Code of the West. Zane Grey

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СКАЧАТЬ the bounds of possibility for them to fix this Ford to fit in with their scheme. All the same, he decided to take instant advantage of the humor of the car before it changed its mind. Forthwith he left the engine running, saw that there was plenty of gasoline and oil, and then hurried back to the house. Donning his jacket and his big black sombrero, he presented himself in the kitchen for orders from the feminine members of the family. His elder sister, Mary, was not there, but Molly, in her requests, made up for two. Cal’s mother was a slight, tall, gray-haired woman, with a wonderful record of pioneer service and sacrifice written on her worn face. The days of her ruggedness were past. She gave Cal money and instructions, and as he was about to go she called him back.

      “Son, listen,” she said, in lower tone. “Shore them tow-haids air up to some mischief. Now don’t forget your manners, whatever they do. It speaks well for you that you offered to meet teacher’s sister. Carry it through, Cal. In my youth the Thurmans of Texas knew how to be courteous to a guest. We’ve most forgot it heah in this hard Tonto country. Shore I look up to you an’ Molly.”

      “All right, mother, I’ll be good,” replied Cal, with a laugh, and bounded out on the porch and off toward the corral. He wanted to avoid meeting his tormentors again, and was fortunate in this. Upon reaching the Ford, he was relieved and amazed to find the engine still running—not only running, but actually softly humming, with an occasional purr.

      “Say, what’s gotten into this old bugg—wagon?” muttered Cal, as he climbed in. He experienced both an inward quake and a thrill. He was young, and his spirit was such that he rose to an occasion that seemed to him harder than any range task ever given him. Indeed, though he felt this, he had quite forgotten Miss Stockwell’s sister. The issue now was to perform a kindness, a duty to one who had been good to him, a task to please his mother, and to do this in spite of Wess Thurman and Tim Matthews and their allies in deviltry.

      Cal got out of the corral and down on the valley road without being hailed from behind—a fact that he took as a good start to his adventure. Then he forgot the boys and lost himself in attention to the car and the sensation of driving along the shady, beautiful road. For some unknown reason the Ford ran better than it ever had run for Cal. As he hummed along between the green walls of juniper and live-oak trees he gradually forgot his uneasiness.

      The morning was clear, and still cool in the shady road. Blue jays and gray squirrels gave noisy awareness of his approach. White-faced red cattle bearing the noted Four T brand browsed along the way. He came to where the road descended a hill, and entered a rocky gully shaded by sycamore trees. They had just begun to add a gold tinge to the green, and cast a wonderful amber light upon the pools of the brook. A flock of wild turkeys, surprised at their drinking, ran with low startled put—put—put into the brush. By and by Cal passed out of the forest of juniper and oak into the rolling hill-lands of manzanita, through which the road meandered and gradually descended.

      Four or five miles took Cal down out of the foothills into the level brush-covered valley lands that led to Ryson. Here and there, at long intervals, lay the ranch of a cattleman. All the old settlers in this country let their stock range over unfenced government lands. Most of them had homesteaded the one hundred and sixty acres allotted by the government, and whenever Cal rode through this district he was possessed of a stronger desire to settle on a place of his own.

      “I’ll homestead that Bear Flat, if father will let me, this very fall,” he soliloquized. “Wess has his eye on Mesa Hill, an’ I’ll bet he’s just waitin’ to save enough money to marry one of them darn twins—or maybe till he can find out which is Angie an’ which is Aggie!—But girls are the least of my trouble. No marryin’ for me. Give me my horses an’ a dog an’ a gun.”

      So young Thurman drove on along the road, with the dry, warm, fragrant breeze in his face, and his thoughts leisurely following idle, dreamy channels. At length he came out into country flat enough for him to see the blue peaks of the Mazatzal range to the south, and to the north the wonderful Mogollon Rim, a black-and-yellow wandering wall of mountain, horizon-long, and ending in the purple distance of the west. This valley was poor in grass, but rich in desert vegetation, such as low scrub oak, and thorny brush, and manzanita, and mescal cactus. On the flats a gray bleached grass had been nipped short. The farther Cal progressed along this road the rougher became the country, and the less he liked it. Green Valley nestled high up in the foothills, and was not many miles from the great slopes, ridges, and canyons of the Tonto, and within half a day’s ride of the lofty Rim. How different his wonderful Bear Flat from this country!

      Several miles east of Ryson he turned a curve in the road to see a tall lanky young man plodding wearily along, bowed under the burden of a bundle wrapped in canvas. As Cal neared the fellow it became evident that he could hardly lift one foot after the other. His soiled worn garb attested to the possibility of contact with brush and a bed on the ground. Cal slowed up, naturally expecting the man to turn and ask for a ride. But he did neither. Then Cal stopped and hailed him.

      “Hey, want a lift?”

      The young man raised a cadaverous pale face that quickly aroused Cal’s sympathy.

      “Thanks. I’ll say I would,” replied the traveler, and he lifted the bundle down from his stooped shoulders.

      “Throw it in back an’ ride in front with me,” suggested Cal, eying him with growing interest. Upon closer view this individual appeared to Cal to be the most singularly built human being he had ever seen. He was very tall, and extremely thin, and so loose jointed that he seemed about to fall apart. His arms were so long as to be grotesque—like the arms of an ape—and his hands were of prodigious size. He had what Cal called a chicken neck, a small head, and the homeliest face Cal had ever looked into. Altogether he presented a ridiculous and pathetic figure.

      “I was all in—and lost in the bargain,” said he. The freckles stood out prominently on his wax-colored skin. He was so long and awkward, and his feet were so huge, that Cal thought he was not going to be able to get into the front seat. But he folded himself in, and slouched down with a heave of relief.

      “Lost? What place were you trying to find?” queried Cal as he started the car again.

      “I’ve hiked from Phoenix. And a couple of days this side of Roosevelt Dam I butted into a gas station along the road—Chadwick. The man there told me I could get a job at the Bar XX ranch, and where to find the trail. I found a trail all right, but it led nowhere. I got lost and couldn’t find my way back to Chadwick. Been ten days and nights.”

      “Huh! You must be hungry?”

      “I’ll say so.”

      “Well, you’re way off the track. Bar XX ranch is east. You’ve traveled north. An’ I happen to know Bloom, the foreman of that outfit. He doesn’t want any men.”

      “It’s kinda hard to get a job,” replied the fellow, with a sigh. “Made sure I could catch on in the Salt River Valley. But everybody’s broke there, same as me, and I guess they’d just as lief not see any service men.”

      “You were in the army?” asked Cal, with a heightening of sympathy.

      “No. I was a marine,” replied the other, briefly.

      His tone of aloofness rather reminded Cal of Boyd upon his return from France. These service men who had seen service were reticent, strange.

      “Marine? That’s a sailor, huh? Did you get over?”

      “I’ll say so. I went through Château Thierry, and now by God! I can’t get work in my own country,” he replied bitterly.

      “Say, СКАЧАТЬ