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.”
“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.
