she cried wildly. "You said you loved me, yet
you didn't kill that monster!"

The borderman, moving quickly like a startled Indian, went out of the
door.

Once more Jonathan Zane entered the gloomy, quiet aisles of the forest
with his soft, tireless tread hardly stirring the leaves.

It was late in the afternoon when he had long left Two Islands behind,
and arrived at the scene of Mordaunt's death. Satisfied with the
distance he had traversed, he crawled into a thicket to rest.

Daybreak found him again on the trail. He made a short cut over the
ridges and by the time the mist had lifted from the valley he was
within stalking distance of the glade. He approached this in the
familiar, slow, cautious manner, and halted behind the big rock from
which he and Wetzel had leaped. The wood was solemnly quiet. No
twittering of birds could be heard. The only sign of life was a gaunt
timber-wolf slinking away amid the foliage. Under the big tree the
savage who had been killed as he would have murdered Helen, lay a
crumpled mass where he had fallen. Two dead Indians were in the center
of the glade, and on the other side were three more bloody, lifeless
forms. Wetzel was not there, nor Legget, nor Brandt.

"I reckoned so," muttered Jonathan as he studied the scene. The grass
had been trampled, the trees barked, the bushes crushed aside.

Jonathan went out of the glade a short distance, and, circling it,
began to look for Wetzel's trail. He found it, and near the light
footprints of his comrade were the great, broad moccasin tracks of
the outlaw. Further searching disclosed the fact that Brandt must have
traveled in line with the others.

With the certainty that Wetzel had killed three of the Indians, and,
in some wonderful manner characteristic of him, routed the outlaws of
whom he was now in pursuit, Jonathan's smoldering emotion burst forth
into full flame. Love for his old comrade, deadly hatred of the
outlaws, and passionate thirst for their blood, rioted in his heart.

Like a lynx scenting its quarry, the borderman started on the trail,
tireless and unswervable. The traces left by the fleeing outlaws and
their pursuer were plain to Jonathan. It was not necessary for him to
stop. Legget and Brandt, seeking to escape the implacable Nemesis,
were traveling with all possible speed, regardless of the broad trail
such hurried movements left behind. They knew full well it would be
difficult to throw this wolf off the scent; understood that if any
attempt was made to ambush the trail, they must cope with woodcraft
keener than an Indian's. Flying in desperation, they hoped to reach
the rocky retreat, where, like foxes in their burrows, they believed
themselves safe.

When the sun sloped low toward the western horizon, lengthening
Jonathan's shadow, he slackened pace. He was entering the rocky,
rugged country which marked the approach to the distant Alleghenies.
From the top of a ridge he took his bearings, deciding that he was
within a few miles of Legget's hiding-place.

At the foot of this ridge, where a murmuring brook sped softly over
its bed, he halted. Here a number of horses had forded the brook. They
were iron-shod, which indicated almost to a certainty, that they were
stolen horses, and in the hands of Indians.

Jonathan saw where the trail of the steeds was merged into that of
the outlaws. He suspected that the Indians and Legget had held a short
council. As he advanced the borderman found only the faintest
impression of Wetzel's trail. Legget and Brandt no longer left any
token of their course. They were riding the horses.