Books: The Last Trail
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Zane Grey >> The Last Trail
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"Well, well, how sweet you look!" he said to Helen; then with a wink
of his eyelid, "Hello, Willie, you'll find Elizabeth inside
with Jack."
"How is he?" asked Helen eagerly, as Will with a laugh and a retort
mounted the steps.
"Jack's doing splendidly. He slept all day. I don't think his injury
amounts to much, at least not for such as him or Wetzel. It would have
finished ordinary men. Bess says if complications don't set in,
blood-poison or something to start a fever, he'll be up shortly.
Wetzel believes the two of 'em will be on the trail inside of a week."
"Did they find Brandt?" asked Helen in a low voice.
"Yes, they ran him to his hole, and, as might have been expected, it
was Bing Legget's camp. The Indians took Jonathan there."
"Then Jack was captured?"
Colonel Zane related the events, as told briefly by Wetzel, that had
taken place during the preceding three days.
"The Indian I saw at the spring carried that bow Jonathan brought
back. He must have shot the arrow. He was a magnificent savage."
"He was indeed a great, and a bad Indian, one of the craftiest spies
who ever stepped in moccasins; but he lies quiet now on the moss and
the leaves. Bing Legget will never find another runner like that
Shawnee. Let us go indoors."
He led Helen into the large sitting-room where Jonathan lay on a
couch, with Betty and Will sitting beside him. The colonel's wife and
children, Silas Zane, and several neighbors, were present.
"Here, Jack, is a lady inquiring after your health. Betts, this
reminds me of the time Isaac came home wounded, after his escape from
the Hurons. Strikes me he and his Indian bride should be about due
here on a visit."
Helen forgot every one except the wounded man lying so quiet and pale
upon the couch. She looked down upon him with eyes strangely dilated,
and darkly bright.
"How are you?" she asked softly.
"I'm all right, thank you, lass," answered Jonathan.
Colonel Zane contrived, with inimitable skill, to get Betty, Will,
Silas, Bessie and the others interested in some remarkable news he had
just heard, or made up, and this left Jonathan and Helen comparatively
alone for the moment.
The wise old colonel thought perhaps this might be the right time. He
saw Helen's face as she leaned over Jonathan, and that was enough for
him. He would have taxed his ingenuity to the utmost to keep the
others away from the young couple.
"I was so frightened," murmured Helen.
"Why?" asked Jonathan.
"Oh! You looked so deathly--the blood, and that awful wound!"
"It's nothin', lass."
Helen smiled down upon him. Whether or not the hurt amounted to
anything in the borderman's opinion, she knew from his weakness, and
his white, drawn face, that the strain of the march home had been
fearful. His dark eyes held now nothing of the coldness and glitter so
natural to them. They were weary, almost sad. She did not feel afraid
of him now. He lay there so helpless, his long, powerful frame as
quiet as a sleeping child's! Hitherto an almost indefinable antagonism
in him had made itself felt; now there was only gentleness, as of a
man too weary to fight longer. Helen's heart swelled with pity, and
tenderness, and love. His weakness affected her as had never his
strength. With an involuntary gesture of sympathy she placed her hand
softly on his.
Jonathan looked up at her with eyes no longer blind. Pain had softened
him. For the moment he felt carried out of himself, as it were, and
saw things differently. The melting tenderness of her gaze, the
glowing softness of her face, the beauty, bewitched him; and beyond
that, a sweet, impelling gladness stirred within him and would not be
denied. He thrilled as her fingers lightly, timidly touched his, and
opened his broad hand to press hers closely and warmly.
"Lass," he whispered, with a huskiness and unsteadiness unnatural to
his deep voice.
Helen bent her head closer to him; she saw his lips tremble, and his
nostrils dilate; but an unutterable sadness shaded the brightness
in his eyes.
"I love you."
The low whisper reached Helen's ears. She seemed to float dreamily
away to some beautiful world, with the music of those words ringing in
her ears. She looked at him again. Had she been dreaming? No; his dark
eyes met hers with a love that he could no longer deny. An exquisite
emotion, keen, strangely sweet and strong, yet terrible with sharp
pain, pulsated through her being. The revelation had been too abrupt.
It was so wonderfully different from what she had ever dared hope. She
lowered her head, trembling.
The next moment she felt Colonel Zane's hand on her chair, and heard
him say in a cheery voice:
"Well, well, see here, lass, you mustn't make Jack talk too much. See
how white and tired he looks."
CHAPTER XV
In forty-eight hours Jonathan Zane was up and about the cabin as
though he had never been wounded; the third day he walked to the
spring; in a week he was waiting for Wetzel, ready to go on the trail.
On the eighth day of his enforced idleness, as he sat with Betty and
the colonel in the yard, Wetzel appeared on a ridge east of the fort.
Soon he rounded the stockade fence, and came straight toward them. To
Colonel Zane and Betty, Wetzel's expression was terrible. The stern
kindliness, the calm, though cold, gravity of his countenance, as they
usually saw it, had disappeared. Yet it showed no trace of his
unnatural passion to pursue and slay. No doubt that terrible
instinct, or lust, was at white heat; but it wore a mask of
impenetrable stone-gray gloom.
Wetzel spoke briefly. After telling Jonathan to meet him at sunset on
the following day at a point five miles up the river, he reported to
the colonel that Legget with his band had left their retreat, moving
southward, apparently on a marauding expedition. Then he shook hands
with Colonel Zane and turned to Betty.
"Good-bye, Betty," he said, in his deep, sonorous voice.
"Good-bye, Lew," answered Betty slowly, as if surprised. "God save
you," she added.
He shouldered his rifle, and hurried down the lane, halting before
entering the thicket that bounded the clearing, to look back at the
settlement. In another moment his dark figure had disappeared among
the bushes.
"Betts, I've seen Wetzel go like that hundreds of times, though he
never shook hands before; but I feel sort of queer about it now.
Wasn't he strange?"
Betty did not answer until Jonathan, who had started to go within, was
out of hearing.
"Lew looked and acted the same the morning he struck Miller's trail,"
Betty replied in a low voice. "I believe, despite his indifference to
danger, he realizes that the chances are greatly against him, as they
were when he began the trailing of Miller, certain it would lead him
into Girty's camp. Then I know Lew has an affection for us, though it
is never shown in ordinary ways. I pray he and Jack will come
home safe."
"This is a bad trail they're taking up; the worst, perhaps, in border
warfare," said Colonel Zane gloomily. "Did you notice how Jack's face
darkened when his comrade came? Much of this borderman-life of his is
due to Wetzel's influence."
"Eb, I'll tell you one thing," returned Betty, with a flash of her
old spirit. "This is Jack's last trail."
"Why do you think so?"
"If he doesn't return he'll be gone the way of all bordermen; but if
he comes back once more he'll never get away from Helen."
"Ugh!" exclaimed Zane, venting his pleasure in characteristic Indian
way.
"That night after Jack came home wounded," continued Betty, "I saw
him, as he lay on the couch, gaze at Helen. Such a look! Eb, she
has won."
"I hope so, but I fear, I fear," replied her brother gloomily. "If
only he returns, that's the thing! Betts, be sure he sees Helen before
he goes away."
"I shall try. Here he comes now," said Betty.
"Hello, Jack!" cried the colonel, as his brother came out in somewhat
of a hurry. "What have you got? By George! It's that blamed arrow the
Shawnee shot into you. Where are you going with it? What the
deuce--Say--Betts, eh?"
Betty had given him a sharp little kick.
The borderman looked embarrassed. He hesitated and flushed. Evidently
he would have liked to avoid his brother's question; but the inquiry
came direct. Dissimulation with him was impossible.
"Helen wanted this, an' I reckon that's where I'm goin' with it," he
said finally, and walked away.
"Eb, you're a stupid!" exclaimed Betty.
"Hang it! Who'd have thought he was going to give her that blamed,
bloody arrow?"
As Helen ushered Jonathan, for the first time, into her cosy little
sitting-room, her heart began to thump so hard she could hear it.
She had not seen him since the night he whispered the words which gave
such happiness. She had stayed at home, thankful beyond expression to
learn every day of his rapid improvement, living in the sweetness of
her joy, and waiting for him. And now as he had come, so dark, so
grave, so unlike a lover to woo, that she felt a chill steal over her.
"I'm so glad you've brought the arrow," she faltered, "for, of course,
coming so far means that you're well once more."
"You asked me for it, an' I've fetched it over. To-morrow I'm off on a
trail I may never return from," he answered simply, and his voice
seemed cold.
An immeasurable distance stretched once more between them. Helen's
happiness slowly died.
"I thank you," she said with a voice that was tremulous despite all
her efforts.
"It's not much of a keepsake."
"I did not ask for it as a keepsake, but because--because I wanted it.
I need nothing tangible to keep alive my memory. A few words whispered
to me not many days ago will suffice for remembrance--or--or did I
dream them?"
Bitter disappointment almost choked Helen. This was not the gentle,
soft-voiced man who had said he loved her. It was the indifferent
borderman. Again he was the embodiment of his strange, quiet woods.
Once more he seemed the comrade of the cold, inscrutable Wetzel.
"No, lass, I reckon you didn't dream," he replied.
Helen swayed from sick bitterness and a suffocating sense of pain,
back to her old, sweet, joyous, tumultuous heart-throbbing.
"Tell me, if I didn't dream," she said softly, her face flashing warm
again. She came close to him and looked up with all her heart in her
great dark eyes, and love trembling on her red lips.
Calmness deserted the borderman after one glance at her. He paced the
floor; twisted and clasped his hands while his eyes gleamed.
"Lass, I'm only human," he cried hoarsely, facing her again.
But only for a moment did he stand before her; but it was long enough
for him to see her shrink a little, the gladness in her eyes giving
way to uncertainty and a fugitive hope. Suddenly he began to pace the
room again, and to talk incoherently. With the flow of words he
gradually grew calmer, and, with something of his natural dignity,
spoke more rationally.
"I said I loved you, an' it's true, but I didn't mean to speak. I
oughtn't have done it. Somethin' made it so easy, so natural like. I'd
have died before letting you know, if any idea had come to me of what
I was sayin'. I've fought this feelin' for months. I allowed myself to
think of you at first, an' there's the wrong. I went on the trail with
your big eyes pictured in my mind, an' before I'd dreamed of it you'd
crept into my heart. Life has never been the same since--that kiss.
Betty said as how you cared for me, an' that made me worse, only I
never really believed. Today I came over here to say good-bye,
expectin' to hold myself well in hand; but the first glance of your
eyes unmans me. Nothin' can come of it, lass, nothin' but trouble.
Even if you cared, an' I don't dare believe you do, nothin' can come
of it! I've my own life to live, an' there's no sweetheart in it.
Mebbe, as Lew says, there's one in Heaven. Oh! girl, this has been
hard on me. I see you always on my lonely tramps; I see your glorious
eyes in the sunny fields an' in the woods, at gray twilight, an' when
the stars shine brightest. They haunt me. Ah! you're the sweetest
lass as ever tormented a man, an' I love you, I love you!"
He turned to the window only to hear a soft, broken cry, and a flurry
of skirts. A rush of wind seemed to envelop him. Then two soft,
rounded arms encircled his neck, and a golden head lay on his breast.
"My borderman! My hero! My love!"
Jonathan clasped the beautiful, quivering girl to his heart.
"Lass, for God's sake don't say you love me," he implored, thrilling
with contact of her warm arms.
"Ah!" she breathed, and raised her head. Her radiant eyes darkly
wonderful with unutterable love, burned into his.
He had almost pressed his lips to the sweet red ones so near his, when
he drew back with a start, and his frame straightened.
"Am I a man, or only a coward?" he muttered. "Lass, let me think.
Don't believe I'm harsh, nor cold, nor nothin' except that I want to
do what's right."
He leaned out of the window while Helen stood near him with a hand on
his quivering shoulder. When at last he turned, his face was
colorless, white as marble, and sad, and set, and stern.
"Lass, it mustn't be; I'll not ruin your life."
"But you will if you give me up."
"No, no, lass."
"I cannot live without you."
"You must. My life is not mine to give."
"But you love me."
"I am a borderman."
"I will not live without you."
"Hush! lass, hush!"
"I love you."
Jonathan breathed hard; once more the tremor, which seemed pitiful in
such a strong man, came upon him. His face was gray.
"I love you," she repeated, her rich voice indescribably deep and
full. She opened wide her arms and stood before him with heaving
bosom, with great eyes dark with woman's sadness, passionate with
woman's promise, perfect in her beauty, glorious in her abandonment.
The borderman bowed and bent like a broken reed.
"Listen," she whispered, coming closer to him, "go if you must leave
me; but let this be your last trail. Come back to me, Jack, come back
to me! You have had enough of this terrible life; you have won a name
that will never be forgotten; you have done your duty to the border.
The Indians and outlaws will be gone soon. Take the farm your brother
wants you to have, and live for me. We will be happy. I shall learn to
keep your home. Oh! my dear, I will recompense you for the loss of all
this wild hunting and fighting. Let me persuade you, as much for your
sake as for mine, for you are my heart, and soul, and life. Go out
upon your last trail, Jack, and come back to me."
"An' let Wetzel go always alone?"
"He is different; he lives only for revenge. What are those poor
savages to you? You have a better, nobler life opening."
"Lass, I can't give him up."
"You need not; but give up this useless seeking of adventure. That,
you know, is half a borderman's life. Give it up, Jack, it not for
your own, then for my sake."
"No-no-never-I can't-I won't be a coward! After all these years I
won't desert him. No-no----"
"Do not say more," she pleaded, stealing closer to him until she was
against his breast. She slipped her arms around his neck. For love and
more than life she was fighting now. "Good-bye, my love." She kissed
him, a long, lingering pressure of her soft full lips on his.
"Dearest, do not shame me further. Dearest Jack, come back to me, for
I love you."
She released him, and ran sobbing from the room.
Unsteady as a blind man, he groped for the door, found it, and went
out.
CHAPTER XVI
The longest day in Jonathan Zane's life, the oddest, the most terrible
and complex with unintelligible emotions, was that one in which he
learned that the wilderness no longer sufficed for him.
He wandered through the forest like a man lost, searching for, he knew
not what. Rambling along the shady trails he looked for that
contentment which had always been his, but found it not. He plunged
into the depths of deep, gloomy ravines; into the fastnesses of
heavy-timbered hollows where the trees hid the light of day; he sought
the open, grassy hillsides, and roamed far over meadow and plain. Yet
something always eluded him. The invisible and beautiful life of all
inanimate things sang no more in his heart. The springy moss, the
quivering leaf, the tell-tale bark of the trees, the limpid, misty,
eddying pools under green banks, the myriads of natural objects from
which he had learned so much, and the manifold joyous life around him,
no longer spoke with soul-satisfying faithfulness. The environment of
his boyish days, of his youth, and manhood, rendered not a sweetness
as of old.
His intelligence, sharpened by the pain of new experience, told him
he had been vain to imagine that he, because he was a borderman, could
escape the universal destiny of human life. Dimly he could feel the
broadening, the awakening into a fuller existence, but he did not
welcome this new light. He realized that men had always turned, at
some time in their lives, to women even as the cypress leans toward
the sun. This weakening of the sterner stuff in him; this softening of
his heart, and especially the inquietude, and lack of joy and harmony
in his old pursuits of the forest trails bewildered him, and troubled
him some. Thousands of times his borderman's trail had been crossed,
yet never to his sorrow until now when it had been crossed by a woman.
Sick at heart, hurt in his pride, darkly savage, sad, remorseful, and
thrilling with awakened passion, all in turn, he roamed the woodland
unconsciously visiting the scenes where he had formerly found
contentment.
He paused by many a shady glen, and beautiful quiet glade; by gray
cliffs and mossy banks, searching with moody eyes for the spirit which
evaded him.
Here in the green and golden woods rose before him a rugged, giant
rock, moss-stained, and gleaming with trickling water. Tangled ferns
dressed in autumn's russet hue lay at the base of the green-gray
cliff, and circled a dark, deep pool dotted with yellow leaves.
Half-way up, the perpendicular ascent was broken by a protruding ledge
upon which waved broad-leaved plants and rusty ferns. Above, the cliff
sheered out with many cracks and seams in its weather-beaten front.
The forest grew to the verge of the precipice. A full foliaged oak and
a luxuriant maple, the former still fresh with its dark green leaves,
the latter making a vivid contrast with its pale yellow, purple-red,
and orange hues, leaned far out over the bluff. A mighty chestnut
grasped with gnarled roots deep into the broken cliff. Dainty plumes
of goldenrod swayed on the brink; red berries, amber moss, and green
trailing vines peeped over the edge, and every little niche and cranny
sported fragile ferns and pale-faced asters. A second cliff, higher
than the first, and more heavily wooded, loomed above, and over it
sprayed a transparent film of water, thin as smoke, and iridescent in
the sunshine. Far above where the glancing rill caressed the mossy
cliff and shone like gleaming gold against the dark branches with
their green and red and purple leaves, lay the faint blue of the sky.
Jonathan pulled on down the stream with humbler heart. His favorite
waterfall had denied him. The gold that had gleamed there was his
sweetheart's hair; the red was of her lips; the dark pool with its
lights and shades, its unfathomable mystery, was like her eyes.
He came at length to another scene of milder aspect. An open glade
where the dancing, dimpling brook raced under dark hemlocks, and where
blood-red sumach leaves, and beech leaves like flashes of sunshine,
lay against the green. Under a leaning birch he found a patch of
purple asters, and a little apart from them, by a mossy stone, a
lonely fringed gentian. Its deep color brought to him the dark blue
eyes that haunted him, and once again, like one possessed of an evil
spirit, he wandered along the merry water-course.
But finally pain and unrest left him. When he surrendered to his love,
peace returned. Though he said in his heart that Helen was not for
him, he felt he did not need to torture himself by fighting against
resistless power. He could love her without being a coward. He would
take up his life where it had been changed, and live it, carrying this
bitter-sweet burden always.
Memory, now that he admitted himself conquered, made a toy of him,
bringing the sweetness of fragrant hair, and eloquent eyes, and
clinging arms, and dewy lips. A thousand-fold harder to fight than
pain was the seductive thought that he had but to go back to Helen to
feel again the charm of her presence, to see the grace of her person,
to hear the music of her voice, to have again her lips on his.
Jonathan knew then that his trial had but begun; that the pain and
suffering of a borderman's broken pride and conquered spirit was
nothing; that to steel his heart against the joy, the sweetness, the
longing of love was everything.
So a tumult raged within his heart. No bitterness, nor wretchedness
stabbed him as before, but a passionate yearning, born of memory, and
unquenchable as the fires of the sun, burned there.
Helen's reply to his pale excuses, to his duty, to his life, was that
she loved him. The wonder of it made him weak. Was not her answer
enough? "I love you!" Three words only; but they changed the world. A
beautiful girl loved him, she had kissed him, and his life could never
again be the same. She had held out her arms to him--and he, cold,
churlish, unfeeling brute, had let her shame herself, fighting for her
happiness, for the joy that is a woman's divine right. He had been
blind; he had not understood the significance of her gracious action;
he had never realized until too late, what it must have cost her, what
heartburning shame and scorn his refusal brought upon her. If she ever
looked tenderly at him again with her great eyes; or leaned toward him
with her beautiful arms outstretched, he would fall at her feet and
throw his duty to the winds, swearing his love was hers always and his
life forever.
So love stormed in the borderman's heart.
Slowly the melancholy Indian-summer day waned as Jonathan strode out
of the woods into a plain beyond, where he was to meet Wetzel at
sunset. A smoky haze like a purple cloud lay upon the gently waving
grass. He could not see across the stretch of prairie-land, though at
this point he knew it was hardly a mile wide. With the trilling of the
grasshoppers alone disturbing the serene quiet of this autumn
afternoon, all nature seemed in harmony with the declining season. He
stood a while, his thoughts becoming the calmer for the silence and
loneliness of this breathing meadow.
When the shadows of the trees began to lengthen, and to steal far out
over the yellow grass, he knew the time had come, and glided out upon
the plain. He crossed it, and sat down upon a huge stone which lay
with one shelving end overhanging the river.
Far in the west the gold-red sun, too fiery for his direct gaze, lost
the brilliance of its under circle behind the fringe of the wooded
hill. Slowly the red ball sank. When the last bright gleam had
vanished in the dark horizon Jonathan turned to search wood and plain.
Wetzel was to meet him at sunset. Even as his first glance swept
around a light step sounded behind him. He did not move, for that step
was familiar. In another moment the tall form of Wetzel stood
beside him.
"I'm about as much behind as you was ahead of time," said Wetzel.
"We'll stay here fer the night, an' be off early in the mornin'."
Under the shelving side of the rock, and in the shade of the thicket,
the bordermen built a little fire and roasted strips of deer-meat.
Then, puffing at their long pipes they sat for a long time in silence,
while twilight let fall a dark, gray cloak over river and plain.
"Legget's move up the river was a blind, as I suspected," said
Wetzel, presently. "He's not far back in the woods from here, an'
seems to be waitin' fer somethin' or somebody. Brandt an' seven
redskins are with him. We'd hev a good chance at them in the mornin';
now we've got 'em a long ways from their camp, so we'll wait, an' see
what deviltry they're up to."
"Mebbe he's waitin' for some Injun band," suggested Jonathan.
"Thar's redskins in the valley an' close to him; but I reckon he's
barkin' up another tree."
"Suppose we run into some of these Injuns?"
"We'll hev to take what comes," replied Wetzel, lying down on a bed of
leaves.
When darkness enveloped the spot Wetzel lay wrapped in deep slumber,
while Jonathan sat against the rock, watching the last flickerings of
the camp-fire.
CHAPTER XVII
Will and Helen hurried back along the river road. Beguiled by the soft
beauty of the autumn morning they ventured farther from the fort than
ever before, and had been suddenly brought to a realization of the
fact by a crackling in the underbrush. Instantly their minds reverted
to bears and panthers, such as they had heard invested the thickets
round the settlement.
"Oh! Will! I saw a dark form stealing along in the woods from tree to
tree!" exclaimed Helen in a startled whisper.
"So did I. It was an Indian, or I never saw one. Walk faster. Once
round the bend in the road we'll be within sight of the fort; then
we'll run," replied Will. He had turned pale, but maintained his
composure.
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