To The Last Man
by
Zane Grey
FOREWORD
It was inevitable that in my efforts to write romantic history of the
great West I should at length come to the story of a feud. For long I
have steered clear of this rock. But at last I have reached it and
must go over it, driven by my desire to chronicle the stirring events
of pioneer days.
Even to-day it is not possible to travel into the remote corners of the
West without seeing the lives of people still affected by a fighting
past. How can the truth be told about the pioneering of the West if
the struggle, the fight, the blood be left out? It cannot be done.
How can a novel be stirring and thrilling, as were those times, unless
it be full of sensation? My long labors have been devoted to making
stories resemble the times they depict. I have loved the West for its
vastness, its contrast, its beauty and color and life, for its wildness
and violence, and for the fact that I have seen how it developed great
men and women who died unknown and unsung.
In this materialistic age, this hard, practical, swift, greedy age of
realism, it seems there is no place for writers of romance, no place
for romance itself. For many years all the events leading up to the
great war were realistic, and the war itself was horribly realistic,
and the aftermath is likewise. Romance is only another name for
idealism; and I contend that life without ideals is not worth living.
Never in the history of the world were ideals needed so terribly as
now. Walter Scott wrote romance; so did Victor Hugo; and likewise
Kipling, Hawthorne, Stevenson. It was Stevenson, particularly, who
wielded a bludgeon against the realists. People live for the dream in
their hearts. And I have yet to know anyone who has not some secret
dream, some hope, however dim, some storied wall to look at in the
dusk, some painted window leading to the soul. How strange indeed to
find that the realists have ideals and dreams! To read them one would
think their lives held nothing significant. But they love, they hope,
they dream, they sacrifice, they struggle on with that dream in their
hearts just the same as others. We all are dreamers, if not in the
heavy-lidded wasting of time, then in the meaning of life that makes us
work on.
It was Wordsworth who wrote, “The world is too much with us”; and if I
could give the secret of my ambition as a novelist in a few words it
would be contained in that quotation. My inspiration to write has
always come from nature. Character and action are subordinated to
setting. In all that I have done I have tried to make people see how
the world is too much with them. Getting and spending they lay waste
their powers, with never a breath of the free and wonderful life of the
open!
So I come back to the main point of this foreword, in which I am trying
to tell why and how I came to write the story of a feud notorious in
Arizona as the Pleasant Valley War.
Some years ago Mr. Harry Adams, a cattleman of Vermajo Park, New
Mexico, told me he had been in the Tonto Basin of Arizona and thought I
might find interesting material there concerning this Pleasant Valley
War. His version of the war between cattlemen and sheepmen certainly
determined me to look over the ground. My old guide, Al Doyle of
Flagstaff, had led me over half of Arizona, but never down into that
wonderful wild and rugged basin between the Mogollon Mesa and the
Mazatzal Mountains. Doyle had long lived on the frontier and his
version of the Pleasant Valley War differed markedly from that of Mr.
Adams. I asked other old timers about it, and their remarks further
excited my curiosity.
Once down there, Doyle and I found the wildest, most rugged, roughest,
and most remarkable country either of us had visited; and the few
inhabitants were like the country. I went in ostensibly to hunt bear
and lion and turkey, but what I really was hunting for was the story of
that Pleasant Valley War. I engaged the services of a bear hunter who
had three strapping sons as reserved and strange and aloof as he was.
No wheel tracks of any kind had ever come within miles of their cabin.
I spent two wonderful months hunting game and reveling in the beauty
and grandeur of that Rim Rock country, but I came out knowing no more
about the Pleasant Valley War. These Texans and their few neighbors,
likewise from Texas, did not talk. But all I saw and felt only
inspired me the more. This trip was in the fall of 1918.
The next year I went again with the best horses, outfit, and men the
Doyles could provide. And this time I did not ask any questions. But I
rode horses—some of them too wild for me—and packed a rifle many a
hundred miles, riding sometimes thirty and forty miles a day, and I
climbed in and out of the deep canyons, desperately staying at the
heels of one of those long-legged Texans. I learned the life of those
backwoodsmen, but I did not get the story of the Pleasant Valley War.
I had, however, won the friendship of that hardy people.
In 1920 I went back with a still larger outfit, equipped to stay as
long as I liked. And this time, without my asking it, different
natives of the Tonto came to tell me about the Pleasant Valley War. No
two of them agreed on anything concerning it, except that only one of
the active participants survived the fighting. Whence comes my title,
TO THE LAST MAN. Thus I was swamped in a mass of material out of which
I could only flounder to my own conclusion. Some of the stories told
me are singularly tempting to a novelist. But, though I believe them
myself, I cannot risk their improbability to those who have no idea of
the wildness of wild men at a wild time. There really was a terrible
and bloody feud, perhaps the most deadly and least known in all the
annals of the West. I saw the ground, the cabins, the graves, all so
darkly suggestive of what must have happened.
I never learned the truth of the cause of the Pleasant Valley War, or
if I did hear it I had no means of recognizing it. All the given
causes were plausible and convincing. Strange to state, there is still
secrecy and reticence all over the Tonto Basin as to the facts of this
feud. Many descendents of those killed are living there now. But no
one likes to talk about it. Assuredly many of the incidents told me
really occurred, as, for example, the terrible one of the two women, in
the face of relentless enemies, saving the bodies of their dead
husbands from being devoured by wild hogs. Suffice it to say that this
romance is true to my conception of the war, and I base it upon the
setting I learned to know and love so well, upon the strange passions
of primitive people, and upon my instinctive reaction to the facts and
rumors that I gathered.
ZANE GREY.
AVALON, CALIFORNIA,
April, 1921
CHAPTER I
At the end of a dry, uphill ride over barren country Jean Isbel
unpacked to camp at the edge of the cedars where a little rocky canyon
green with willow and cottonwood, promised water and grass.
His animals were tired, especially the pack mule that had carried a
heavy load; and with slow heave of relief they knelt and rolled in the
dust. Jean experienced something of relief himself as he threw off his
chaps. He had not been used to hot, dusty, glaring days on the barren
lands. Stretching his long length beside a tiny rill of clear water
that tinkled over the red stones, he drank thirstily. The water was
cool, but it had an acrid taste—an alkali bite that he did not like.
Not since he had left Oregon had he tasted clear, sweet, cold water;
and he missed it just as he longed for the stately shady forests he had
loved. This wild, endless Arizona land bade fair to earn his hatred.
By the time he had leisurely completed his tasks twilight had fallen
and coyotes had begun their barking. Jean listened to the yelps and to
the moan of the cool wind in the cedars with a sense of satisfaction
that these lonely sounds were familiar. This cedar wood burned into a
pretty fire and the smell of its smoke was newly pleasant.
“Reckon maybe I’ll learn to like Arizona,” he mused, half aloud. “But
I’ve a hankerin’ for waterfalls an’ dark-green forests. Must be the
Indian in me.... Anyway, dad needs me bad, an’ I reckon I’m here for
keeps.”
Jean threw some cedar branches on the fire, in the light of which he
opened his father’s letter, hoping by repeated reading to grasp more of
its strange portent. It had been two months in reaching him, coming by
traveler, by stage and train, and then by boat, and finally by stage
again. Written in lead pencil on a leaf torn from an old ledger, it
would have been hard to read even if the writing had been more legible.
“Dad’s writin’ was always bad, but I never saw it so shaky,” said Jean,
thinking aloud.
GRASS VALLY, ARIZONA.
Son Jean,—Come home. Here is your home and here your needed.
When we left Oregon we all reckoned you would not be long behind.
But its years now. I am growing old, son, and you was always my
steadiest boy. Not that you ever was so dam steady. Only your
wildness seemed more for the woods. You take after mother, and
your brothers Bill and Guy take after me. That is the red and
white of it. Your part Indian, Jean, and that Indian I reckon
I am going to need bad. I am rich in cattle and horses. And my
range here is the best I ever seen. Lately we have been losing
stock. But that is not all nor so bad. Sheepmen have moved into
the Tonto and are grazing down on Grass Vally. Cattlemen and
sheepmen can never bide in this country. We have bad times ahead.
Reckon I have more reasons to worry and need you, but you must wait
to hear that by word of mouth. Whatever your doing, chuck it and
rustle for Grass Vally so to make here by spring. I am asking you
to take pains to pack in some guns and a lot of shells. And hide
them in your outfit. If you meet anyone when your coming down into
the Tonto, listen more than you talk. And last, son, dont let
anything keep you in Oregon. Reckon you have a sweetheart, and
if so fetch her along. With love from your dad,
GASTON ISBEL.
Jean pondered over this letter. Judged by memory of his father, who
had always been self-sufficient, it had been a surprise and somewhat of
a shock. Weeks of travel and reflection had not helped him to grasp
the meaning between the lines.
“Yes, dad’s growin’ old,” mused Jean, feeling a warmth and a sadness
stir in him. “He must be ‘way over sixty. But he never looked old....
So he’s rich now an’ losin’ stock, an’ goin’ to be sheeped off his
range. Dad could stand a lot of rustlin’, but not much from sheepmen.”
The softness that stirred in Jean merged into a cold, thoughtful
earnestness which had followed every perusal of his father’s letter. A
dark, full current seemed flowing in his veins, and at times he felt it
swell and heat. It troubled him, making him conscious of a deeper,
stronger self, opposed to his careless, free, and dreamy nature. No
ties had bound him in Oregon, except love for the great, still forests
and the thundering rivers; and this love came from his softer side. It
had cost him a wrench to leave. And all the way by ship down the coast
to San Diego and across the Sierra Madres by stage, and so on to this
last overland travel by horseback, he had felt a retreating of the self
that was tranquil and happy and a dominating of this unknown somber
self, with its menacing possibilities. Yet despite a nameless regret
and a loyalty to Oregon, when he lay in his blankets he had to confess
a keen interest in his adventurous future, a keen enjoyment of this
stark, wild Arizona. It appeared to be a different sky stretching in
dark, star-spangled dome over him—closer, vaster, bluer. The strong
fragrance of sage and cedar floated over him with the camp-fire smoke,
and all seemed drowsily to subdue his thoughts.
At dawn he rolled out of his blankets and, pulling on his boots, began
the day with a zest for the work that must bring closer his calling
future. White, crackling frost and cold, nipping air were the same
keen spurs to action that he had known in the uplands of Oregon, yet
they were not wholly the same. He sensed an exhilaration similar to
the effect of a strong, sweet wine. His horse and mule had fared well
during the night, having been much refreshed by the grass and water of
the little canyon. Jean mounted and rode into the cedars with gladness
that at last he had put the endless leagues of barren land behind him.
The trail he followed appeared to be seldom traveled. It led,
according to the meager information obtainable at the last settlement,
directly to what was called the Rim, and from there Grass Valley could
be seen down in the Basin. The ascent of the ground was so gradual
that only in long, open stretches could it be seen. But the nature of
the vegetation showed Jean how he was climbing. Scant, low, scraggy
cedars gave place to more numerous, darker, greener, bushier ones, and
these to high, full-foliaged, green-berried trees. Sage and grass in
the open flats grew more luxuriously. Then came the pinyons, and
presently among them the checker-barked junipers. Jean hailed the
first pine tree with a hearty slap on the brown, rugged bark. It was a
small dwarf pine struggling to live. The next one was larger, and
after that came several, and beyond them pines stood up everywhere
above the lower trees. Odor of pine needles mingled with the other dry
smells that made the wind pleasant to Jean. In an hour from the first
line of pines he had ridden beyond the cedars and pinyons into a slowly
thickening and deepening forest. Underbrush appeared scarce except in
ravines, and the ground in open patches held a bleached grass. Jean’s
eye roved for sight of squirrels, birds, deer, or any moving creature.
It appeared to be a dry, uninhabited forest. About midday Jean halted
at a pond of surface water, evidently melted snow, and gave his animals
a drink. He saw a few old deer tracks in the mud and several huge bird
tracks new to him which he concluded must have been made by wild
turkeys.
The trail divided at this pond. Jean had no idea which branch he ought
to take. “Reckon it doesn’t matter,” he muttered, as he was about to
remount. His horse was standing with ears up, looking back along the
trail. Then Jean heard a clip-clop of trotting hoofs, and presently
espied a horseman.
Jean made a pretense of tightening his saddle girths while he peered
over his horse at the approaching rider. All men in this country were
going to be of exceeding interest to Jean Isbel. This man at a
distance rode and looked like all the Arizonians Jean had seen, he had
a superb seat in the saddle, and he was long and lean. He wore a huge
black sombrero and a soiled red scarf. His vest was open and he was
without a coat.
The rider came trotting up and halted several paces from Jean
“Hullo, stranger!” he said, gruffly.
“Howdy yourself!” replied Jean. He felt an instinctive importance in
the meeting with the man. Never had sharper eyes flashed over Jean and
his outfit. He had a dust-colored, sun-burned face, long, lean, and
hard, a huge sandy mustache that hid his mouth, and eyes of piercing
light intensity. Not very much hard Western experience had passed by
this man, yet he was not old, measured by years. When he dismounted
Jean saw he was tall, even for an Arizonian.
“Seen your tracks back a ways,” he said, as he slipped the bit to let
his horse drink. “Where bound?”
“Reckon I’m lost, all right,” replied Jean. “New country for me.”
“Shore. I seen thet from your tracks an’ your last camp. Wal, where
was you headin’ for before you got lost?”
The query was deliberately cool, with a dry, crisp ring. Jean felt the
lack of friendliness or kindliness in it.
“Grass Valley. My name’s Isbel,” he replied, shortly.
The rider attended to his drinking horse and presently rebridled him;
then with long swing of leg he appeared to step into the saddle.
“Shore I knowed you was Jean Isbel,” he said. “Everybody in the Tonto
has heerd old Gass Isbel sent fer his boy.”
“Well then, why did you ask?” inquired Jean, bluntly.
“Reckon I wanted to see what you’d say.”
“So? All right. But I’m not carin’ very much for what YOU say.”
Their glances locked steadily then and each measured the other by the
intangible conflict of spirit.
“Shore thet’s natural,” replied the rider. His speech was slow, and
the motions of his long, brown hands, as he took a cigarette from his
vest, kept time with his words. “But seein’ you’re one of the Isbels,
I’ll hev my say whether you want it or not. My name’s Colter an’ I’m
one of the sheepmen Gass Isbel’s riled with.”
“Colter. Glad to meet you,” replied Jean. “An’ I reckon who riled my
father is goin’ to rile me.”
“Shore. If thet wasn’t so you’d not be an Isbel,” returned Colter,
with a grim little laugh. “It’s easy to see you ain’t run into any
Tonto Basin fellers yet. Wal, I’m goin’ to tell you thet your old man
gabbed like a woman down at Greaves’s store. Bragged aboot you an’ how
you could fight an’ how you could shoot an’ how you could track a hoss
or a man! Bragged how you’d chase every sheep herder back up on the
Rim.... I’m tellin’ you because we want you to git our stand right.
We’re goin’ to run sheep down in Grass Valley.”
“Ahuh! Well, who’s we?” queried Jean, curtly.
“What-at?... We—I mean the sheepmen rangin’ this Rim from Black Butte
to the Apache country.”
“Colter, I’m a stranger in Arizona,” said Jean, slowly. “I know little
about ranchers or sheepmen. It’s true my father sent for me. It’s
true, I dare say, that he bragged, for he was given to bluster an’
blow. An’ he’s old now. I can’t help it if he bragged about me. But
if he has, an’ if he’s justified in his stand against you sheepmen, I’m
goin’ to do my best to live up to his brag.”
“I get your hunch. Shore we understand each other, an’ thet’s a
powerful help. You take my hunch to your old man,” replied Colter, as
he turned his horse away toward the left. “Thet trail leadin’ south is
yours. When you come to the Rim you’ll see a bare spot down in the
Basin. Thet ’ll be Grass Valley.”
He rode away out of sight into the woods. Jean leaned against his
horse and pondered. It seemed difficult to be just to this Colter, not
because of his claims, but because of a subtle hostility that emanated
from him. Colter had the hard face, the masked intent, the turn of
speech that Jean had come to associate with dishonest men. Even if Jean
had not been prejudiced, if he had known nothing of his father’s
trouble with these sheepmen, and if Colter had met him only to exchange
glances and greetings, still Jean would never have had a favorable
impression. Colter grated upon him, roused an antagonism seldom felt.
“Heigho!” sighed the young man, “Good-by to huntin’ an’ fishing’! Dad’s
given me a man’s job.”
With that he mounted his horse and started the pack mule into the
right-hand trail. Walking and trotting, he traveled all afternoon,
toward sunset getting into heavy forest of pine. More than one snow
bank showed white through the green, sheltered on the north slopes of
shady ravines. And it was upon entering this zone of richer, deeper
forestland that Jean sloughed off his gloomy forebodings. These
stately pines were not the giant firs of Oregon, but any lover of the
woods could be happy under them. Higher still he climbed until the
forest spread before and around him like a level park, with thicketed
ravines here and there on each side. And presently that deceitful
level led to a higher bench upon which the pines towered, and were
matched by beautiful trees he took for spruce. Heavily barked, with
regular spreading branches, these conifers rose in symmetrical shape to
spear the sky with silver plumes. A graceful gray-green moss, waved
like veils from the branches. The air was not so dry and it was
colder, with a scent and touch of snow. Jean made camp at the first
likely site, taking the precaution to unroll his bed some little
distance from his fire. Under the softly moaning pines he felt
comfortable, having lost the sense of an immeasurable open space
falling away from all around him.
The gobbling of wild turkeys awakened Jean, “Chuga-lug, chug-a-lug,
chug-a-lug-chug.” There was not a great difference between the gobble
of a wild turkey and that of a tame one. Jean got up, and taking his
rifle went out into the gray obscurity of dawn to try to locate the
turkeys. But it was too dark, and finally when daylight came they
appeared to be gone. The mule had strayed, and, what with finding it
and cooking breakfast and packing, Jean did not make a very early
start. On this last lap of his long journey he had slowed down. He was
weary of hurrying; the change from weeks in the glaring sun and
dust-laden wind to this sweet coot darkly green and brown forest was
very welcome; he wanted to linger along the shaded trail. This day he
made sure would see him reach the Rim. By and by he lost the trail.
It had just worn out from lack of use. Every now and then Jean would
cross an old trail, and as he penetrated deeper into the forest every
damp or dusty spot showed tracks of turkey, deer, and bear. The amount
of bear sign surprised him. Presently his keen nostrils were assailed
by a smell of sheep, and soon he rode into a broad sheep, trail. From
the tracks Jean calculated that the sheep had passed there the day
before.
An unreasonable antipathy seemed born in him. To be sure he had been
prepared to dislike sheep, and that was why he was unreasonable. But
on the other hand this band of sheep had left a broad bare swath,
weedless, grassless, flowerless, in their wake. Where sheep grazed
they destroyed. That was what Jean had against them.
An hour later he rode to the crest of a long parklike slope, where new
green grass was sprouting and flowers peeped everywhere. The pines
appeared far apart; gnarled oak trees showed rugged and gray against
the green wall of woods. A white strip of snow gleamed like a moving
stream away down in the woods.
Jean heard the musical tinkle of bells and the baa-baa of sheep and the
faint, sweet bleating of lambs. As he road toward these sounds a dog
ran out from an oak thicket and barked at him. Next Jean smelled a
camp fire and soon he caught sight of a curling blue column of smoke,
and then a small peaked tent. Beyond the clump of oaks Jean
encountered a Mexican lad carrying a carbine. The boy had a swarthy,
pleasant face, and to Jean’s greeting he replied, “BUENAS DIAS.” Jean
understood little Spanish, and about all he gathered by his simple
queries was that the lad was not alone—and that it was “lambing time.”
This latter circumstance grew noisily manifest. The forest seemed
shrilly full of incessant baas and plaintive bleats. All about the
camp, on the slope, in the glades, and everywhere, were sheep. A few
were grazing; many were lying down; most of them were ewes suckling
white fleecy little lambs that staggered on their feet. Everywhere
Jean saw tiny lambs just born. Their pin-pointed bleats pierced the
heavier baa-baa of their mothers.
Jean dismounted and led his horse down toward the camp, where he rather
expected to see another and older Mexican, from whom he might get
information. The lad walked with him. Down this way the plaintive
uproar made by the sheep was not so loud.
“Hello there!” called Jean, cheerfully, as he approached the tent. No
answer was forthcoming. Dropping his bridle, he went on, rather
slowly, looking for some one to appear. Then a voice from one side
startled him.
“Mawnin’, stranger.”
A girl stepped out from beside a pine. She carried a rifle. Her face
flashed richly brown, but she was not Mexican. This fact, and the
sudden conviction that she had been watching him, somewhat disconcerted
Jean.
“Beg pardon—miss,” he floundered. “Didn’t expect, to see a—girl....
I’m sort of lost—lookin’ for the Rim—an’ thought I’d find a sheep
herder who’d show me. I can’t savvy this boy’s lingo.”
While he spoke it seemed to him an intentness of expression, a strain
relaxed from her face. A faint suggestion of hostility likewise
disappeared. Jean was not even sure that he had caught it, but there
had been something that now was gone.
“Shore I’ll be glad to show y’u,” she said.
“Thanks, miss. Reckon I can breathe easy now,” he replied,
“It’s a long ride from San Diego. Hot an’ dusty! I’m pretty tired.
An’ maybe this woods isn’t good medicine to achin’ eyes!”
“San Diego! Y’u’re from the coast?”
“Yes.”
Jean had doffed his sombrero at sight of her and he still held it,
rather deferentially, perhaps. It seemed to attract her attention.
“Put on y’ur hat, stranger.... Shore I can’t recollect when any man
bared his haid to me.” She uttered a little laugh in which surprise
and frankness mingled with a tint of bitterness.
Jean sat down with his back to a pine, and, laying the sombrero by his
side, he looked full at her, conscious of a singular eagerness, as if
he wanted to verify by close scrutiny a first hasty impression. If
there had been an instinct in his meeting with Colter, there was more
in this. The girl half sat, half leaned against a log, with the shiny
little carbine across her knees. She had a level, curious gaze upon
him, and Jean had never met one just like it. Her eyes were rather a
wide oval in shape, clear and steady, with shadows of thought in their
amber-brown depths. They seemed to look through Jean, and his gaze
dropped first. Then it was he saw her ragged homespun skirt and a few
inches of brown, bare ankles, strong and round, and crude worn-out
moccasins that failed to hide the shapeliness, of her feet. Suddenly
she drew back her stockingless ankles and ill-shod little feet. When
Jean lifted his gaze again he found her face half averted and a stain
of red in the gold tan of her cheek. That touch of embarrassment
somehow removed her from this strong, raw, wild woodland setting. It
changed her poise. It detracted from the curious, unabashed, almost
bold, look that he had encountered in her eyes.
“Reckon you’re from Texas,” said Jean, presently.
“Shore am,” she drawled. She had a lazy Southern voice, pleasant to
hear. “How’d y’u-all guess that?”
“Anybody can tell a Texan. Where I came from there were a good many
pioneers an’ ranchers from the old Lone Star state. I’ve worked for
several. An’, come to think of it, I’d rather hear a Texas girl talk
than anybody.”
“Did y’u know many Texas girls?” she inquired, turning again to face
him.
“Reckon I did—quite a good many.”
“Did y’u go with them?”
“Go with them? Reckon you mean keep company. Why, yes, I guess I
did—a little,” laughed Jean. “Sometimes on a Sunday or a dance once
in a blue moon, an’ occasionally a ride.”
“Shore that accounts,” said the girl, wistfully.
“For what?” asked Jean.
“Y’ur bein’ a gentleman,” she replied, with force. “Oh, I’ve not
forgotten. I had friends when we lived in Texas.... Three years ago.
Shore it seems longer. Three miserable years in this damned country!”
Then she bit her lip, evidently to keep back further unwitting
utterance to a total stranger. And it was that biting of her lip that
drew Jean’s attention to her mouth. It held beauty of curve and
fullness and color that could not hide a certain sadness and
bitterness. Then the whole flashing brown face changed for Jean. He
saw that it was young, full of passion and restraint, possessing a
power which grew on him. This, with her shame and pathos and the fact
that she craved respect, gave a leap to Jean’s interest.
“Well, I reckon you flatter me,” he said, hoping to put her at her ease
again. “I’m only a rough hunter an’ fisherman-woodchopper an’ horse
tracker. Never had all the school I needed—nor near enough company of
nice girls like you.”
“Am I nice?” she asked, quickly.
“You sure are,” he replied, smiling.
“In these rags,” she demanded, with a sudden flash of passion that
thrilled him. “Look at the holes.” She showed rips and worn-out
places in the sleeves of her buckskin blouse, through which gleamed a
round, brown arm. “I sew when I have anythin’ to sew with.... Look at
my skirt—a dirty rag. An’ I have only one other to my name.... Look!”
Again a color tinged her cheeks, most becoming, and giving the lie to
her action. But shame could not check her violence now. A dammed-up
resentment seemed to have broken out in flood. She lifted the ragged
skirt almost to her knees. “No stockings! No Shoes!... How can a
girl be nice when she has no clean, decent woman’s clothes to wear?”
“How—how can a girl...” began Jean. “See here, miss, I’m beggin’ your
pardon for—sort of stirrin’ you to forget yourself a little. Reckon I
understand. You don’t meet many strangers an’ I sort of hit you
wrong—makin’ you feel too much—an’ talk too much. Who an’ what you
are is none of my business. But we met.... An’ I reckon somethin’ has
happened—perhaps more to me than to you.... Now let me put you
straight about clothes an’ women. Reckon I know most women love nice
things to wear an’ think because clothes make them look pretty that
they’re nicer or better. But they’re wrong. You’re wrong. Maybe it ’d
be too much for a girl like you to be happy without clothes. But you
can be—you axe just as nice, an’—an’ fine—an’, for all you know, a
good deal more appealin’ to some men.”
“Stranger, y’u shore must excuse my temper an’ the show I made of
myself,” replied the girl, with composure. “That, to say the least,
was not nice. An’ I don’t want anyone thinkin’ better of me than I
deserve. My mother died in Texas, an’ I’ve lived out heah in this wild
country—a girl alone among rough men. Meetin’ y’u to-day makes me see
what a hard lot they are—an’ what it’s done to me.”
Jean smothered his curiosity and tried to put out of his mind a growing
sense that he pitied her, liked her.
“Are you a sheep herder?” he asked.
“Shore I am now an’ then. My father lives back heah in a canyon. He’s
a sheepman. Lately there’s been herders shot at. Just now we’re short
an’ I have to fill in. But I like shepherdin’ an’ I love the woods,
and the Rim Rock an’ all the Tonto. If they were all, I’d shore be
happy.”
“Herders shot at!” exclaimed Jean, thoughtfully. “By whom? An’ what
for?”
“Trouble brewin’ between the cattlemen down in the Basin an’ the
sheepmen up on the Rim. Dad says there’ll shore be hell to pay. I tell
him I hope the cattlemen chase him back to Texas.”
“Then— Are you on the ranchers’ side?” queried Jean, trying to
pretend casual interest.
“No. I’ll always be on my father’s side,” she replied, with spirit.
“But I’m bound to admit I think the cattlemen have the fair side of the
argument.”
“How so?”
“Because there’s grass everywhere. I see no sense in a sheepman goin’
out of his way to surround a cattleman an’ sheep off his range. That
started the row. Lord knows how it’ll end. For most all of them heah
are from Texas.”
“So I was told,” replied Jean. “An’ I heard’ most all these Texans got
run out of Texas. Any truth in that?”
“Shore I reckon there is,” she replied, seriously. “But, stranger, it
might not be healthy for y’u to, say that anywhere. My dad, for one,
was not run out of Texas. Shore I never can see why he came heah. He’s
accumulated stock, but he’s not rich nor so well off as he was back
home.”
“Are you goin’ to stay here always?” queried Jean, suddenly.
“If I do so it ’ll be in my grave,” she answered, darkly. “But what’s
the use of thinkin’? People stay places until they drift away. Y’u
can never tell.... Well, stranger, this talk is keepin’ y’u.”
She seemed moody now, and a note of detachment crept into her voice.
Jean rose at once and went for his horse. If this girl did not desire
to talk further he certainly had no wish to annoy her. His mule had
strayed off among the bleating sheep. Jean drove it back and then led
his horse up to where the girl stood. She appeared taller and, though
not of robust build, she was vigorous and lithe, with something about
her that fitted the place. Jean was loath to bid her good-by.
“Which way is the Rim?” he asked, turning to his saddle girths.
“South,” she replied, pointing. “It’s only a mile or so. I’ll walk
down with y’u.... Suppose y’u’re on the way to Grass Valley?”
“Yes; I’ve relatives there,” he returned. He dreaded her next
question, which he suspected would concern his name. But she did not
ask. Taking up her rifle she turned away. Jean strode ahead to her
side. “Reckon if you walk I won’t ride.”
So he found himself beside a girl with the free step of a Mountaineer.
Her bare, brown head came up nearly to his shoulder. It was a small,
pretty head, graceful, well held, and the thick hair on it was a shiny,
soft brown. She wore it in a braid, rather untidily and tangled, he
thought, and it was tied with a string of buckskin. Altogether her
apparel proclaimed poverty.
Jean let the conversation languish for a little. He wanted to think
what to say presently, and then he felt a rather vague pleasure in
stalking beside her. Her profile was straight cut and exquisite in
line. From this side view the soft curve of lips could not be seen.
She made several attempts to start conversation, all of which Jean
ignored, manifestly to her growing constraint. Presently Jean, having
decided what he wanted to say, suddenly began: “I like this adventure.
Do you?”
“Adventure! Meetin’ me in the woods?” And she laughed the laugh of
youth. “Shore you must be hard up for adventure, stranger.”
“Do you like it?” he persisted, and his eyes searched the half-averted
face.
“I might like it,” she answered, frankly, “if—if my temper had not
made a fool of me. I never meet anyone I care to talk to. Why should
it not be pleasant to run across some one new—some one strange in this
heah wild country?”
“We are as we are,” said Jean, simply. “I didn’t think you made a fool
of yourself. If I thought so, would I want to see you again?”
“Do y’u?” The brown face flashed on him with surprise, with a light he
took for gladness. And because he wanted to appear calm and friendly,
not too eager, he had to deny himself the thrill of meeting those
changing eyes.
“Sure I do. Reckon I’m overbold on such short acquaintance. But I
might not have another chance to tell you, so please don’t hold it
against me.”
This declaration over, Jean felt relief and something of exultation. He
had been afraid he might not have the courage to make it. She walked
on as before, only with her head bowed a little and her eyes downcast.
No color but the gold-brown tan and the blue tracery of veins showed in
her cheeks. He noticed then a slight swelling quiver of her throat;
and he became alive to its graceful contour, and to how full and
pulsating it was, how nobly it set into the curve of her shoulder.
Here in her quivering throat was the weakness of her, the evidence of
her sex, the womanliness that belied the mountaineer stride and the
grasp of strong brown hands on a rifle. It had an effect on Jean
totally inexplicable to him, both in the strange warmth that stole over
him and in the utterance he could not hold back.
“Girl, we’re strangers, but what of that? We’ve met, an’ I tell you it
means somethin’ to me. I’ve known girls for months an’ never felt this
way. I don’t know who you are an’ I don’t care. You betrayed a good
deal to me. You’re not happy. You’re lonely. An’ if I didn’t want to
see you again for my own sake I would for yours. Some things you said
I’ll not forget soon. I’ve got a sister, an’ I know you have no
brother. An’ I reckon ...”
At this juncture Jean in his earnestness and quite without thought
grasped her hand. The contact checked the flow of his speech and
suddenly made him aghast at his temerity. But the girl did not make
any effort to withdraw it. So Jean, inhaling a deep breath and trying
to see through his bewilderment, held on bravely. He imagined he felt
a faint, warm, returning pressure. She was young, she was friendless,
she was human. By this hand in his Jean felt more than ever the
loneliness of her. Then, just as he was about to speak again, she
pulled her hand free.
“Heah’s the Rim,” she said, in her quaint Southern drawl. “An’ there’s
Y’ur Tonto Basin.”
Jean had been intent only upon the girl. He had kept step beside her
without taking note of what was ahead of him. At her words he looked
up expectantly, to be struck mute.
He felt a sheer force, a downward drawing of an immense abyss beneath
him. As he looked afar he saw a black basin of timbered country, the
darkest and wildest he had ever gazed upon, a hundred miles of blue
distance across to an unflung mountain range, hazy purple against the
sky. It seemed to be a stupendous gulf surrounded on three sides by
bold, undulating lines of peaks, and on his side by a wall so high that
he felt lifted aloft on the run of the sky.
“Southeast y’u see the Sierra Anchas,” said the girl pointing. “That
notch in the range is the pass where sheep are driven to Phoenix an’
Maricopa. Those big rough mountains to the south are the Mazatzals.
Round to the west is the Four Peaks Range. An’ y’u’re standin’ on the
Rim.”
Jean could not see at first just what the Rim was, but by shifting his
gaze westward he grasped this remarkable phenomenon of nature. For
leagues and leagues a colossal red and yellow wall, a rampart, a
mountain-faced cliff, seemed to zigzag westward. Grand and bold were
the promontories reaching out over the void. They ran toward the
westering sun. Sweeping and impressive were the long lines slanting
away from them, sloping darkly spotted down to merge into the black
timber. Jean had never seen such a wild and rugged manifestation of
nature’s depths and upheavals. He was held mute.
“Stranger, look down,” said the girl.
Jean’s sight was educated to judge heights and depths and distances.
This wall upon which he stood sheered precipitously down, so far that
it made him dizzy to look, and then the craggy broken cliffs merged
into red-slided, cedar-greened slopes running down and down into gorges
choked with forests, and from which soared up a roar of rushing waters.
Slope after slope, ridge beyond ridge, canyon merging into canyon—so
the tremendous bowl sunk away to its black, deceiving depths, a
wilderness across which travel seemed impossible.
“Wonderful!” exclaimed Jean.
“Indeed it is!” murmured the girl. “Shore that is Arizona. I reckon I
love THIS. The heights an’ depths—the awfulness of its wilderness!”
“An’ you want to leave it?”
“Yes an’ no. I don’t deny the peace that comes to me heah. But not
often do I see the Basin, an’ for that matter, one doesn’t live on
grand scenery.”
“Child, even once in a while—this sight would cure any misery, if you
only see. I’m glad I came. I’m glad you showed it to me first.”
She too seemed under the spell of a vastness and loneliness and beauty
and grandeur that could not but strike the heart.
Jean took her hand again. “Girl, say you will meet me here,” he said,
his voice ringing deep in his ears.
“Shore I will,” she replied, softly, and turned to him. It seemed then
that Jean saw her face for the first time. She was beautiful as he had
never known beauty. Limned against that scene, she gave it life—wild,
sweet, young life—the poignant meaning of which haunted yet eluded
him. But she belonged there. Her eyes were again searching his, as if
for some lost part of herself, unrealized, never known before.
Wondering, wistful, hopeful, glad—they were eyes that seemed surprised,
to reveal part of her soul.
Then her red lips parted. Their tremulous movement was a magnet to
Jean. An invisible and mighty force pulled him down to kiss them.
Whatever the spell had been, that rude, unconscious action broke it.
He jerked away, as if he expected to be struck. “Girl—I—I”—he gasped
in amaze and sudden-dawning contrition—“I kissed you—but I swear it
wasn’t intentional—I never thought....”
The anger that Jean anticipated failed to materialize. He stood,
breathing hard, with a hand held out in unconscious appeal. By the
same magic, perhaps, that had transfigured her a moment past, she was
now invested again by the older character.
“Shore I reckon my callin’ y’u a gentleman was a little previous,” she
said, with a rather dry bitterness. “But, stranger, yu’re sudden.”
“You’re not insulted?” asked Jean, hurriedly.
“Oh, I’ve been kissed before. Shore men are all alike.”
“They’re not,” he replied, hotly, with a subtle rush of disillusion, a
dulling of enchantment. “Don’t you class me with other men who’ve
kissed you. I wasn’t myself when I did it an’ I’d have gone on my
knees to ask your forgiveness.... But now I wouldn’t—an’ I wouldn’t
kiss you again, either—even if you—you wanted it.”
Jean read in her strange gaze what seemed to him a vague doubt, as if
she was questioning him.
“Miss, I take that back,” added Jean, shortly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t
mean to be rude. It was a mean trick for me to kiss you. A girl alone
in the woods who’s gone out of her way to be kind to me! I don’t know
why I forgot my manners. An’ I ask your pardon.”
She looked away then, and presently pointed far out and down into the
Basin.
“There’s Grass Valley. That long gray spot in the black. It’s about
fifteen miles. Ride along the Rim that way till y’u cross a trail.
Shore y’u can’t miss it. Then go down.”
“I’m much obliged to you,” replied Jean, reluctantly accepting what he
regarded as his dismissal. Turning his horse, he put his foot in the
stirrup, then, hesitating, he looked across the saddle at the girl. Her
abstraction, as she gazed away over the purple depths suggested
loneliness and wistfulness. She was not thinking of that scene spread
so wondrously before her. It struck Jean she might be pondering a
subtle change in his feeling and attitude, something he was conscious
of, yet could not define.
“Reckon this is good-by,” he said, with hesitation.
“ADIOS, SENOR,” she replied, facing him again. She lifted the little
carbine to the hollow of her elbow and, half turning, appeared ready to
depart.
“Adios means good-by?” he queried.
“Yes, good-by till to-morrow or good-by forever. Take it as y’u like.”
“Then you’ll meet me here day after to-morrow?” How eagerly he spoke,
on impulse, without a consideration of the intangible thing that had
changed him!
“Did I say I wouldn’t?”
“No. But I reckoned you’d not care to after—” he replied, breaking
off in some confusion.
“Shore I’ll be glad to meet y’u. Day after to-morrow about
mid-afternoon. Right heah. Fetch all the news from Grass Valley.”
“All right. Thanks. That’ll be—fine,” replied Jean, and as he spoke
he experienced a buoyant thrill, a pleasant lightness of enthusiasm,
such as always stirred boyishly in him at a prospect of adventure.
Before it passed he wondered at it and felt unsure of himself. He
needed to think.
“Stranger shore I’m not recollectin’ that y’u told me who y’u are,” she
said.
“No, reckon I didn’t tell,” he returned. “What difference does that
make? I said I didn’t care who or what you are. Can’t you feel the
same about me?”
“Shore—I felt that way,” she replied, somewhat non-plussed, with the
level brown gaze steadily on his face. “But now y’u make me think.”
“Let’s meet without knowin’ any more about each other than we do now.”
“Shore. I’d like that. In this big wild Arizona a girl—an’ I reckon
a man—feels so insignificant. What’s a name, anyhow? Still, people
an’ things have to be distinguished. I’ll call y’u ‘Stranger’ an’ be
satisfied—if y’u say it’s fair for y’u not to tell who y’u are.”
“Fair! No, it’s not,” declared Jean, forced to confession. “My name’s
Jean—Jean Isbel.”
“ISBEL!” she exclaimed, with a violent start. “Shore y’u can’t be son
of old Gass Isbel.... I’ve seen both his sons.”
“He has three,” replied Jean, with relief, now the secret was out. “I’m
the youngest. I’m twenty-four. Never been out of Oregon till now. On
my way—”
The brown color slowly faded out of her face, leaving her quite pale,
with eyes that began to blaze. The suppleness of her seemed to stiffen.
“My name’s Ellen Jorth,” she burst out, passionately. “Does it mean
anythin’ to y’u?”
“Never heard it in my life,” protested Jean. “Sure I reckoned you
belonged to the sheep raisers who ’re on the outs with my father.
That’s why I had to tell you I’m Jean Isbel.... Ellen Jorth. It’s
strange an’ pretty.... Reckon I can be just as good a—a friend to
you—”
“No Isbel, can ever be a friend to me,” she said, with bitter coldness.
Stripped of her ease and her soft wistfulness, she stood before him one
instant, entirely another girl, a hostile enemy. Then she wheeled and
strode off into the woods.
Jean, in amaze, in consternation, watched her swiftly draw away with
her lithe, free step, wanting to follow her, wanting to call to her;
but the resentment roused by her suddenly avowed hostility held him
mute in his tracks. He watched her disappear, and when the
brown-and-green wall of forest swallowed the slender gray form he
fought against the insistent desire to follow her, and fought in vain.