Zane Grey (5 page)

The road, like the trail, led down grade, but no longer at such steep
angles, and was bordered by cedar and pinyon, jack-pine and juniper,
mescal and manzanita. Quite sharply, going around a ridge, the road
led Jean's eye down to a small open flat of marshy, or at least grassy,
ground. This green oasis in the wilderness of red and timbered ridges
marked another change in the character of the Basin. Beyond that the
country began to spread out and roll gracefully, its dark-green forest
interspersed with grassy parks, until Jean headed into a long, wide
gray-green valley surrounded by black-fringed hills. His pulses
quickened here. He saw cattle dotting the expanse, and here and there
along the edge log cabins and corrals.

As a village, Grass Valley could not boast of much, apparently, in the
way of population. Cabins and houses were widely scattered, as if the
inhabitants did not care to encroach upon one another. But the one
store, built of stone, and stamped also with the characteristic
isolation, seemed to Jean to be a rather remarkable edifice. Not
exactly like a fort did it strike him, but if it had not been designed
for defense it certainly gave that impression, especially from the
long, low side with its dark eye-like windows about the height of a
man's shoulder. Some rather fine horses were tied to a hitching rail.
Otherwise dust and dirt and age and long use stamped this Grass Valley
store and its immediate environment.

Jean threw his bridle, and, getting down, mounted the low porch and
stepped into the wide open door. A face, gray against the background
of gloom inside, passed out of sight just as Jean entered. He knew he
had been seen. In front of the long, rather low-ceiled store were four
men, all absorbed, apparently, in a game of checkers. Two were playing
and two were looking on. One of these, a gaunt-faced man past middle
age, casually looked up as Jean entered. But the moment of that casual
glance afforded Jean time enough to meet eyes he instinctively
distrusted. They masked their penetration. They seemed neither curious
nor friendly. They saw him as if he had been merely thin air.

"Good evenin'," said Jean.

After what appeared to Jean a lapse of time sufficient to impress him
with a possible deafness of these men, the gaunt-faced one said,
"Howdy, Isbel!"

The tone was impersonal, dry, easy, cool, laconic, and yet it could not
have been more pregnant with meaning. Jean's sharp sensibilities
absorbed much. None of the slouch-sombreroed, long-mustached
Texans—for so Jean at once classed them—had ever seen Jean, but they
knew him and knew that he was expected in Grass Valley. All but the
one who had spoken happened to have their faces in shadow under the
wide-brimmed black hats. Motley-garbed, gun-belted, dusty-booted, they
gave Jean the same impression of latent force that he had encountered
in Colter.

"Will somebody please tell me where to find my father, Gaston Isbel?"
inquired Jean, with as civil a tongue as he could command.

Nobody paid the slightest attention. It was the same as if Jean had
not spoken. Waiting, half amused, half irritated, Jean shot a rapid
glance around the store. The place had felt bare; and Jean, peering
back through gloomy space, saw that it did not contain much. Dry goods
and sacks littered a long rude counter; long rough shelves divided
their length into stacks of canned foods and empty sections; a low
shelf back of the counter held a generous burden of cartridge boxes,
and next to it stood a rack of rifles. On the counter lay open cases
of plug tobacco, the odor of which was second in strength only to that
of rum.

Jean's swift-roving eye reverted to the men, three of whom were
absorbed in the greasy checkerboard. The fourth man was the one who
had spoken and he now deigned to look at Jean. Not much flesh was
there stretched over his bony, powerful physiognomy. He stroked a lean
chin with a big mobile hand that suggested more of bridle holding than
familiarity with a bucksaw and plow handle. It was a lazy hand. The
man looked lazy. If he spoke at all it would be with lazy speech, yet
Jean had not encountered many men to whom he would have accorded more
potency to stir in him the instinct of self-preservation.

"Shore," drawled this gaunt-faced Texan, "old Gass lives aboot a mile
down heah." With slow sweep of the big hand he indicated a general
direction to the south; then, appearing to forget his questioner, he
turned his attention to the game.

Jean muttered his thanks and, striding out, he mounted again, and drove
the pack mule down the road. "Reckon I've ran into the wrong folds
to-day," he said. "If I remember dad right he was a man to make an'
keep friends. Somehow I'll bet there's goin' to be hell." Beyond the
store were some rather pretty and comfortable homes, little ranch
houses back in the coves of the hills. The road turned west and Jean
saw his first sunset in the Tonto Basin. It was a pageant of purple
clouds with silver edges, and background of deep rich gold. Presently
Jean met a lad driving a cow. "Hello, Johnny!" he said, genially, and
with a double purpose. "My name's Jean Isbel. By Golly! I'm lost in
Grass Valley. Will you tell me where my dad lives?"

"Yep. Keep right on, an' y'u cain't miss him," replied the lad, with a
bright smile. "He's lookin' fer y'u."

"How do you know, boy?" queried Jean, warmed by that smile.

"Aw, I know. It's all over the valley thet y'u'd ride in ter-day.
Shore I wus the one thet tole yer dad an' he give me a dollar."

"Was he glad to hear it?" asked Jean, with a queer sensation in his
throat.

"Wal, he plumb was."

"An' who told you I was goin' to ride in to-day?"

"I heerd it at the store," replied the lad, with an air of confidence.
"Some sheepmen was talkin' to Greaves. He's the storekeeper. I was
settin' outside, but I heerd. A Mexican come down off the Rim ter-day
an' he fetched the news." Here the lad looked furtively around, then
whispered. "An' thet greaser was sent by somebody. I never heerd no
more, but them sheepmen looked pretty plumb sour. An' one of them,
comin' out, give me a kick, darn him. It shore is the luckedest day
fer us cowmen."

"How's that, Johnny?"

"Wal, that's shore a big fight comin' to Grass Valley. My dad says so
an' he rides fer yer dad. An' if it comes now y'u'll be heah."

"Ahuh!" laughed Jean. "An' what then, boy?"

The lad turned bright eyes upward. "Aw, now, yu'all cain't come thet
on me. Ain't y'u an Injun, Jean Isbel? Ain't y'u a hoss tracker thet
rustlers cain't fool? Ain't y'u a plumb dead shot? Ain't y'u wuss'ern
a grizzly bear in a rough-an'-tumble? ... Now ain't y'u, shore?"

Jean bade the flattering lad a rather sober good day and rode on his
way. Manifestly a reputation somewhat difficult to live up to had
preceded his entry into Grass Valley.

Jean's first sight of his future home thrilled him through. It was a
big, low, rambling log structure standing well out from a wooded knoll
at the edge of the valley. Corrals and barns and sheds lay off at the
back. To the fore stretched broad pastures where numberless cattle and
horses grazed. At sunset the scene was one of rich color. Prosperity
and abundance and peace seemed attendant upon that ranch; lusty voices
of burros braying and cows bawling seemed welcoming Jean. A hound
bayed. The first cool touch of wind fanned Jean's cheek and brought a
fragrance of wood smoke and frying ham.

Horses in the Pasture romped to the fence and whistled at these
newcomers. Jean espied a white-faced black horse that gladdened his
sight. "Hello, Whiteface! I'll sure straddle you," called Jean. Then
up the gentle slope he saw the tall figure of his father—the same as
he had seen him thousands of times, bareheaded, shirt sleeved, striding
with long step. Jean waved and called to him.

"Hi, You Prodigal!" came the answer. Yes, the voice of his father—and
Jean's boyhood memories flashed. He hurried his horse those last few
rods. No—dad was not the same. His hair shone gray.

"Here I am, dad," called Jean, and then he was dismounting. A deep,
quiet emotion settled over him, stilling the hurry, the eagerness, the
pang in his breast.

"Son, I shore am glad to see you," said his father, and wrung his hand.
"Wal, wal, the size of you! Shore you've grown, any how you favor your
mother."

Jean felt in the iron clasp of hand, in the uplifting of the handsome
head, in the strong, fine light of piercing eyes that there was no
difference in the spirit of his father. But the old smile could not
hide lines and shades strange to Jean.

"Dad, I'm as glad as you," replied Jean, heartily. "It seems long
we've been parted, now I see you. Are You well, dad, an' all right?"

"Not complainin', son. I can ride all day same as ever," he said.
"Come. Never mind your hosses. They'll be looked after. Come meet the
folks.... Wal, wal, you got heah at last."

On the porch of the house a group awaited Jean's coming, rather
silently, he thought. Wide-eyed children were there, very shy and
watchful. The dark face of his sister corresponded with the image of
her in his memory. She appeared taller, more womanly, as she embraced
him. "Oh, Jean, Jean, I'm glad you've come!" she cried, and pressed
him close. Jean felt in her a woman's anxiety for the present as well
as affection for the past. He remembered his aunt Mary, though he had
not seen her for years. His half brothers, Bill and Guy, had changed
but little except perhaps to grow lean and rangy. Bill resembled his
father, though his aspect was jocular rather than serious. Guy was
smaller, wiry, and hard as rock, with snapping eyes in a brown, still
face, and he had the bow-legs of a cattleman. Both had married in
Arizona. Bill's wife, Kate, was a stout, comely little woman, mother
of three of the children. The other wife was young, a strapping girl,
red headed and freckled, with wonderful lines of pain and strength in
her face. Jean remembered, as he looked at her, that some one had
written him about the tragedy in her life. When she was only a child
the Apaches had murdered all her family. Then next to greet Jean were
the little children, all shy, yet all manifestly impressed by the
occasion. A warmth and intimacy of forgotten home emotions flooded
over Jean. Sweet it was to get home to these relatives who loved him
and welcomed him with quiet gladness. But there seemed more. Jean was
quick to see the shadow in the eyes of the women in that household and
to sense a strange reliance which his presence brought.

"Son, this heah Tonto is a land of milk an' honey," said his father, as
Jean gazed spellbound at the bounteous supper.

Jean certainly performed gastronomic feats on this occasion, to the
delight of Aunt Mary and the wonder of the children. "Oh, he's
starv-ved to death," whispered one of the little boys to his sister.
They had begun to warm to this stranger uncle. Jean had no chance to
talk, even had he been able to, for the meal-time showed a relaxation
of restraint and they all tried to tell him things at once. In the
bright lamplight his father looked easier and happier as he beamed upon
Jean.

After supper the men went into an adjoining room that appeared most
comfortable and attractive. It was long, and the width of the house,
with a huge stone fireplace, low ceiling of hewn timbers and walls of
the same, small windows with inside shutters of wood, and home-made
table and chairs and rugs.

"Wal, Jean, do you recollect them shootin'-irons?" inquired the
rancher, pointing above the fireplace. Two guns hung on the spreading
deer antlers there. One was a musket Jean's father had used in the war
of the rebellion and the other was a long, heavy, muzzle-loading
flintlock Kentucky, rifle with which Jean had learned to shoot.

"Reckon I do, dad," replied Jean, and with reverent hands and a rush of
memory he took the old gun down.

"Jean, you shore handle thet old arm some clumsy," said Guy Isbel,
dryly. And Bill added a remark to the effect that perhaps Jean had
been leading a luxurious and tame life back there in Oregon, and then
added, "But I reckon he's packin' that six-shooter like a Texan."

"Say, I fetched a gun or two along with me," replied Jean, jocularly.
"Reckon I near broke my poor mule's back with the load of shells an'
guns. Dad, what was the idea askin' me to pack out an arsenal?"

"Son, shore all shootin' arms an' such are at a premium in the Tonto,"
replied his father. "An' I was givin' you a hunch to come loaded."

His cool, drawling voice seemed to put a damper upon the pleasantries.
Right there Jean sensed the charged atmosphere. His brothers were
bursting with utterance about to break forth, and his father suddenly
wore a look that recalled to Jean critical times of days long past. But
the entrance of the children and the women folk put an end to
confidences. Evidently the youngsters were laboring under subdued
excitement. They preceded their mother, the smallest boy in the lead.
For him this must have been both a dreadful and a wonderful experience,
for he seemed to be pushed forward by his sister and brother and
mother, and driven by yearnings of his own. "There now, Lee. Say,
'Uncle Jean, what did you fetch us?' The lad hesitated for a shy,
frightened look at Jean, and then, gaining something from his scrutiny
of his uncle, he toddled forward and bravely delivered the question of
tremendous importance.

"What did I fetch you, hey?" cried Jean, in delight, as he took the lad
up on his knee. "Wouldn't you like to know? I didn't forget, Lee. I
remembered you all. Oh! the job I had packin' your bundle of
presents.... Now, Lee, make a guess."

"I dess you fetched a dun," replied Lee.

"A dun!—I'll bet you mean a gun," laughed Jean. "Well, you
four-year-old Texas gunman! Make another guess."