Books: The Man of the Forest
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Zane Grey >> The Man of the Forest
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Roy might never have been shot, judging from the way he
stepped out, and Dale was almost as quick. Carmichael
reached them -- grasped them with swift, hard hands.
"Boys -- I jest rode in. An' they said you'd found her!"
"Shore, Las Vegas. Dale fetched her home safe an' sound. . .
. There she is."
The cowboy thrust aside the two men, and with a long stride
he faced the porch, his piercing eyes on the door. All that
Helen could think of his look was that it seemed terrible.
Bo stepped outside in front of Helen. Probably she would
have run straight into Carmichael's arms if some strange
instinct had not withheld her. Helen judged it to be fear;
she found her heart lifting painfully.
"Bo!" he yelled, like a savage, yet he did not in the least
resemble one.
"Oh -- Tom!" cried Bo, falteringly. She half held out her
arms.
"You, girl?" That seemed to be his piercing query, like the
quivering blade in his eyes. Two more long strides carried
him close up to her, and his look chased the red out of Bo's
cheek. Then it was beautiful to see his face marvelously
change until it was that of the well remembered Las Vegas
magnified in all his old spirit.
"Aw!" The exclamation was a tremendous sigh. "I shore am
glad!"
That beautiful flash left his face as he wheeled to the men.
He wrung Dale's hand long and hard, and his gaze confused
the older man.
"RIGGS!" he said, and in the jerk of his frame as he whipped
out the word disappeared the strange, fleeting signs of his
kindlier emotion.
"Wilson killed him," replied Dale.
"Jim Wilson -- that old Texas Ranger! . . . Reckon he lent
you a hand?"
"My friend, he saved Bo," replied Dale, with emotion. "My
old cougar an' me -- we just hung 'round."
"You made Wilson help you?" cut in the hard voice.
"Yes. But he killed Riggs before I come up an' I reckon he'd
done well by Bo if I'd never got there."
"How about the gang?"
"All snuffed out, I reckon, except Wilson."
"Somebody told me Beasley hed ran Miss Helen off the ranch.
Thet so?"
"Yes. Four of his greasers packed her down the hill -- most
tore her clothes off, so Roy tells me."
"Four greasers! . . . Shore it was Beasley's deal clean
through?"
"Yes. Riggs was led. He had an itch for a bad name, you
know. But Beasley made the plan. It was Nell they wanted
instead of Bo."
Abruptly Carmichael stalked off down the darkening path, his
silver heel-plates ringing, his spurs jingling.
"Hold on, Carmichael," called Dale, taking a step.
"Oh, Tom!" cried Bo.
"Shore folks callin' won't be no use, if anythin would be,"
said Roy. "Las Vegas has hed a look at red liquor."
"He's been drinking! Oh, that accounts! . . . he never --
never even touched me!"
For once Helen was not ready to comfort Bo. A mighty tug at
her heart had sent her with flying, uneven steps toward
Dale. He took another stride down the path, and another.
"Dale -- oh -- please stop!" she called, very low.
He halted as if he had run sharply into a bar across the
path. When he turned Helen had come close. Twilight was deep
there in the shade of the peach-trees, but she could see his
face, the hungry, flaring eyes.
"I -- I haven't thanked you -- yet -- for bringing Bo home,"
she whispered.
"Nell, never mind that," he said, in surprise. "If you must
-- why, wait. I've got to catch up with that cowboy."
"No. Let me thank you now," she whispered, and, stepping
closer, she put her arms up, meaning to put them round his
neck. That action must be her self-punishment for the other
time she had done it. Yet it might also serve to thank him.
But, strangely, her hands got no farther than his breast,
and fluttered there to catch hold of the fringe of his
buckskin jacket. She felt a heave of his deep chest.
"I -- I do thank you -- with all my heart," she said,
softly. "I owe you now -- for myself and her -- more than I
can ever repay."
"Nell, I'm your friend," he replied, hurriedly. "Don't talk
of repayin' me. Let me go now -- after Las Vegas."
"What for?" she queried, suddenly.
"I mean to line up beside him -- at the bar -- or wherever
he goes," returned Dale.
"Don't tell me that. _I_ know. You're going straight to meet
Beasley."
"Nell, if you hold me up any longer I reckon I'll have to
run -- or never get to Beasley before that cowboy."
Helen locked her fingers in the fringe of his jacket --
leaned closer to him, all her being responsive to a bursting
gust of blood over her.
"I'll not let you go," she said.
He laughed, and put his great hands over hers. "What 're you
sayin', girl? You can't stop me."
"Yes, I can. Dale, I don't want you to risk your life."
He stared at her, and made as if to tear her hands from
their hold.
"Listen -- please -- oh -- please!" she implored. "If you go
deliberately to kill Beasley -- and do it -- that will be
murder. . . . It's against my religion. . . . I would be
unhappy all my life."
"But, child, you'll be ruined all your life if Beasley is
not dealt with -- as men of his breed are always dealt with
in the West," he remonstrated, and in one quick move he had
freed himself from her clutching fingers.
Helen, with a move as swift, put her arms round his neck and
clasped her hands tight.
"Milt, I'm finding myself," she said. "The other day, when I
did -- this -- you made an excuse for me. . . . I'm not
two-faced now."
She meant to keep him from killing Beasley if she sacrificed
every last shred of her pride. And she stamped the look of
his face on her heart of hearts to treasure always. The
thrill, the beat of her pulses, almost obstructed her
thought of purpose.
"Nell, just now -- when you're overcome -- rash with
feelin's -- don't say to me -- a word -- a --"
He broke down huskily.
"My first friend -- my -- Oh Dale, I KNOW you love me! she
whispered. And she hid her face on his breast, there to feel
a tremendous tumult.
"Oh, don't you?" she cried, in low, smothered voice, as his
silence drove her farther on this mad, yet glorious purpose.
"If you need to be told -- yes -- I reckon I do love you,
Nell Rayner," he replied.
It seemed to Helen that he spoke from far off. She lifted
her face, her heart on her lips.
"If you kill Beasley I'll never marry you," she said.
"Who's expectin' you to?" he asked, with low, hoarse laugh.
"Do you think you have to marry me to square accounts?
This's the only time you ever hurt me, Nell Rayner. . . .
I'm 'shamed you could think I'd expect you -- out of
gratitude --"
"Oh -- you -- you are as dense as the forest where you
live," she cried. And then she shut her eyes again, the
better to remember that transfiguration of his face, the
better to betray herself.
"Man -- I love you!" Full and deep, yet tremulous, the words
burst from her heart that had been burdened with them for
many a day.
Then it seemed, in the throbbing riot of her senses, that
she was lifted and swung into his arms, and handled with a
great and terrible tenderness, and hugged and kissed with
the hunger and awkwardness of a bear, and held with her feet
off the ground, and rendered blind, dizzy, rapturous, and
frightened, and utterly torn asunder from her old calm,
thinking self.
He put her down -- released her.
"Nothin' could have made me so happy as what you said." He
finished with a strong sigh of unutterable, wondering joy.
"Then you will not go to -- to meet --"
Helen's happy query froze on her lips.
"I've got to go!" he rejoined, with his old, quiet voice.
"Hurry in to Bo. . . . An' don't worry. Try to think of
things as I taught you up in the woods."
Helen heard his soft, padded footfalls swiftly pass away.
She was left there, alone in the darkening twilight,
suddenly cold and stricken, as if turned to stone.
Thus she stood an age-long moment until the upflashing truth
galvanized her into action. Then she flew in pursuit of
Dale. The truth was that, in spite of Dale's' early training
in the East and the long years of solitude which had made
him wonderful in thought and feeling, he had also become a
part of this raw, bold, and violent West.
It was quite dark now and she had run quite some distance
before she saw Dale's tall, dark form against the yellow
light of Turner's saloon.
Somehow, in that poignant moment, when her flying feet kept
pace with her heart, Helen felt in herself a force opposing
itself against this raw, primitive justice of the West. She
was one of the first influences emanating from civilized
life, from law and order. In that flash of truth she saw the
West as it would be some future time, when through women and
children these wild frontier days would be gone forever.
Also, just as clearly she saw the present need of men like
Roy Beeman and Dale and the fire-blooded Carmichael. Beasley
and his kind must be killed. But Helen did not want her
lover, her future husband, and the probable father of her
children to commit what she held to be murder.
At the door of the saloon she caught up with Dale.
"Milt -- oh -- wait!' -- wait!" she panted.
She heard him curse under his breath as he turned. They were
alone in the yellow flare of light. Horses were champing
bits and drooping before the rails.
"You go back!" ordered Dale, sternly. His face was pale, his
eyes were gleaming.
"No! Not till -- you take me -- or carry me!" she replied,
resolutely, with all a woman's positive and inevitable
assurance.
Then he laid hold of her with ungentle hands. His violence,
especially the look on his face, terrified Helen, rendered
her weak. But nothing could have shaken her resolve. She
felt victory. Her sex, her love, and her presence would be
too much for Dale.
As he swung Helen around, the low hum of voices inside the
saloon suddenly rose to sharp, hoarse roars, accompanied by
a scuffling of feet and crashing of violently sliding chairs
or tables. Dale let go of Helen and leaped toward the door.
But a silence inside, quicker and stranger than the roar,
halted him. Helen's heart contracted, then seemed to cease
beating. There was absolutely not a perceptible sound. Even
the horses appeared, like Dale, to have turned to statues.
Two thundering shots annihilated this silence. Then quickly
came a lighter shot -- the smash of glass. Dale ran into the
saloon. The horses began to snort, to rear, to pound. A low,
muffled murmur terrified Helen even as it drew her. Dashing
at the door, she swung it in and entered.
The place was dim, blue-hazed, smelling of smoke. Dale stood
just inside the door. On the floor lay two men. Chairs and
tables were overturned. A motley, dark, shirt-sleeved,
booted, and belted crowd of men appeared hunched against the
opposite wall, with pale, set faces, turned to the bar.
Turner, the proprietor, stood at one end, his face livid,
his hands aloft and shaking. Carmichael leaned against the
middle of the bar. He held a gun low down. It was smoking.
With a gasp Helen flashed her eyes back to Dale. He had seen
her -- was reaching an arm toward her. Then she saw the man
lying almost at her feet. Jeff Mulvey -- her uncle's old
foreman! His face was awful to behold. A smoking gun lay
near his inert hand. The other man had fallen on his face.
His garb proclaimed him a Mexican. He was not yet dead. Then
Helen, as she felt Dale's arm encircle her, looked farther,
because she could not prevent it -- looked on at that
strange figure against the bar -- this boy who had been such
a friend in her hour of need -- this nai;ve and frank
sweetheart of her sister's.
She saw a man now -- wild, white, intense as fire, with some
terrible cool kind of deadliness in his mien. His left elbow
rested upon the bar, and his hand held a glass of red
liquor. The big gun, low down in his other hand, seemed as
steady as if it were a fixture.
"Heah's to thet -- half-breed Beasley an' his outfit!"
Carmichael drank, while his flaming eyes held the crowd;
then with savage action of terrible passion he flung the
glass at the quivering form of the still living Mexican on
the floor.
Helen felt herself slipping. All seemed to darken around
her. She could not see Dale, though she knew he held her.
Then she fainted.
CHAPTER XXV
Las Vegas Carmichael was a product of his day.
The Pan Handle of Texas, the old Chisholm Trail along which
were driven the great cattle herds northward, Fort Dodge,
where the cowboys conflicted with the card-sharps -- these
hard places had left their marks on Carmichael. To come from
Texas was to come from fighting stock. And a cowboy's life
was strenuous, wild, violent, and generally brief. The
exceptions were the fortunate and the swiftest men with
guns; and they drifted from south to north and west, taking
with them the reckless, chivalrous, vitriolic spirit
peculiar to their breed.
The pioneers and ranchers of the frontier would never have
made the West habitable had it not been for these wild
cowboys, these hard-drinking, hard-riding, hard-living
rangers of the barrens, these easy, cool, laconic, simple
young men whose blood was tinged with fire and who possessed
a magnificent and terrible effrontery toward danger and
death.
Las Vegas ran his horse from Widow Cass's cottage to
Turner's saloon, and the hoofs of the goaded steed crashed
in the door. Las Vegas's entrance was a leap. Then he stood
still with the door ajar and the horse pounding and snorting
back. All the men in that saloon who saw the entrance of Las
Vegas knew what it portended. No thunderbolt could have more
quickly checked the drinking, gambling, talking crowd. They
recognized with kindred senses the nature of the man and his
arrival. For a second the blue-hazed room was perfectly
quiet, then men breathed, moved, rose, and suddenly caused a
quick, sliding crash of chairs and tables.
The cowboy's glittering eyes flashed to and fro, and then
fixed on Mulvey and his Mexican companion. That glance
singled out these two, and the sudden rush of nervous men
proved it. Mulvey and the sheep-herder were left alone in
the center of the floor.
"Howdy, Jeff ! Where's your boss?" asked Las Vegas. His
voice was cool, friendly; his manner was easy, natural; but
the look of him was what made Mulvey pale and the Mexican
livid.
"Reckon he's home," replied Mulvey.
"Home? What's he call home now?"
"He's hangin' out hyar at Auchincloss's," replied Mulvey.
His voice was not strong, but his eyes were steady,
watchful.
Las Vegas quivered all over as if stung. A flame that seemed
white and red gave his face a singular hue.
"Jeff, you worked for old Al a long time, an' I've heard of
your differences," said Las Vegas. "Thet ain't no mix of
mine. . . . But you double-crossed Miss Helen!"
Mulvey made no attempt to deny this. He gulped slowly. His
hands appeared less steady, and he grew paler. Again Las
Vegas's words signified less than his look. And that look
now included the Mexican.
"Pedro, you're one of Beasley's old hands," said Las Vegas,
accusingly. "An' -- you was one of them four greasers thet
--"
Here the cowboy choked and bit over his words as if they
were a material poison. The Mexican showed his guilt and
cowardice. He began to jabber.
"Shet up!" hissed Las Vegas, with a savage and significant
jerk of his arm, as if about to strike. But that action was
read for its true meaning. Pell-mell the crowd split to rush
each way and leave an open space behind the three.
Las Vegas waited. But Mulvey seemed obstructed. The Mexican
looked dangerous through his fear. His fingers twitched as
if the tendons running up into his arms were being pulled.
An instant of suspense -- more than long enough for Mulvey
to be tried and found wanting -- and Las Vegas, with laugh
and sneer, turned his back upon the pair and stepped to the
bar. His call for a bottle made Turner jump and hold it out
with shaking hands. Las Vegas poured out a drink, while his
gaze was intent on the scarred old mirror hanging behind the
bar.
This turning his back upon men he had just dared to draw
showed what kind of a school Las Vegas had been trained in.
If those men had been worthy antagonists of his class he
would never have scorned them. As it was, when Mulvey and
the Mexican jerked at their guns, Las Vegas swiftly wheeled
and shot twice. Mulvey's gun went off as he fell, and the
Mexican doubled up in a heap on the floor. Then Las Vegas
reached around with his left hand for the drink he had
poured out.
At this juncture Dale burst into the saloon, suddenly to
check his impetus, to swerve aside toward the bar and halt.
The door had not ceased swinging when again it was propelled
inward, this time to admit Helen Rayner, white and
wide-eyed.
In another moment then Las Vegas had spoken his deadly toast
to Beasley's gang and had fiercely flung the glass at the
writhing Mexican on the floor. Also Dale had gravitated
toward the reeling Helen to catch her when she fainted.
Las Vegas began to curse, and, striding to Dale, he pushed
him out of the saloon.
"--! What 're you doin' heah?" he yelled, stridently.
"Hevn't you got thet girl to think of? Then do it, you big
Indian! Lettin' her run after you heah -- riskin' herself
thet way! You take care of her an' Bo an' leave this deal to
me!"
The cowboy, furious as he was at Dale, yet had keen, swift
eyes for the horses near at hand, and the men out in the dim
light. Dale lifted the girl into his arms, and, turning
without a word, stalked away to disappear in the darkness.
Las Vegas, holding his gun low, returned to the bar-room. If
there had been any change in the crowd it was slight. The
tension had relaxed. Turner no longer stood with hands up.
"You-all go on with your fun," called the cowboy, with a
sweep of his gun. "But it'd be risky fer any one to start
leavin'."
With that he backed against the bar, near where the black
bottle stood. Turner walked out to begin righting tables and
chairs, and presently the crowd, with some caution and
suspense, resumed their games and drinking. It was
significant that a wide berth lay between them and the door.
From time to time Turner served liquor to men who called for
it.
Las Vegas leaned with back against the bar. After a while he
sheathed his gun and reached around for the bottle. He drank
with his piercing eyes upon the door. No one entered and no
one went out. The games of chance there and the drinking
were not enjoyed. It was a hard scene -- that smoky, long,
ill-smelling room, with its dim, yellow lights, and dark,
evil faces, with the stealthy-stepping Turner passing to and
fro, and the dead Mulvey staring in horrible fixidity at the
ceiling, and the Mexican quivering more and more until he
shook violently, then lay still, and with the drinking,
somber, waiting cowboy, more fiery and more flaming with
every drink, listening for a step that did not come.
Time passed, and what little change it wrought was in the
cowboy. Drink affected him, but he did not become drunk. It
seemed that the liquor he drank was consumed by a mounting
fire. It was fuel to a driving passion. He grew more sullen,
somber, brooding, redder of eye and face, more crouching and
restless. At last, when the hour was so late that there was
no probability of Beasley appearing, Las Vegas flung himself
out of the saloon.
All lights of the village had now been extinguished. The
tired horses drooped in the darkness. Las Vegas found his
horse and led him away down the road and out a lane to a
field where a barn stood dim and dark in the starlight.
Morning was not far off. He unsaddled the horse and, turning
him loose, went into the barn. Here he seemed familiar with
his surroundings, for he found a ladder and climbed to a
loft, where be threw himself on the hay.
He rested, but did not sleep. At daylight he went down and
brought his horse into the barn. Sunrise found Las Vegas
pacing to and fro the short length of the interior, and
peering out through wide cracks between the boards. Then
during the succeeding couple of hours he watched the
occasional horseman and wagon and herder that passed on into
the village.
About the breakfast hour Las Vegas saddled his horse and
rode back the way he had come the night before. At Turner's
he called for something to eat as well as for whisky. After
that he became a listening, watching machine. He drank
freely for an hour; then he stopped. He seemed to be drunk,
but with a different kind of drunkenness from that usual in
drinking men. Savage, fierce, sullen, he was one to avoid.
Turner waited on him in evident fear.
At length Las Vegas's condition became such that action was
involuntary. He could not stand still nor sit down. Stalking
out, he passed the store, where men slouched back to avoid
him, and he went down the road, wary and alert, as if he
expected a rifle-shot from some hidden enemy. Upon his
return down that main thoroughfare of the village not a
person was to be seen. He went in to Turner's. The
proprietor was there at his post, nervous and pale. Las
Vegas did not order any more liquor.
"Turner, I reckon I'll bore you next time I run in heah," he
said, and stalked out.
He had the stores, the road, the village, to himself; and he
patrolled a beat like a sentry watching for an Indian
attack.
Toward noon a single man ventured out into the road to
accost the cowboy.
"Las Vegas, I'm tellin' you -- all the greasers air leavin'
the range," he said.
"Howdy, Abe!" replied Las Vegas. "What 'n hell you talkin'
about?"
The man repeated his information. And Las Vegas spat out
frightful curses.
"Abe -- you heah what Beasley's doin'?"
"Yes. He's with his men -- up at the ranch. Reckon he can't
put off ridin' down much longer."
That was where the West spoke. Beasley would be forced to
meet the enemy who had come out single-handed against him.
Long before this hour a braver man would have come to face
Las Vegas. Beasley could not hire any gang to bear the brunt
of this situation. This was the test by which even his own
men must judge him. All of which was to say that as the
wildness of the West had made possible his crimes, so it now
held him responsible for them.
"Abe, if thet -- greaser don't rustle down heah I'm goin'
after him."
"Sure. But don't be in no hurry," replied Abe.
"I'm waltzin' to slow music. . . . Gimme a smoke."
With fingers that slightly trembled Abe rolled a cigarette,
lit it from his own, and handed it to the cowboy.
"Las Vegas, I reckon I hear hosses," he said, suddenly.
"Me, too," replied Las Vegas, with his head high like that
of a listening deer. Apparently he forgot the cigarette and
also his friend. Abe hurried back to the store, where he
disappeared.
Las Vegas began his stalking up and down, and his action now
was an exaggeration of all his former movements. A rational,
ordinary mortal from some Eastern community, happening to
meet this red-faced cowboy, would have considered him drunk
or crazy. Probably Las Vegas looked both. But all the same
he was a marvelously keen and strung and efficient
instrument to meet the portending issue. How many thousands
of times, on the trails, and in the wide-streeted little
towns all over the West, had this stalk of the cowboy's been
perpetrated! Violent, bloody, tragic as it was, it had an
importance in that pioneer day equal to the use of a horse
or the need of a plow.
At length Pine was apparently a deserted village, except for
Las Vegas, who patrolled his long beat in many ways -- he
lounged while he watched; he stalked like a mountaineer; he
stole along Indian fashion, stealthily, from tree to tree,
from corner to corner; he disappeared in the saloon to
reappear at the back; he slipped round behind the barns to
come out again in the main road; and time after time he
approached his horse as if deciding to mount.
The last visit he made into Turner's saloon he found no one
there. Savagely he pounded on the bar with his gun. He got
no response. Then the long-pent-up rage burst. With wild
whoops he pulled another gun and shot at the mirror, the
lamps. He shot the neck off a bottle and drank till be
choked, his neck corded, bulging, and purple. His only slow
and deliberate action was the reloading of his gun. Then he
crashed through the doors, and with a wild yell leaped sheer
into the saddle, hauling his horse up high and goading him
to plunge away.
Men running to the door and windows of the store saw a
streak of dust flying down the road. And then they trooped
out to see it disappear. The hour of suspense ended for
them. Las Vegas had lived up to the code of the West, had
dared his man out, had waited far longer than needful to
prove that man a coward. Whatever the issue now, Beasley was
branded forever. That moment saw the decline of whatever
power he had wielded. He and his men might kill the cowboy
who had ridden out alone to face him, but that would not
change the brand.
The preceding night Beasley bad been finishing a late supper
at his newly acquired ranch, when Buck Weaver, one of his
men, burst in upon him with news of the death of Mulvey and
Pedro.
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