Helen Rayner had been on the westbound overland train fully twenty-four
hours before she made an alarming discovery.
Accompanied by her sister Bo, a precocious girl of sixteen, Helen had
left St. Joseph with a heart saddened by farewells to loved ones at
home, yet full of thrilling and vivid anticipations of the strange life
in the Far West. All her people had the pioneer spirit; love of change,
action, adventure, was in her blood. Then duty to a widowed mother
with a large and growing family had called to Helen to accept this rich
uncle's offer. She had taught school and also her little brothers and
sisters; she had helped along in other ways. And now, though the
tearing up of the roots of old loved ties was hard, this opportunity was
irresistible in its call. The prayer of her dreams had been answered. To
bring good fortune to her family; to take care of this beautiful, wild
little sister; to leave the yellow, sordid, humdrum towns for the great,
rolling, boundless open; to live on a wonderful ranch that was some day
to be her own; to have fulfilled a deep, instinctive, and undeveloped
love of horses, cattle, sheep, of desert and mountain, of trees and
brooks and wild flowers--all this was the sum of her most passionate
longings, now in some marvelous, fairylike way to come true.
A check to her happy anticipations, a blank, sickening dash of cold
water upon her warm and intimate dreams, had been the discovery
that Harve Riggs was on the train. His presence could mean only one
thing--that he had followed her. Riggs had been the worst of many
sore trials back there in St. Joseph. He had possessed some claim or
influence upon her mother, who favored his offer of marriage to Helen;
he was neither attractive, nor good, nor industrious, nor anything that
interested her; he was the boastful, strutting adventurer, not genuinely
Western, and he affected long hair and guns and notoriety. Helen had
suspected the veracity of the many fights he claimed had been his,
and also she suspected that he was not really big enough to be bad--as
Western men were bad. But on the train, in the station at La Junta, one
glimpse of him, manifestly spying upon her while trying to keep out of
her sight, warned Helen that she now might have a problem on her hands.
The recognition sobered her. All was not to be a road of roses to this
new home in the West. Riggs would follow her, if he could not accompany
her, and to gain his own ends he would stoop to anything. Helen felt the
startling realization of being cast upon her own resources, and then
a numbing discouragement and loneliness and helplessness. But these
feelings did not long persist in the quick pride and flash of her
temper. Opportunity knocked at her door and she meant to be at home to
it. She would not have been Al Auchincloss's niece if she had faltered.
And, when temper was succeeded by genuine anger, she could have laughed
to scorn this Harve Riggs and his schemes, whatever they were. Once
and for all she dismissed fear of him. When she left St. Joseph she had
faced the West with a beating heart and a high resolve to be worthy of
that West. Homes had to be made out there in that far country, so Uncle
Al had written, and women were needed to make homes. She meant to be one
of these women and to make of her sister another. And with the thought
that she would know definitely what to say to Riggs when he approached
her, sooner or later, Helen dismissed him from mind.
While the train was in motion, enabling Helen to watch the ever-changing
scenery, and resting her from the strenuous task of keeping Bo well in
hand at stations, she lapsed again into dreamy gaze at the pine forests
and the red, rocky gullies and the dim, bold mountains. She saw the sun
set over distant ranges of New Mexico--a golden blaze of glory, as new
to her as the strange fancies born in her, thrilling and fleeting by.
Bo's raptures were not silent, and the instant the sun sank and the
color faded she just as rapturously importuned Helen to get out the huge
basket of food they had brought from home.
They had two seats, facing each other, at the end of the coach, and
piled there, with the basket on top, was luggage that constituted all
the girls owned in the world. Indeed, it was very much more than they
had ever owned before, because their mother, in her care for them and
desire to have them look well in the eyes of this rich uncle, had spent
money and pains to give them pretty and serviceable clothes.
The girls sat together, with the heavy basket on their knees, and ate
while they gazed out at the cool, dark ridges. The train clattered
slowly on, apparently over a road that was all curves. And it was
supper-time for everybody in that crowded coach. If Helen had not been
so absorbed by the great, wild mountain-land she would have had more
interest in the passengers. As it was she saw them, and was amused
and thoughtful at the men and women and a few children in the car, all
middle-class people, poor and hopeful, traveling out there to the New
West to find homes. It was splendid and beautiful, this fact, yet it
inspired a brief and inexplicable sadness. From the train window, that
world of forest and crag, with its long bare reaches between, seemed so
lonely, so wild, so unlivable. How endless the distance! For hours and
miles upon miles no house, no hut, no Indian tepee! It was amazing, the
length and breadth of this beautiful land. And Helen, who loved brooks
and running streams, saw no water at all.
Then darkness settled down over the slow-moving panorama; a cool night
wind blew in at the window; white stars began to blink out of the blue.
The sisters, with hands clasped and heads nestled together, went to
sleep under a heavy cloak.
Early the next morning, while the girls were again delving into their
apparently bottomless basket, the train stopped at Las Vegas.
“Look! Look!” cried Bo, in thrilling voice. “Cowboys! Oh, Nell, look!”
Helen, laughing, looked first at her sister, and thought how most of all
she was good to look at. Bo was little, instinct with pulsating life,
and she had chestnut hair and dark-blue eyes. These eyes were flashing,
roguish, and they drew like magnets.
Outside on the rude station platform were railroad men, Mexicans, and
a group of lounging cowboys. Long, lean, bow-legged fellows they were,
with young, frank faces and intent eyes. One of them seemed particularly
attractive with his superb build, his red-bronze face and bright-red
scarf, his swinging gun, and the huge, long, curved spurs. Evidently
he caught Bo's admiring gaze, for, with a word to his companions, he
sauntered toward the window where the girls sat. His gait was singular,
almost awkward, as if he was not accustomed to walking. The long spurs
jingled musically. He removed his sombrero and stood at ease, frank,
cool, smiling. Helen liked him on sight, and, looking to see what effect
he had upon Bo, she found that young lady staring, frightened stiff.
“Good mawnin',” drawled the cowboy, with slow, good-humored smile. “Now
where might you-all be travelin'?”
The sound of his voice, the clean-cut and droll geniality; seemed new
and delightful to Helen.
“We go to Magdalena--then take stage for the White Mountains,” replied
Helen.
The cowboy's still, intent eyes showed surprise.
“Apache country, miss,” he said. “I reckon I'm sorry. Thet's shore no
place for you-all... Beggin' your pawdin--you ain't Mormons?”
“No. We're nieces of Al Auchincloss,” rejoined Helen.
“Wal, you don't say! I've been down Magdalena way an' heerd of Al....
Reckon you're goin' a-visitin'?”
“It's to be home for us.”
“Shore thet's fine. The West needs girls.... Yes, I've heerd of Al.
An old Arizona cattle-man in a sheep country! Thet's bad.... Now I'm
wonderin'--if I'd drift down there an' ask him for a job ridin' for
him--would I get it?”
His lazy smile was infectious and his meaning was as clear as crystal
water. The gaze he bent upon Bo somehow pleased Helen. The last year or
two, since Bo had grown prettier all the time, she had been a magnet for
admiring glances. This one of the cowboy's inspired respect and liking,
as well as amusement. It certainly was not lost upon Bo.
“My uncle once said in a letter that he never had enough men to run his
ranch,” replied Helen, smiling.
“Shore I'll go. I reckon I'd jest naturally drift that way--now.”
He seemed so laconic, so easy, so nice, that he could not have been
taken seriously, yet Helen's quick perceptions registered a daring, a
something that was both sudden and inevitable in him. His last word was
as clear as the soft look he fixed upon Bo.
Helen had a mischievous trait, which, subdue it as she would,
occasionally cropped out; and Bo, who once in her wilful life had been
rendered speechless, offered such a temptation.
“Maybe my little sister will put in a good word for you--to Uncle Al,”
said Helen. Just then the train jerked, and started slowly. The cowboy
took two long strides beside the car, his heated boyish face almost on a
level with the window, his eyes, now shy and a little wistful, yet bold,
too, fixed upon Bo.
“Good-by--Sweetheart!” he called.
He halted--was lost to view.
“Well!” ejaculated Helen, contritely, half sorry, half amused. “What a
sudden young gentleman!”
Bo had blushed beautifully.
“Nell, wasn't he glorious!” she burst out, with eyes shining.
“I'd hardly call him that, but he was--nice,” replied Helen, much
relieved that Bo had apparently not taken offense at her.
It appeared plain that Bo resisted a frantic desire to look out of the
window and to wave her hand. But she only peeped out, manifestly to her
disappointment.
“Do you think he--he'll come to Uncle Al's?” asked Bo.
“Child, he was only in fun.”
“Nell, I'll bet you he comes. Oh, it'd be great! I'm going to love
cowboys. They don't look like that Harve Riggs who ran after you so.”
Helen sighed, partly because of the reminder of her odious suitor, and
partly because Bo's future already called mysteriously to the child.
Helen had to be at once a mother and a protector to a girl of intense
and wilful spirit.
One of the trainmen directed the girls' attention to a green, sloping
mountain rising to a bold, blunt bluff of bare rock; and, calling
it Starvation Peak, he told a story of how Indians had once driven
Spaniards up there and starved them. Bo was intensely interested, and
thereafter she watched more keenly than ever, and always had a question
for a passing trainman. The adobe houses of the Mexicans pleased her,
and, then the train got out into Indian country, where pueblos appeared
near the track and Indians with their bright colors and shaggy wild
mustangs--then she was enraptured.
“But these Indians are peaceful!” she exclaimed once, regretfully.
“Gracious, child! You don't want to see hostile Indians, do you?”
queried Helen.
“I do, you bet,” was the frank rejoinder.
“Well, I'LL bet that I'll be sorry I didn't leave you with mother.”
“Nell--you never will!”
They reached Albuquerque about noon, and this important station, where
they had to change trains, had been the first dreaded anticipation of
the journey. It certainly was a busy place--full of jabbering Mexicans,
stalking, red-faced, wicked-looking cowboys, lolling Indians. In the
confusion Helen would have been hard put to it to preserve calmness,
with Bo to watch, and all that baggage to carry, and the other train to
find; but the kindly brakeman who had been attentive to them now helped
them off the train into the other--a service for which Helen was very
grateful.
“Albuquerque's a hard place,” confided the trainman. “Better stay in the
car--and don't hang out the windows.... Good luck to you!”
Only a few passengers were in the car and they were Mexicans at the
forward end. This branch train consisted of one passenger-coach, with a
baggage-car, attached to a string of freight-cars. Helen told herself,
somewhat grimly, that soon she would know surely whether or not her
suspicions of Harve Riggs had warrant. If he was going on to Magdalena
on that day he must go in this coach. Presently Bo, who was not obeying
admonitions, drew her head out of the window. Her eyes were wide in
amaze, her mouth open.
“Nell! I saw that man Riggs!” she whispered. “He's going to get on this
train.”
“Bo, I saw him yesterday,” replied Helen, soberly.
“He's followed you--the--the--”
“Now, Bo, don't get excited,” remonstrated Helen. “We've left home now.
We've got to take things as they come. Never mind if Riggs has followed
me. I'll settle him.”
“Oh! Then you won't speak--have anything to do with him?”
“I won't if I can help it.”
Other passengers boarded the train, dusty, uncouth, ragged men, and
some hard-featured, poorly clad women, marked by toil, and several more
Mexicans. With bustle and loud talk they found their several seats.
Then Helen saw Harve Riggs enter, burdened with much luggage. He was a
man of about medium height, of dark, flashy appearance, cultivating long
black mustache and hair. His apparel was striking, as it consisted of
black frock-coat, black trousers stuffed in high, fancy-topped boots,
an embroidered vest, and flowing tie, and a black sombrero. His belt and
gun were prominent. It was significant that he excited comment among the
other passengers.
When he had deposited his pieces of baggage he seemed to square himself,
and, turning abruptly, approached the seat occupied by the girls. When
he reached it he sat down upon the arm of the one opposite, took off
his sombrero, and deliberately looked at Helen. His eyes were light,
glinting, with hard, restless quiver, and his mouth was coarse and
arrogant. Helen had never seen him detached from her home surroundings,
and now the difference struck cold upon her heart.
“Hello, Nell!” he said. “Surprised to see me?”
“No,” she replied, coldly.
“I'll gamble you are.”
“Harve Riggs, I told you the day before I left home that nothing you
could do or say mattered to me.”
“Reckon that ain't so, Nell. Any woman I keep track of has reason to
think. An' you know it.”
“Then you followed me--out here?” demanded Helen, and her voice, despite
her control, quivered with anger.
“I sure did,” he replied, and there was as much thought of himself in
the act as there was of her.
“Why? Why? It's useless--hopeless.”
“I swore I'd have you, or nobody else would,” he replied, and here, in
the passion of his voice there sounded egotism rather than hunger for
a woman's love. “But I reckon I'd have struck West anyhow, sooner or
later.”
“You're not going to--all the way--to Pine?” faltered Helen, momentarily
weakening.
“Nell, I'll camp on your trail from now on,” he declared.
Then Bo sat bolt-upright, with pale face and flashing eyes.
“Harve Riggs, you leave Nell alone,” she burst out, in ringing, brave
young voice. “I'll tell you what--I'll bet--if you follow her and
nag her any more, my uncle Al or some cowboy will run you out of the
country.”
“Hello, Pepper!” replied Riggs, coolly. “I see your manners haven't
improved an' you're still wild about cowboys.”
“People don't have good manners with--with--”
“Bo, hush!” admonished Helen. It was difficult to reprove Bo just then,
for that young lady had not the slightest fear of Riggs. Indeed, she
looked as if she could slap his face. And Helen realized that however
her intelligence had grasped the possibilities of leaving home for a
wild country, and whatever her determination to be brave, the actual
beginning of self-reliance had left her spirit weak. She would rise
out of that. But just now this flashing-eyed little sister seemed a
protector. Bo would readily adapt herself to the West, Helen thought,
because she was so young, primitive, elemental.
Whereupon Bo turned her back to Riggs and looked out of the window. The
man laughed. Then he stood up and leaned over Helen.
“Nell, I'm goin' wherever you go,” he said, steadily. “You can take that
friendly or not, just as it pleases you. But if you've got any sense
you'll not give these people out here a hunch against me. I might hurt
somebody.... An' wouldn't it be better--to act friends? For I'm goin' to
look after you, whether you like it or not.”
Helen had considered this man an annoyance, and later a menace, and now
she must declare open enmity with him. However disgusting the idea that
he considered himself a factor in her new life, it was the truth. He
existed, he had control over his movements. She could not change that.
She hated the need of thinking so much about him; and suddenly, with a
hot, bursting anger, she hated the man.
“You'll not look after me. I'll take care of myself,” she said, and
she turned her back upon him. She heard him mutter under his breath and
slowly move away down the car. Then Bo slipped a hand in hers.
“Never mind, Nell,” she whispered. “You know what old Sheriff Haines
said about Harve Riggs. 'A four-flush would-be gun-fighter! If he ever
strikes a real Western town he'll get run out of it.' I just wish my
red-faced cowboy had got on this train!”
Helen felt a rush of gladness that she had yielded to Bo's wild
importunities to take her West. The spirit which had made Bo
incorrigible at home probably would make her react happily to life out
in this free country. Yet Helen, with all her warmth and gratefulness,
had to laugh at her sister.
“Your red-faced cowboy! Why, Bo, you were scared stiff. And now you
claim him!”
“I certainly could love that fellow,” replied Bo, dreamily.
“Child, you've been saying that about fellows for a long time. And
you've never looked twice at any of them yet.”
“He was different.... Nell, I'll bet he comes to Pine.”
“I hope he does. I wish he was on this train. I liked his looks, Bo.”
“Well, Nell dear, he looked at ME first and last--so don't get your
hopes up.... Oh, the train's starting!... Good-by, Albu-ker--what's that
awful name?... Nell, let's eat dinner. I'm starved.”
Then Helen forgot her troubles and the uncertain future, and what with
listening to Bo's chatter, and partaking again of the endless good
things to eat in the huge basket, and watching the noble mountains, she
drew once more into happy mood.
The valley of the Rio Grande opened to view, wide near at hand in a
great gray-green gap between the bare black mountains, narrow in the
distance, where the yellow river wound away, glistening under a hot
sun. Bo squealed in glee at sight of naked little Mexican children that
darted into adobe huts as the train clattered by, and she exclaimed her
pleasure in the Indians, and the mustangs, and particularly in a group
of cowboys riding into town on spirited horses. Helen saw all Bo pointed
out, but it was to the wonderful rolling valley that her gaze clung
longest, and to the dim purple distance that seemed to hold something
from her. She had never before experienced any feeling like that; she
had never seen a tenth so far. And the sight awoke something strange
in her. The sun was burning hot, as she could tell when she put a hand
outside the window, and a strong wind blew sheets of dry dust at the
train. She gathered at once what tremendous factors in the Southwest
were the sun and the dust and the wind. And her realization made her
love them. It was there; the open, the wild, the beautiful, the lonely
land; and she felt the poignant call of blood in her--to seek, to
strive, to find, to live. One look down that yellow valley, endless
between its dark iron ramparts, had given her understanding of her
uncle. She must be like him in spirit, as it was claimed she resembled
him otherwise.
At length Bo grew tired of watching scenery that contained no life, and,
with her bright head on the faded cloak, she went to sleep. But Helen
kept steady, farseeing gaze out upon that land of rock and plain; and
during the long hours, as she watched through clouds of dust and veils
of heat, some strong and doubtful and restless sentiment seemed to
change and then to fix. It was her physical acceptance--her eyes and her
senses taking the West as she had already taken it in spirit.
A woman should love her home wherever fate placed her, Helen believed,
and not so much from duty as from delight and romance and living. How
could life ever be tedious or monotonous out here in this tremendous
vastness of bare earth and open sky, where the need to achieve made
thinking and pondering superficial?
It was with regret that she saw the last of the valley of the Rio
Grande, and then of its paralleled mountain ranges. But the miles
brought compensation in other valleys, other bold, black upheavals of
rock, and then again bare, boundless yellow plains, and sparsely cedared
ridges, and white dry washes, ghastly in the sunlight, and dazzling
beds of alkali, and then a desert space where golden and blue flowers
bloomed.
She noted, too, that the whites and yellows of earth and rock had
begun to shade to red--and this she knew meant an approach to
Arizona. Arizona, the wild, the lonely, the red desert, the green
plateau--Arizona with its thundering rivers, its unknown spaces, its
pasture-lands and timber-lands, its wild horses, cowboys, outlaws,
wolves and lions and savages! As to a boy, that name stirred and
thrilled and sang to her of nameless, sweet, intangible things,
mysterious and all of adventure. But she, being a girl of twenty, who
had accepted responsibilities, must conceal the depths of her heart and
that which her mother had complained was her misfortune in not being
born a boy.
Time passed, while Helen watched and learned and dreamed. The train
stopped, at long intervals, at wayside stations where there seemed
nothing but adobe sheds and lazy Mexicans, and dust and heat. Bo awoke
and began to chatter, and to dig into the basket. She learned from the
conductor that Magdalena was only two stations on. And she was full of
conjectures as to who would meet them, what would happen. So Helen was
drawn back to sober realities, in which there was considerable zest.
Assuredly she did not know what was going to happen. Twice Riggs passed
up and down the aisle, his dark face and light eyes and sardonic smile
deliberately forced upon her sight. But again Helen fought a growing
dread with contemptuous scorn. This fellow was not half a man. It was
not conceivable what he could do, except annoy her, until she arrived
at Pine. Her uncle was to meet her or send for her at Snowdrop, which
place, Helen knew, was distant a good long ride by stage from Magdalena.
This stage-ride was the climax and the dread of all the long journey, in
Helen's considerations.
“Oh, Nell!” cried Bo, with delight. “We're nearly there! Next station,
the conductor said.”
“I wonder if the stage travels at night,” said Helen, thoughtfully.
“Sure it does!” replied the irrepressible Bo.
The train, though it clattered along as usual, seemed to Helen to fly.
There the sun was setting over bleak New Mexican bluffs, Magdalena was
at hand, and night, and adventure. Helen's heart beat fast. She
watched the yellow plains where the cattle grazed; their presence, and
irrigation ditches and cottonwood-trees told her that the railroad part
of the journey was nearly ended. Then, at Bo's little scream, she
looked across the car and out of the window to see a line of low, flat,
red-adobe houses. The train began to slow down. Helen saw children run,
white children and Mexican together; then more houses, and high upon a
hill an immense adobe church, crude and glaring, yet somehow beautiful.
Helen told Bo to put on her bonnet, and, performing a like office for
herself, she was ashamed of the trembling of her fingers. There were
bustle and talk in the car.
The train stopped. Helen peered out to see a straggling crowd of
Mexicans and Indians, all motionless and stolid, as if trains or nothing
else mattered. Next Helen saw a white man, and that was a relief. He
stood out in front of the others. Tall and broad, somehow striking, he
drew a second glance that showed him to be a hunter clad in gray-fringed
buckskin, and carrying a rifle.