The Man of the Forest, Zane Grey [books to read for 13 year olds txt] 📗
- Author: Zane Grey
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a girl she was!”
Dale felt his face grow red. Indeed, this was strange
conversation for him.
“Honest, Al —” he began.
“Son, don’t lie to an old man.”
“Lie! I wouldn’t lie to any one. Al, it’s only men who live
in towns an’ are always makin’ deals. I live in the forest,
where there’s nothin’ to make me lie.”
“Wal, no offense meant, I’m sure,” responded Auchincloss.
“An’ mebbe there’s somethin’ in what you say … We was
talkin’ about them sheep your big cat killed. Wal, Milt, I
can’t prove it, that’s sure. An’ mebbe you’ll think me
doddery when I tell you my reason. It wasn’t what them
greaser herders said about seein’ a cougar in the herd.”
“What was it, then?” queried Dale, much interested.
“Wal, thet day a year ago I seen your pet. He was lyin’ in
front of the store an’ you was inside tradin’, fer supplies,
I reckon. It was like meetin’ an enemy face to face.
Because, damn me if I didn’t know that cougar was guilty
when he looked in my eyes! There!”
The old rancher expected to be laughed at. But Dale was
grave.
“Al, I know how you felt,” he replied, as if they were
discussing an action of a human being. “Sure I’d hate to
doubt old Tom. But he’s a cougar. An’ the ways of animals
are strange … Anyway, Al, I’ll make good the loss of
your sheep.”
“No, you won’t,” rejoined Auchincloss, quickly. “We’ll call
it off. I’m takin’ it square of you to make the offer.
Thet’s enough. So forget your worry about work, if you had
any.”
“There’s somethin’ else, Al, I wanted to say,” began Dale,
with hesitation. “An’ it’s about Beasley.”
Auchincloss started violently, and a flame of red shot into
his face. Then he raised a big hand that shook. Dale saw in
a flash how the old man’s nerves had gone.
“Don’t mention — thet — thet greaser — to me!” burst out
the rancher. “It makes me see — red… . Dale, I ain’t
overlookin’ that you spoke up fer me to-day — stood fer my
side. Lem Harden told me. I was glad. An’ thet’s why —
to-day — I forgot our old quarrel… . But not a word
about thet sheep-thief — or I’ll drive you off the place!”
“But, Al — be reasonable,” remonstrated Dale. “It’s
necessary thet I speak of — of Beasley.”
“It ain’t. Not to me. I won’t listen.”
“Reckon you’ll have to, Al,” returned Dale. “Beasley’s after
your property. He’s made a deal —”
“By Heaven! I know that!” shouted Auchincloss, tottering up,
with his face now black-red. “Do you think thet’s new to me?
Shut up, Dale! I can’t stand it.”
“But Al — there’s worse,” went on Dale, hurriedly. “Worse!
Your life’s threatened — an’ your niece, Helen — she’s to
be —”
“Shut up — an’ clear out!” roared Auchincloss, waving his
huge fists.
He seemed on the verge of a collapse as, shaking all over,
he backed into the door. A few seconds of rage had
transformed him into a pitiful old man.
“But, Al — I’m your friend —” began Dale, appealingly.
“Friend, hey?” returned the rancher, with grim, bitter
passion. “Then you’re the only one… . Milt Dale, I’m
rich an’ I’m a dyin’ man. I trust nobody … But, you wild
hunter — if you’re my friend — prove it! … Go kill
thet greaser sheep-thief! DO somethin’ — an’ then come talk
to me!”
With that he lurched, half falling, into the house, and
slammed the door.
Dale stood there for a blank moment, and then, taking up his
rifle, he strode away.
Toward sunset Dale located the camp of his four Mormon
friends, and reached it in time for supper.
John, Roy, Joe, and Hal Beeman were sons of a pioneer Mormon
who had settled the little community of Snowdrop. They were
young men in years, but hard labor and hard life in the open
had made them look matured. Only a year’s difference in age
stood between John and Roy, and between Roy and Joe, and
likewise Joe and Hal. When it came to appearance they were
difficult to distinguish from one another. Horsemen,
sheep-herders, cattle-raisers, hunters — they all possessed
long, wiry, powerful frames, lean, bronzed, still faces, and
the quiet, keen eyes of men used to the open.
Their camp was situated beside a spring in a cove surrounded
by aspens, some three miles from Pine; and, though working
for Beasley, near the village, they had ridden to and fro
from camp, after the habit of seclusion peculiar to their
kind.
Dale and the brothers had much in common, and a warm regard
had sprang up. But their exchange of confidences had wholly
concerned things pertaining to the forest. Dale ate supper
with them, and talked as usual when he met them, without
giving any hint of the purpose forming in his mind. After
the meal he helped Joe round up the horses, hobble them for
the night, and drive them into a grassy glade among the
pines. Later, when the shadows stole through the forest on
the cool wind, and the campfire glowed comfortably, Dale
broached the subject that possessed him.
“An’ so you’re working for Beasley?” he queried, by way of
starting conversation.
“We was,” drawled John. “But to-day, bein’ the end of our
month, we got our pay an’ quit. Beasley sure was sore.”
“Why’d you knock off?”
John essayed no reply, and his brothers all had that quiet,
suppressed look of knowledge under restraint.
“Listen to what I come to tell you, then you’ll talk,” went
on Dale. And hurriedly he told of Beasley’s plot to abduct
Al Auchincloss’s niece and claim the dying man’s property.
When Dale ended, rather breathlessly, the Mormon boys sat
without any show of surprise or feeling. John, the eldest,
took up a stick and slowly poked the red embers of the fire,
making the white sparks fly.
“Now, Milt, why’d you tell us thet?” he asked, guardedly.
“You’re the only friends I’ve got,” replied Dale. “It didn’t
seem safe for me to talk down in the village. I thought of
you boys right off. I ain’t goin’ to let Snake Anson get
that girl. An’ I need help, so I come to you.”
“Beasley’s strong around Pine, an’ old Al’s weakenin’.
Beasley will git the property, girl or no girl,” said John.
“Things don’t always turn out as they look. But no matter
about that. The girl deal is what riled me… . She’s to
arrive at Magdalena on the sixteenth, an’ take stage for
Snowdrop… . Now what to do? If she travels on that stage
I’ll be on it, you bet. But she oughtn’t to be in it at all.
… Boys, somehow I’m goin’ to save her. Will you help me?
I reckon I’ve been in some tight corners for you. Sure, this
‘s different. But are you my friends? You know now what
Beasley is. An’ you’re all lost at the hands of Snake
Anson’s gang. You’ve got fast hosses, eyes for trackin’, an’
you can handle a rifle. You’re the kind of fellows I’d want
in a tight pinch with a bad gang. Will you stand by me or
see me go alone?”
Then John Beeman, silently, and with pale face, gave Dale’s
hand a powerful grip, and one by one the other brothers rose
to do likewise. Their eyes flashed with hard glint and a
strange bitterness hovered around their thin lips.
“Milt, mebbe we know what Beasley is better ‘n you,” said
John, at length. “He ruined my father. He’s cheated other
Mormons. We boys have proved to ourselves thet he gets the
sheep Anson’s gang steals… . An’ drives the herds to
Phenix! Our people won’t let us accuse Beasley. So we’ve
suffered in silence. My father always said, let some one
else say the first word against Beasley, an’ you’ve come to
us!”
Roy Beeman put a hand on Dale’s shoulder. He, perhaps, was
the keenest of the brothers and the one to whom adventure
and peril called most. He had been oftenest with Dale, on
many a long trail, and he was the hardest rider and the most
relentless tracker in all that range country.
“An’ we’re goin’ with you,” he said, in a strong and rolling
voice.
They resumed their seats before the fire. John threw on more
wood, and with a crackling and sparkling the blaze curled
up, fanned by the wind. As twilight deepened into night the
moan in the pines increased to a roar. A pack of coyotes
commenced to pierce the air in staccato cries.
The five young men conversed long and earnestly,
considering, planning, rejecting ideas advanced by each.
Dale and Roy Beeman suggested most of what became acceptable
to all. Hunters of their type resembled explorers in slow
and deliberate attention to details. What they had to deal
with here was a situation of unlimited possibilities; the
horses and outfit needed; a long detour to reach Magdalena
unobserved; the rescue of a strange girl who would no doubt
be self-willed and determined to ride on the stage — the
rescue forcible, if necessary; the fight and the inevitable
pursuit; the flight into the forest, and the safe delivery
of the girl to Auchincloss.
“Then, Milt, will we go after Beasley?” queried Roy Beeman,
significantly.
Dale was silent and thoughtful.
“Sufficient unto the day!” said John. “An’ fellars, let’s go
to bed.”
They rolled out their tarpaulins, Dale sharing Roy’s
blankets, and soon were asleep, while the red embers slowly
faded, and the great roar of wind died down, and the forest
stillness set in.
Helen Rayner had been on the westbound overland train fully
twenty-four hours before she made an alarming discovery.
Accompanied by her sister Bo, a precocious girl of sixteen,
Helen had left St. Joseph with a heart saddened by farewells
to loved ones at home, yet full of thrilling and vivid
anticipations of the strange life in the Far West. All her
people had the pioneer spirit; love of change, action,
adventure, was in her blood. Then duty to a widowed mother
with a large and growing family had called to Helen to
accept this rich uncle’s offer. She had taught school and
also her little brothers and sisters; she had helped along
in other ways. And now, though the tearing up of the roots
of old loved ties was hard, this opportunity was
irresistible in its call. The prayer of her dreams had been
answered. To bring good fortune to her family; to take care
of this beautiful, wild little sister; to leave the yellow,
sordid, humdrum towns for the great, rolling, boundless
open; to live on a wonderful ranch that was some day to be
her own; to have fulfilled a deep, instinctive, and
undeveloped love of horses, cattle, sheep, of desert and
mountain, of trees and brooks and wild flowers — all this
was the sum of her most passionate longings, now in some
marvelous, fairylike way to come true.
A check to her happy anticipations, a blank, sickening dash
of cold water upon her warm and intimate dreams, had been
the discovery that Harve Riggs was on the train. His
presence could mean only one thing — that he had followed
her. Riggs had been the worst of many sore trials back there
in St. Joseph. He had possessed some claim or influence upon
her mother, who
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