The Heritage of the Desert

Z >> Zane Grey >> The Heritage of the Desert

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"I'm glad to hear it. Good-day, Snood, I'm in something of a hurry."

With that Hare faced about in the direction of White Sage. Once clear of
the corrals he saw the village closer than he had expected to find it.
He walked Silvermane most of the way, and jogged along the rest, so that
he reached the village in the twilight. Memory served him well. He rode
in as August Naab had ridden out, and arrived at the Bishop's barn-yard,
where he put up his horse. Then he went to the house. It was necessary
to introduce himself for none of the Bishop's family recognized in him
the young man they had once befriended. The old Bishop prayed and
reminded him of the laying on of hands. The women served him with food,
the young men brought him new boots and garments to replace those that
had been worn to tatters. Then they plied him with questions about the
Naabs, whom they had not seen for nearly a year. They rejoiced at his
recovered health; they welcomed him with warm words.

Later Hare sought an interview alone with the Bishop's sons, and he told
them of the loss of the sheep, of the burning of the new corrals, of the
tracks leading to Holderness's ranch. In turn they warned him of his
danger, and gave him information desired by August Naab. Holderness's
grasp on the outlying ranges and water-rights had slowly and surely
tightened; every month he acquired new territory; he drove cattle
regularly to Lund, and it was no secret that much of the stock came from
the eastern slope of Coconina. He could not hire enough riders to do his
work. A suspicion that he was not a cattle-man but a rustler had slowly
gained ground; it was scarcely hinted, but it was believed. His
friendship with Dene had become offensive to the Mormons, who had
formerly been on good footing with him. Dene's killing of Martin Cole
was believed to have been at Holderness's instigation. Cole had
threatened Holderness. Then Dene and Cole had met in the main street of
White Sage. Cole's death ushered in the bloody time that he had
prophesied. Dene's band had grown; no man could say how many men he had
or who they were. Chance and Culver were openly his lieutenants, and
whenever they came into the village there was shooting. There were ugly
rumors afloat in regard to their treatment of Mormon women. The wives
and daughters of once peaceful White Sage dared no longer venture
out-of-doors after nightfall. There was more money in coin and more
whiskey than ever before in the village. Lund and the few villages
northward were terrorized as well as White Sage. It was a bitter story.

The Bishop and his sons tried to persuade Hare next morning to leave the
village without seeing Holderness, urging the futility of such a meeting.

"I will see him," said Hare. He spent the morning at the cottage, and
when it came time to take his leave he smiled into the anxious faces." If
I weren't able to take care of myself August Naab would never have said
so.'

Had Hare asked himself what he intended to do when he faced Holderness he
could not have told. His feelings were pent-in, bound, but at the bottom
something rankled. His mind seemed steeped in still thunderous
atmosphere.

How well he remembered the quaint wide street, the gray church! As he
rode many persons stopped to gaze at Silvermane. He turned the corner
into the main thoroughfare A new building had been added to the several
stores. Mustangs stood, bridles down, before the doors; men lounged
along the railings.

As he dismounted he heard the loungers speak of his horse, and he saw
their leisurely manner quicken. He stepped into the store to meet more
men, among them August Naab's friend Abe. Hare might never have been in
White Sage for all the recognition he found, but he excited something
keener than curiosity. He asked for spurs, a clasp-knife and some other
necessaries, and he contrived, when momentarily out of sight behind a
pile of boxes, to whisper his identity to Abe. The Mormon was
dumbfounded. When he came out of his trance he showed his gladness, and
at a question of Hare's he silently pointed toward the saloon.

Hare faced the open door. The room had been enlarged; it was now on a
level with the store floor, and was blue with smoke, foul with the fumes
of rum, and noisy with the voices of dark, rugged men.

A man in the middle of the room was dancing a jig.

"Hello, who's this?" he said, straightening up.

It might have been the stopping of the dance or the quick spark in Hare's
eyes that suddenly quieted the room. Hare had once vowed to himself that
he would never forget the scarred face; it belonged to the outlaw Chance.

The sight of it flashed into the gulf of Hare's mind like a meteor into
black night. A sudden madness raced through his veins.

"Hello' Don't you know me?" he said, with a long step that brought him
close to Chance.

The outlaw stood irresolute. Was this an old friend or an enemy? His
beady eyes scintillated and twitched as if they sought to look him over,
yet dared not because it was only in the face that intention could be
read.

The stillness of the room broke to a hoarse whisper from some one.

"Look how he packs his gun."

Another man answering whispered: "There's not six men in Utah who pack a
gun thet way."

Chance heard these whispers, for his eye shifted downward the merest
fraction of a second. The brick color of his face turned a dirty white.

"Do you know me?" demanded Hare.

Chance's answer was a spasmodic jerking of his hand toward his hip.
Hare's arm moved quicker, and Chance's Colt went spinning to the floor.

"Too slow," said Hare. Then he flung Chance backward and struck him
blows that sent his head with sodden thuds against the log wall. Chance
sank to the floor in a heap.

Hare kicked the outlaw's gun out of the way, and wheeled to the crowd.
Holderness stood foremost, his tall form leaning against the bar, his
clear eyes shining like light on ice.

"Do you know me?" asked Hare, curtly.

HolderDess started slightly. "I certainly don't," he replied.

"You slapped my face once." Hare leaned close to the rancher. "Slap it
now--you rustler!"

In the slow, guarded instant when Hare's gaze held Holderness and the
other men, a low murmuring ran through the room.

"Dene's spy!" suddenly burst out Holderness.

Hare slapped his face. Then he backed a few paces with his right arm
held before him almost as high as his shoulder, the wrist rigid, the
fingers quivering.

"Don't try to draw, Holderness. Thet's August Naab's trick with a gun,"
whispered a man, hurriedly.

"Holderness, I made a bonfire over at Seeping Springs," said Hare." I
burned the new corrals your men built, and I tracked them to your ranch.
Snood threw up his job when he heard it. He's an honest man, and no
honest man will work for a water-thief, a cattle-rustler, a sheep-killer.
You're shown up, Holderness. Leave the country before some one kills
you--understand, before some one kills you!"

Holderness stood motionless against the bar, his eyes fierce with
passionate hate.

Hare backed step by step to the outside door, his right hand still high,
his look holding the crowd bound to the last instant. Then he slipped
out, scattered the group round Silvermane, and struck hard with the
spurs.

The gray, never before spurred, broke down the road into his old wild
speed.

Men were crossing from the corner of the green square. One, a compact
little fellow, swarthy, his dark hair long and flowing, with jaunty and
alert air, was Dene, the outlaw leader. He stopped, with his companions,
to let the horse cross.

Hare guided the thundering stallion slightly to the left. Silvermane
swerved and in two mighty leaps bore down on the outlaw. Dene saved
himself by quickly leaping aside, but even as he moved Silvermane struck
him with his left fore-leg, sending him into the dust.

At the street corner Hare glanced back. Yelling men were rushing from
the saloon and some of them fired after him. The bullets whistled
harmlessly behind Hare. Then the corner house shut off his view.

Silvermane lengthened out and stretched lower with his white mane flying
and his nose pointed level for the desert.

XI
THE DESERT-HAWK

Toward the close of the next day Jack Hare arrived at Seeping Springs. A
pile of gray ashes marked the spot where the trimmed logs had lain.
Round the pool ran a black circle hard packed into the ground by many
hoofs. Even the board flume had been burned to a level with the glancing
sheet of water. Hare was slipping Silvermane's bit to let him drink when
he heard a halloo. Dave Naab galloped out of the cedars, and presently
August Naab and his other sons appeared with a pack-train.

"Now you've played bob!" exclaimed Dave. He swung out of his saddle and
gripped Hare with both hands. "I know what you've done; I know where
you've been. Father will be furious, but don't you care."

The other Naabs trotted down the slope and lined their horses before the
pool. The sons stared in blank astonishment; the father surveyed the
scene slowly, and then fixed wrathful eyes on Hare.

"What does this mean?" he demanded, with the sonorous roll of his angry
voice.

Hare told all that had happened.

August Naab's gloomy face worked, and his eagle-gaze had in it a strange
far-seeing light; his mind was dwelling upon his mystic power of
revelation.

"I see--I see," he said haltingly.

"Ki--yi-i-i!" yelled Dave Naab with all the power of his lungs. His head
was back, his mouth wide open, his face red, his neck corded and swollen
with the intensity of his passion.

"Be still--boy!" ordered his father." Hare, this was madness--but tell me
what you learned."

Briefly Hare repeated all that he had been told at the Bishop's, and
concluded with the killing of Martin Cole by Dene.

August Naab bowed his head and his giant frame shook under the force of
his emotion. Martin Cole was the last of his life-long friends.

"This--this outlaw--you say you ran him down?" asked Naab, rising haggard
and shaken out of his grief.

"Yes. He didn't recognize me or know what was coming till Silvermane was
on him. But he was quick, and fell sidewise. Silvermane's knee sent him
sprawling."

"What will it all lead to?" asked August Naab, and in his extremity he
appealed to his eldest son.

"The bars are down," said Snap Naab, with a click of his long teeth.

"Father," began Dave Naab earnestly, "Jack has done a splendid thing.
The news will fly over Utah like wildfire. Mormons are slow. They need
a leader. But they can follow and they will. We can't cure these evils
by hoping and praying. We've got to fight!"

"Dave's right, dad, it means fight," cried George, with his fist clinched
high.

"You've been wrong, father, in holding back," said Make Naab, his lean
jaw bulging. "This Holderness will steal the water and meat out of our
children's mouths. We've got to fight!"

"Let's ride to White Sage," put in Snap Naub, and the little flecks in
his eyes were dancing. "I'll throw a gun on Dene. I can get to him.
We've been tolerable friends. He's wanted me to join his band. I'll
kill him."

He laughed as he raised his right hand and swept it down to his left
side; the blue Colt lay on his outstretched palm. Dene's life and
Holderness's, too, hung in the balance between two deadly snaps of this
desert-wolf's teeth. He was one of the Naabs, and yet apart from them,
for neither religion, nor friendship, nor life itself mattered to him.

August Naab's huge bulk shook again, not this time with grief, but in
wrestling effort to withstand the fiery influence of this unholy fighting
spirit among his sons.

"I am forbidden."

His answer was gentle, but its very gentleness breathed of his battle
over himself, of allegiance to something beyond earthly duty. "We'll
drive the cattle to Silver Cup," he decided, "and then go home. I give
up Seeping Springs. Perhaps this valley and water will content
Holderness."

When they reached the oasis Hare was surprised to find that it was the
day before Christmas. The welcome given the long-absent riders was like
a celebration. Much to Hare's disappointment Mescal did not appear; the
homecoming was not joyful to him because it lacked her welcoming smile.

Christmas Day ushered in the short desert winter; ice formed in the
ditches and snow fell, but neither long resisted the reflection of the
sun from the walls. The early morning hours were devoted to religious
services. At midday dinner was served in the big room of August Naab's
cabin. At one end was a stone fireplace where logs blazed and crackled.

In all his days Hare had never seen such a bountiful board. Yet he was
unable to appreciate it, to share in the general thanksgiving.
Dominating all other feeling was the fear that Mescal would come in and
take a seat by Snap Naab's side. When Snap seated himself opposite with
his pale little wife Hare found himself waiting for Mescal with an
intensity that made him dead to all else. The girls, Judith, Esther,
Rebecca, came running gayly in, clad in their best dresses, with bright
ribbons to honor the occasion. Rebecca took the seat beside Snap, and
Hare gulped with a hard contraction of his throat. Mescal was not yet a
Mormon's wife! He seemed to be lifted upward, to grow light-headed with
the blessed assurance. Then Mescal entered and took the seat next to
him. She smiled and spoke, and the blood beat thick in his ears.

That moment was happy, but it was as nothing to its successor. Under the
table-cover Mescal's hand found his, and pressed it daringly and gladly.
Her hand lingered in his all the time August Naab spent in carving the
turkey--lingered there even though Snap Naab's hawk eyes were never far
away. In the warm touch of her hand, in some subtle thing that radiated
from her Hare felt a change in the girl he loved. A few months had
wrought in her some indefinable difference, even as they had increased
his love to its full volume and depth. Had his absence brought her to
the realization of her woman's heart?

In the afternoon Hare left the house and spent a little while with
Silvermane; then he wandered along the wall to the head of the oasis, and
found a seat on the fence. The next few weeks presented to him a
situation that would be difficult to endure. He would be near Mescal,
but only to have the truth forced cruelly home to him every sane moment--
that she was not for him. Out on the ranges he had abandoned himself to
dreams of her; they had been beautiful; they had made the long hours seem
like minutes; but they had forged chains that could not be broken, and
now he was hopelessly fettered.

The clatter of hoofs roused him from a reverie which was half sad, half
sweet. Mescal came tearing down the level on Black Bolly. She pulled in
the mustang and halted beside Hare to hold out shyly a red scarf
embroidered with Navajo symbols in white and red beads.

"I've wanted a chance to give you this," she said, "a little Christmas
present."

For a few seconds Hare could find no words.

"Did you make it for me, Mescal?" he finally asked. "How good of you!
I'll keep it always."

"Put it on now--let me tie it--there!"

"But, child. Suppose he--they saw it?"

"I don't care who sees it."

She met him with clear, level eyes. Her curt, crisp speech was full of
meaning. He looked long at her, with a yearning denied for many a day.
Her face was the same, yet wonderfully changed; the same in line and
color, but different in soul and spirit. The old sombre shadow lay deep
in the eyes, but to it had been added gleam of will and reflection of
thought. The whole face had been refined and transformed.

"Mescal! What's happened? You're not the same. You seem almost happy.
Have you--has heaven you up?"

"Don't you know Mormons better than that? The thing is the same--so far
as they're concerned."

"But Mescal--are you going to marry him? For God's sake, tell me."

"Never." It was a woman's word, instant, inflexible, desperate. With a
deep breath Hare realized where the girl had changed.

"Still you're promised, pledged to him! How'll you get out of it?"

"I don't know how. But I'll cut out my tongue, and be dumb as my poor
peon before I'll speak the word that'll make me Snap Naab's wife."

There was a long silence. Mescal smoothed out Bolly's mane, and Hare
gazed up at the walls with eyes that did not see them.

Presently he spoke." I'm afraid for you. Snap watched us to-day at
dinner."

"He's jealous."

"Suppose he sees this scarf?"

Mescal laughed defiantly. It was bewildering for Hare to hear her.

"He'll--Mescal, I may yet come to this." Hare's laugh echoed Mescal's as
he pointed to the enclosure under the wall, where the graves showed bare
and rough.

Her warm color fled, but it flooded back, rich, mantling brow and cheek
and neck.

"Snap Naab will never kill you," she said impulsively.

"Mescal."

She swiftly turned her face away as his hand closed on hers.

"Mescal, do you love me?"

The trembling of her fingers and the heaving of her bosom lent his hope
conviction. "Mescal," he went on, "these past months have been years,
years of toiling, thinking, changing, but always loving. I'm not the man
you knew. I'm wild-- I'm starved for a sight of you. I love you! Mescal,
my desert flower!"

She raised her free hand to his shoulder and swayed toward him. He held
her a moment, clasped tight, and then released her.

"I'm quite mad!" he exclaimed, in a passion of self-reproach." What a
risk I'm putting on you! But I couldn't help it. Look at me-- Just
once--please-- Mescal, just one look. ... Now go."

The drama of the succeeding days was of absorbing interest. Hare had
liberty; there was little work for him to do save to care for Silvermane.
He tried to hunt foxes in the caves and clefts; he rode up and down the
broad space under the walls; he sought the open desert only to be driven
in by the bitter, biting winds. Then he would return to the big
living-room of the Naabs and sit before the burning logs. This spacious
room was warm, light, pleasant, and was used by every one in leisure
hours. Mescal spent most of her time there. She was engaged upon a new
frock of buckskin, and over this she bent with her needle and beads.
When there was a chance Hare talked with her, speaking one language with
his tongue, a far different one with his eyes. When she was not present
he looked into the glowing red fire and dreamed of her.

In the evenings when Snap came in to his wooing and drew Mescal into a
corner, Hare watched with covert glance and smouldering jealousy.
Somehow he had come to see all things and all people in the desert glass,
and his symbol for Snap Garb was the desert-hawk. Snap's eyes were as
wild and piercing as those of a hawk; his nose and mouth were as the beak
of a hawk; his hands resembled the claws of a hawk; and the spurs he
wore, always bloody, were still more significant of his ruthless nature.
Then Snap's courting of the girl, the cool assurance, the unhastening
ease, were like the slow rise, the sail, and the poise of a desert-hawk
before the downward lightning-swift swoop on his quarry.

It was intolerable for Hare to sit there in the evenings, to try to play
with the children who loved him, to talk to August Naab when his eye
seemed ever drawn to the quiet couple in the corner, and his ear was
unconsciously strained to catch a passing word. That hour was a
miserable one for him, yet he could not bring himself to leave the room.
He never saw Snap touch her; he never heard Mescal's voice; he believed
that she spoke very little. When the hour was over and Mescal rose to
pass to her room, then his doubt, his fear, his misery, were as though
they had never been, for as Mescal said good-night she would give him one
look, swift as a flash, and in it were womanliness and purity, and some-
thing beyond his comprehension. Her Indian serenity and mysticism veiled
yet suggested some secret, some power by which she might yet escape the
iron band of this Mormon rule. Hare could not fathom it. In that
good-night glance was a meaning for him alone, if meaning ever shone in
woman's eyes, and it said: "I will be true to you and to myself!"

Once the idea struck him that as soon as spring returned it would be an
easy matter, and probably wise, for him to leave the oasis and go up into
Utah, far from the desert-canyon country. But the thought refused to
stay before his consciousness a moment. New life had flushed his veins
here. He loved the dreamy, sleepy oasis with its mellow sunshine always
at rest on the glistening walls; he loved the cedar-scented plateau where
hope had dawned, and the wind-swept sand-strips, where hard out-of-door
life and work had renewed his wasting youth; he loved the canyon winding
away toward Coconina, opening into wide abyss; and always, more than all,
he loved the Painted Desert, with its ever-changing pictures, printed in
sweeping dust and bare peaks and purple haze. He loved the beauty of
these places, and the wildness in them had an affinity with something
strange and untamed in him. He would never leave them. When his blood
had cooled, when this tumultuous thrill and swell had worn themselves
out, happiness would come again.

Early in the winter Snap Naab had forced his wife to visit his father's
house with him; and she had remained in the room, white-faced,
passionately jealous, while he wooed Mescal. Then had come a scene.
Hare had not been present, but he knew its results. Snap had been
furious, his father grave, Mescal tearful and ashamed. The wife found
many ways to interrupt her husband's lovemaking. She sent the children
for him; she was taken suddenly ill; she discovered that the corral gate
was open and his cream-colored pinto, dearest to his heart, was running
loose; she even set her cottage on fire.

One Sunday evening just before twilight Hare was sitting on the porch
with August Naab and Dave, when their talk was interrupted by Snap's loud
calling for his wife. At first the sounds came from inside his cabin.
Then he put his head out of a window and yelled. Plainly he was both
impatient and angry. It was nearly time for him to make his Sunday call
upon Mescal.

"Something's wrong," muttered Dave.

"Hester! Hester!" yelled Snap.

Mother Ruth came out and said that Hester was not there.

"Where is she?" Snap banged on the window-sill with his fists. "Find
her, somebody--Hester!"

"Son, this is the Sabbath," called Father Naab, gravely. "Lower your
voice. Now what's the matter?"

"Matter!" bawled Snap, giving way to rage. "When I was asleep Hester
stole all my clothes. She's hid them--she's run off--there's not a
d--n thing for me to put on! I'll--"

The roar of laughter from August and Dave drowned the rest of the speech.
Hare managed to stifle his own mirth. Snap pulled in his head and
slammed the window shut.

"Jack," said August, "even among Mormons the course of true love never
runs smooth."

Hare finally forgot his bitter humor in pity for the wife. Snap came to
care not at all for her messages and tricks, and he let nothing interfere
with his evening beside Mescal. It was plain that he had gone far on the
road of love. Whatever he had been in the beginning of the betrothal, he
was now a lover, eager, importunate. His hawk's eyes were softer than
Hare had ever seen them; he was obliging, kind, gay, an altogether
different Snap Naab. He groomed himself often, and wore clean scares,
and left off his bloody spurs. For eight months he had not touched the
bottle. When spring approached he was madly in love with Mescal. And
the marriage was delayed because his wife would not have another woman in
her home.

Once Hare heard Snap remonstrating with his father.

"If she don't come to time soon I'll keep the kids and send her back to
her father."

"Don't be hasty, son. Let her have time," replied August. "Women must
be humored. I'll wager she'll give in before the cottonwood blows, and
that's not long."

It was Hare's habit, as the days grew warmer, to walk a good deal, and
one evening, as twilight shadowed the oasis and grew black under the
towering walls, he strolled out toward the fields. While passing Snap's
cottage Hare heard a woman's voice in passionate protest and a man's in
strident anger Later as he stood with his arm on Silvermane, a woman's
scream, at first high-pitched, then suddenly faint and smothered, caused
him to grow rigid, and his hand clinched tight. When he went back by the
cottage a low moaning confirmed his suspicion.

That evening Snap appeared unusually bright and happy; and he asked his
father to name the day for the wedding. August did so in a loud voice
and with evident relief. Then the quaint Mormon congratulations were
offered to Mescal. To Hare, watching the strange girl with the
distressingly keen intuition of an unfortunate lover, she appeared as
pleased as any of them that the marriage was settled. But there was no
shyness, no blushing confusion. When Snap bent to kiss her--his first
kiss--she slightly turned her face, so that his lips brushed her cheek,
yet even then her self-command did not break for an instant. It was a
task for Hare to pretend to congratulate her; nevertheless he mumbled
something. She lifted her long lashes, and there, deep beneath the
shadows, was unutterable anguish. It gave him a shock. He went to his
room, convinced that she had yielded; and though he could not blame her,
and he knew she was helpless, he cried out in reproach and resentment.
She had failed him, as he had known she must fail. He tossed on his bed
and thought; he lay quiet, wide-open eyes staring into the darkness, and
his mind burned and seethed. Through the hours of that long night he
learned what love had cost him.

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