30,000 On the Hoof. Zane Grey

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СКАЧАТЬ some farming tools, and miscellaneous hardware for what Huett thought was a sacrifice. That bargain ended a day that had passed along swiftly.

      “My luck’s in,” exulted Logan, and on the strength of that belief he hurried to the railroad-station. Again there was a telegram for him. Before he opened it he knew Lucinda would come. Her brief reply was: “Leave to-morrow. Arrive Tuesday. Love. Lucinda.”

      “Now, there’s a girl!” ejaculated Huett, in great relief and satisfaction. Then he stared at the word love. He had forgotten to include that in either of his telegrams. As a matter of fact the sentiment love had not occurred to him. But still, he reflected, a man would have to be all sorts of a stick not to respond to one such as Lucinda Baker. Logan recalled with strong satisfaction that she had not been very popular with certain boys because she would not spoon. He had liked her for that. All at once his satisfaction and gladness glowed into something strange and perturbing. The fact of her coming to marry him grew real; he must try to think of that as well as the numberless things important toward the future of his ranch.

      The next day, Saturday, saw Huett labor strenuous hours between daylight and dark. Sunday at the blacksmith’s he packed and helped his friend rig a canvas cover over the wagon. This would keep the contents dry and serve as a place to sleep during the way down. Monday, finding he still had a couple of hundred dollars left, Logan bought horse and saddle, some tinned goods, and dried fruits, a small medicine case, some smoking tobacco, and last a large box of candy for his prospective bride.

      This present brought him to the very necessary consideration of how and where he could be married. Here the blacksmith again came to his assistance. There was a parson in town who would “hitch you up pronto for a five dollar gold piece!”

      Two overland trains rolled in from the East every day, the first arriving at eighty-thirty in the morning, and the second at ten in the evening. On board one of these today would be Lucinda Baker.

      “Hope she comes on the early one,” said Logan aloud, when he presented himself at the station far ahead of time. “We can get the ‘hitch pronto’ as Hardy calls it, and be off today.”

      It did not take Logan long to discover that the most important daily event in Flagg was the arrival of this morning train. The platform might have been a promenade, to the annoyance of the railroad men. Logan leaned against the hitching-rail and waited. Obstreperous cowboys clanked along with their awkward stride, ogling the girls. Mexicans, with blanketed shoulders, lounged about, their sloe-black eyes watchful, while handsome Navajo braves with colorful bands around their heads, padded to and fro with their moccasined tread. Lucinda would be much impressed by them, thought Logan.

      The train whistled from around the pine-forested bend. Logan felt a queer palpitation that he excused as unusual eagerness and gladness. Small wonder—a fellow’s bride came only once!

      Presently Logan saw the dusty brown train, like a long scaly snake coiling behind a puffing black head, come into sight to straighten out and rapidly draw near. The engine passed with a steaming roar. Logan counted the cars. Then with a grinding of steel on steel the train came to a halt.

Chapter Two

      Lucinda Baker’s dreams of romance and adventure had been secrets no one had ever guessed; but none of them had ever transcended this actual journey of hers to the far West to become the wife of her girlhood sweetheart. Yet it seemed she had been preparing for some incredible adventure ever since Logan had left Independence. How else could she account for having become a school teacher at sixteen, working through the long vacations, her strong application to household duties? She had always known that Logan Huett would never return home again, and that the great unknown West had claimed him. For this reason, if any, she had been training herself to become a pioneer’s wife.

      She was thrillingly happy. She had left her family well and comfortable. She was inexpressably glad to be away from persistent suitors. She was free to be herself—the half savage yearning creature she knew under her skin. Steady, plodding, dutiful, unsentimental Lucinda Baker was relegated to the past.

      Kansas in autumn was one vast seared rolling prairie, dotted with hamlets and towns along the steel highway. Lucinda grew tired watching the endless roll and stretch of barren land. She interested herself in her fellow-passengers and their children, all simple middle-class people like herself, journeying West to take up that beckoning life of the ranges. But what she saw of Colorado before dark, the gray swelling slopes toward the heave and bulk of dim mountains, gave her an uneasy, awesome premonition of a fearful wildness and ruggedness of nature much different from the pictures she had imagined. She awoke in New Mexico, to gaze in rapture at its silver valleys, its dark forests, its sharp peaks white against the blue.

      But Arizona, the next day, crowned Lucinda’s magnified expectations. During the night the train had traversed nearly half of this strange glorious wilderness of purple land. Sunshine, Canyon Diablo were but wayside stations. Were there no towns in this tremendous country? Her query to the porter brought the information that Flagg was the next stop, two hours later. Yet still Lucinda feasted her gaze and tried not to think of Logan. Would he disappoint her? She had loved him since she was a little girl when he had rescued her from some beastly boys who had dragged her into a mud puddle. But not forgetting Logan’s few and practical letters she argued that his proposal of marriage was conclusive.

      What changes would this hard country have wrought in Logan Huett? What would it do to her? Lucinda gazed with awe and fear out across this purple land, monotonous for leagues on leagues, then startling with magnificent red walls, towering and steep, that wandered away into the dim mystic blue, and again shooting spear-pointed, black-belted peaks skyward; and once the vista was bisected by a deep narrow yellow gorge, dreadful to gaze down into and justifying its diabolic name.

      After long deliberation Lucinda reasoned that Logan probably would not have changed much from the serious practical boy to whom action was almost as necessary as breathing. He would own a ranch somewhere close to a town, perhaps near Flagg, and he would have friends among these westerners. In this loyal way Lucinda subdued her qualms and shut her eyes so she could not see the dense monotonous forest the train had entered. Surrendering to thought of Logan then, she found less concern in how she would react to him than how he would discover her. Lucinda knew that she had grown and changed more after fifteen than was usual in girls. What her friends and family had said about her improvement, and especially the boys who had courted her, was far more flattering than justified, she felt. But perhaps it might be enough to make Logan fail to recognize her.

      A shrill whistle disrupted Lucinda’s meditation. The train was now clattering down grade and emerging from the green into a clearing. A trainman opened the coach-door to call out in sing-song voice: “Flagg. Stop five minutes.”

      Lucinda’s eyes dimmed. She wiped them so she could see out. The Forest had given place to a ghastly area of bleached and burned stumps of trees. That led to a huge hideous structure with blue smoke belching from a great boiler-like chimney. Around it and beyond were piles of yellow lumber as high as houses. This was a sawmill. Lucinda preferred the forest to this crude and raw evidence of man’s labors. Beyond were scattered little cabins made of slabs and shacks, all dreary and drab, unrelieved by any green.

      As the train slowed down with a grind of wheels there was a noisy bustle in the coach. Many passengers were getting off here. Lucinda marked several young girls, one of them pretty with snapping eyes, who were excited beyond due. What would they have shown had they Lucinda’s cue for feeling? She felt a growing tumult within, but outwardly she was composed.

      When the train jarred to a stop, Lucinda lifted her two grips onto the seat and crossed the aisle to look out on that side. She saw up above the track a long block of queer, high, board fronted buildings all adjoining. They fitted her first impression СКАЧАТЬ