Zane Grey (19 page)

"Poor fellow!" sighed Mrs. Zane.

"Papa said he left Fort Pitt with one of Metzar's men as a guide."

"Then he didn't take the 'little cuss,' as Eb calls his man Case?"

"No, if I remember rightly papa said Case wouldn't go."

"I wish he had. He's no addition to our village."

Voices outside attracted their attention. Mrs. Zane glanced from the
window and said: "There come Betty and Will."

Helen went on the porch to see her cousin and Betty entering the
yard, and Colonel Zane once again leaning on his spade.

"Gather any hickory-nuts from birch or any other kind of trees?" asked
the colonel grimly.

"No," replied Will cheerily, "the shells haven't opened yet."

"Too bad the frost is so backward," said Colonel Zane with a laugh.
"But I can't see that it makes any difference."

"Where are my leaves?" asked Helen, with a smile and a nod to Betty.

"What leaves?" inquired that young woman, plainly mystified.

"Why, the autumn leaves Will promised to gather with me, then changed
his mind, and said he'd bring them."

"I forgot," Will replied a little awkwardly.

Colonel Zane coughed, and then, catching Betty's glance, which had
begun to flash, he plied his spade vigorously.

Betty's face had colored warmly at her brother's first question; it
toned down slightly when she understood that he was not going to tease
her as usual, and suddenly, as she looked over his head, it paled
white as snow.

"Eb, look down the lane!" she cried.

Two tall men were approaching with labored tread, one half-supporting
his companion.

"Wetzel! Jack! and Jack's hurt!" cried Betty.

"My dear, be calm," said Colonel Zane, in that quiet tone he always
used during moments of excitement. He turned toward the bordermen, and
helped Wetzel lead Jonathan up the walk into the yard.

From Wetzel's clothing water ran, his long hair was disheveled, his
aspect frightful. Jonathan's face was white and drawn. His buckskin
hunting coat was covered with blood, and the hand which he held
tightly against his left breast showed dark red stains.

Helen shuddered. Almost fainting, she leaned against the porch, too
horrified to cry out, with contracting heart and a chill stealing
through her veins.

"Jack! Jack!" cried Betty, in agonized appeal.

"Betty, it's nothin'," said Wetzel.

"Now, Betts, don't be scared of a little blood," Jonathan said with a
faint smile flitting across his haggard face.

"Bring water, shears an' some linsey cloth," added Wetzel, as Mrs.
Zane came running out.

"Come inside," cried the colonel's wife, as she disappeared again
immediately.

"No," replied the borderman, removing his coat, and, with the
assistance of his brother, he unlaced his hunting shirt, pulling it
down from a wounded shoulder. A great gory hole gaped just beneath his
left collar-bone.

Although stricken with fear, when Helen saw the bronzed, massive
shoulder, the long, powerful arm with its cords of muscles playing
under the brown skin, she felt a thrill of admiration.

"Just missed the lung," said Mrs. Zane. "Eb, no bullet ever made that
hole."

Wetzel washed the bloody wound, and, placing on it a wad of leaves he
took from his pocket, bound up the shoulder tightly.

"What made that hole?" asked Colonel Zane.

Wetzel lifted the quiver of arrows Jonathan had laid on the porch,
and, selecting one, handed it to the colonel. The flint-head and a
portion of the shaft were stained with blood.

"The Shawnee!" exclaimed Colonel Zane. Then he led Wetzel aside, and
began conversing in low tones while Jonathan, with Betty holding his
arm, ascended the steps and went within the dwelling.

Helen ran home, and, once in her room, gave vent to her emotions. She
cried because of fright, nervousness, relief, and joy. Then she bathed
her face, tried to rub some color into her pale cheeks, and set about
getting dinner as one in a trance. She could not forget that broad
shoulder with its frightful wound. What a man Jonathan must be to
receive a blow like that and live! Exhausted, almost spent, had been
his strength when he reached home, yet how calm and cool he was! What
would she not have given for the faint smile that shone in his eyes
for Betty?

The afternoon was long for Helen. When at last supper was over she
changed her gown, and, asking Will to accompany her, went down the
lane toward Colonel Zane's cabin. At this hour the colonel almost
invariably could be found sitting on his doorstep puffing a long
Indian pipe, and gazing with dreamy eyes over the valley.

"Well, well, how sweet you look!" he said to Helen; then with a wink
of his eyelid, "Hello, Willie, you'll find Elizabeth inside
with Jack."

"How is he?" asked Helen eagerly, as Will with a laugh and a retort
mounted the steps.

"Jack's doing splendidly. He slept all day. I don't think his injury
amounts to much, at least not for such as him or Wetzel. It would have
finished ordinary men. Bess says if complications don't set in,
blood-poison or something to start a fever, he'll be up shortly.
Wetzel believes the two of 'em will be on the trail inside of a week."

"Did they find Brandt?" asked Helen in a low voice.

"Yes, they ran him to his hole, and, as might have been expected, it
was Bing Legget's camp. The Indians took Jonathan there."

"Then Jack was captured?"

Colonel Zane related the events, as told briefly by Wetzel, that had
taken place during the preceding three days.

"The Indian I saw at the spring carried that bow Jonathan brought
back. He must have shot the arrow. He was a magnificent savage."

"He was indeed a great, and a bad Indian, one of the craftiest spies
who ever stepped in moccasins; but he lies quiet now on the moss and
the leaves. Bing Legget will never find another runner like that
Shawnee. Let us go indoors."

He led Helen into the large sitting-room where Jonathan lay on a
couch, with Betty and Will sitting beside him. The colonel's wife and
children, Silas Zane, and several neighbors, were present.

"Here, Jack, is a lady inquiring after your health. Betts, this
reminds me of the time Isaac came home wounded, after his escape from
the Hurons. Strikes me he and his Indian bride should be about due
here on a visit."

Helen forgot every one except the wounded man lying so quiet and pale
upon the couch. She looked down upon him with eyes strangely dilated,
and darkly bright.

"How are you?" she asked softly.

"I'm all right, thank you, lass," answered Jonathan.

Colonel Zane contrived, with inimitable skill, to get Betty, Will,
Silas, Bessie and the others interested in some remarkable news he had
just heard, or made up, and this left Jonathan and Helen comparatively
alone for the moment.

The wise old colonel thought perhaps this might be the right time. He
saw Helen's face as she leaned over Jonathan, and that was enough for
him. He would have taxed his ingenuity to the utmost to keep the
others away from the young couple.

"I was so frightened," murmured Helen.

"Why?" asked Jonathan.

"Oh! You looked so deathly—the blood, and that awful wound!"

"It's nothin', lass."

Helen smiled down upon him. Whether or not the hurt amounted to
anything in the borderman's opinion, she knew from his weakness, and
his white, drawn face, that the strain of the march home had been
fearful. His dark eyes held now nothing of the coldness and glitter so
natural to them. They were weary, almost sad. She did not feel afraid
of him now. He lay there so helpless, his long, powerful frame as
quiet as a sleeping child's! Hitherto an almost indefinable antagonism
in him had made itself felt; now there was only gentleness, as of a
man too weary to fight longer. Helen's heart swelled with pity, and
tenderness, and love. His weakness affected her as had never his
strength. With an involuntary gesture of sympathy she placed her hand
softly on his.

Jonathan looked up at her with eyes no longer blind. Pain had softened
him. For the moment he felt carried out of himself, as it were, and
saw things differently. The melting tenderness of her gaze, the
glowing softness of her face, the beauty, bewitched him; and beyond
that, a sweet, impelling gladness stirred within him and would not be
denied. He thrilled as her fingers lightly, timidly touched his, and
opened his broad hand to press hers closely and warmly.

"Lass," he whispered, with a huskiness and unsteadiness unnatural to
his deep voice.

Helen bent her head closer to him; she saw his lips tremble, and his
nostrils dilate; but an unutterable sadness shaded the brightness
in his eyes.

"I love you."

The low whisper reached Helen's ears. She seemed to float dreamily
away to some beautiful world, with the music of those words ringing in
her ears. She looked at him again. Had she been dreaming? No; his dark
eyes met hers with a love that he could no longer deny. An exquisite
emotion, keen, strangely sweet and strong, yet terrible with sharp
pain, pulsated through her being. The revelation had been too abrupt.
It was so wonderfully different from what she had ever dared hope. She
lowered her head, trembling.

The next moment she felt Colonel Zane's hand on her chair, and heard
him say in a cheery voice:

"Well, well, see here, lass, you mustn't make Jack talk too much. See
how white and tired he looks."

In forty-eight hours Jonathan Zane was up and about the cabin as
though he had never been wounded; the third day he walked to the
spring; in a week he was waiting for Wetzel, ready to go on the trail.

On the eighth day of his enforced idleness, as he sat with Betty and
the colonel in the yard, Wetzel appeared on a ridge east of the fort.
Soon he rounded the stockade fence, and came straight toward them. To
Colonel Zane and Betty, Wetzel's expression was terrible. The stern
kindliness, the calm, though cold, gravity of his countenance, as they
usually saw it, had disappeared. Yet it showed no trace of his
unnatural passion to pursue and slay. No doubt that terrible
instinct, or lust, was at white heat; but it wore a mask of
impenetrable stone-gray gloom.

Wetzel spoke briefly. After telling Jonathan to meet him at sunset on
the following day at a point five miles up the river, he reported to
the colonel that Legget with his band had left their retreat, moving
southward, apparently on a marauding expedition. Then he shook hands
with Colonel Zane and turned to Betty.

"Good-bye, Betty," he said, in his deep, sonorous voice.

"Good-bye, Lew," answered Betty slowly, as if surprised. "God save
you," she added.

He shouldered his rifle, and hurried down the lane, halting before
entering the thicket that bounded the clearing, to look back at the
settlement. In another moment his dark figure had disappeared among
the bushes.

"Betts, I've seen Wetzel go like that hundreds of times, though he
never shook hands before; but I feel sort of queer about it now.
Wasn't he strange?"

Betty did not answer until Jonathan, who had started to go within, was
out of hearing.

"Lew looked and acted the same the morning he struck Miller's trail,"
Betty replied in a low voice. "I believe, despite his indifference to
danger, he realizes that the chances are greatly against him, as they
were when he began the trailing of Miller, certain it would lead him
into Girty's camp. Then I know Lew has an affection for us, though it
is never shown in ordinary ways. I pray he and Jack will come
home safe."

"This is a bad trail they're taking up; the worst, perhaps, in border
warfare," said Colonel Zane gloomily. "Did you notice how Jack's face
darkened when his comrade came? Much of this borderman-life of his is
due to Wetzel's influence."

"Eb, I'll tell you one thing," returned Betty, with a flash of her
old spirit. "This is Jack's last trail."

"Why do you think so?"

"If he doesn't return he'll be gone the way of all bordermen; but if
he comes back once more he'll never get away from Helen."

"Ugh!" exclaimed Zane, venting his pleasure in characteristic Indian
way.

"That night after Jack came home wounded," continued Betty, "I saw
him, as he lay on the couch, gaze at Helen. Such a look! Eb, she
has won."

"I hope so, but I fear, I fear," replied her brother gloomily. "If
only he returns, that's the thing! Betts, be sure he sees Helen before
he goes away."

"I shall try. Here he comes now," said Betty.

"Hello, Jack!" cried the colonel, as his brother came out in somewhat
of a hurry. "What have you got? By George! It's that blamed arrow the
Shawnee shot into you. Where are you going with it? What the
deuce—Say—Betts, eh?"

Betty had given him a sharp little kick.

The borderman looked embarrassed. He hesitated and flushed. Evidently
he would have liked to avoid his brother's question; but the inquiry
came direct. Dissimulation with him was impossible.

"Helen wanted this, an' I reckon that's where I'm goin' with it," he
said finally, and walked away.

"Eb, you're a stupid!" exclaimed Betty.

"Hang it! Who'd have thought he was going to give her that blamed,
bloody arrow?"

As Helen ushered Jonathan, for the first time, into her cosy little
sitting-room, her heart began to thump so hard she could hear it.

She had not seen him since the night he whispered the words which gave
such happiness. She had stayed at home, thankful beyond expression to
learn every day of his rapid improvement, living in the sweetness of
her joy, and waiting for him. And now as he had come, so dark, so
grave, so unlike a lover to woo, that she felt a chill steal over her.

"I'm so glad you've brought the arrow," she faltered, "for, of course,
coming so far means that you're well once more."