The Man of the Forest by Zane Grey (fb2 epub reader .txt) 📕

that man’s mind is beyond me… .

Marry him to save my ranch? I wouldn’t marry him to save my

life!”

 

Carmichael suddenly broke his silence.

 

“Bo, did you see the other men?”

 

“Yes. I was coming to that,” she replied. “I caught a

glimpse of them back in the cedars. The three were together,

or, at least, three horsemen were there. They had halted

behind some trees. Then on the way home I began to think.

Even in my fury I had received impressions. Riggs was

SURPRISED when I got up. I’ll bet he had not expected me to

be who I was. He thought I was NELL! … I look bigger in

this buckskin outfit. My hair was up till I lost my hat, and

that was when I had the tumble. He took me for Nell. Another

thing, I remember — he made some sign — some motion while

I was calling him names, and I believe that was to keep

those other men back… . I believe Riggs had a plan with

those other men to waylay Nell and make off with her. I

absolutely know it.”

 

“Bo, you’re so — so — you jump at wild ideas so,”

protested Helen, trying to believe in her own assurance. But

inwardly she was trembling.

 

“Miss Helen, that ain’t a wild idee,” said Roy, seriously.

“I reckon your sister is pretty close on the trail. Las

Vegas, don’t you savvy it thet way?”

 

Carmichael’s answer was to stalk out of the room.

 

“Call him back!” cried Helen, apprehensively.

 

“Hold on, boy!” called Roy, sharply.

 

Helen reached the door simultaneously with Roy. The cowboy

picked up his sombrero, jammed it on his head, gave his belt

a vicious hitch that made the gun-sheath jump, and then in

one giant step he was astride Ranger.

 

“Carmichael! Stay!” cried Helen.

 

The cowboy spurred the black, and the stones rang under

iron-shod hoofs.

 

“Bo! Call him back! Please call him back!” importuned Helen,

in distress.

 

“I won’t,” declared Bo Rayner. Her face shone whiter now and

her eyes were like fiery flint. That was her answer to a

loving, gentle-hearted sister; that was her answer to the

call of the West.

 

“No use,” said Roy, quietly. “An’ I reckon I’d better trail

him up.”

 

He, too, strode out and, mounting his horse, galloped

swiftly away.

 

It turned out that Bo, was more bruised and scraped and

shaken than she had imagined. One knee was rather badly cut,

which injury alone would have kept her from riding again

very soon. Helen, who was somewhat skilled at bandaging

wounds, worried a great deal over these sundry blotches on

Bo’s fair skin, and it took considerable time to wash and

dress them. Long after this was done, and during the early

supper, and afterward, Bo’s excitement remained unabated.

The whiteness stayed on her face and the blaze in her eyes.

Helen ordered and begged her to go to bed, for the fact was

Bo could not stand up and her hands shook.

 

“Go to bed? Not much,” she said. “I want to know what he

does to Riggs.”

 

It was that possibility which had Helen in dreadful

suspense. If Carmichael killed Riggs, it seemed to Helen

that the bottom would drop out of this structure of Western

life she had begun to build so earnestly and fearfully. She

did not believe that he would do so. But the uncertainty was

torturing.

 

“Dear Bo,” appealed Helen, “you don’t want — Oh! you do

want Carmichael to — to kill Riggs?”

 

“No, I don’t, but I wouldn’t care if he did,” replied Bo,

bluntly.

 

“Do you think — he will?”

 

“Nell, if that cowboy really loves me he read my mind right

here before he left,” declared Bo. “And he knew what I

thought he’d do.”

 

“And what’s — that?” faltered Helen.

 

“I want him to round Riggs up down in the village —

somewhere in a crowd. I want Riggs shown up as the coward,

braggart, four-flush that he is. And insulted, slapped,

kicked — driven out of Pine!”

 

Her passionate speech still rang throughout the room when

there came footsteps on the porch. Helen hurried to raise

the bar from the door and open it just as a tap sounded on

the door-post. Roy’s face stood white out of the darkness.

His eyes were bright. And his smile made Helen’s fearful

query needless.

 

“How are you-all this evenin’?” he drawled, as he came in.

 

A fire blazed on the hearth and a lamp burned on the table.

By their light Bo looked white and eager-eyed as she

reclined in the big armchair.

 

“What ‘d he do?” she asked, with all her amazing force.

 

“Wal, now, ain’t you goin’ to tell me how you are?”

 

“Roy, I’m all bunged up. I ought to be in bed, but I just

couldn’t sleep till I hear what Las Vegas did. I’d forgive

anything except him getting drunk.”

 

“Wal, I shore can ease your mind on thet,” replied Roy. “He

never drank a drop.”

 

Roy was distractingly slow about beginning the tale any

child could have guessed he was eager to tell. For once the

hard, intent quietness, the soul of labor, pain, and

endurance so plain in his face was softened by pleasurable

emotion. He poked at the burning logs with the toe of his

boot. Helen observed that he had changed his boots and now

wore no spurs. Then he had gone to his quarters after

whatever had happened down in Pine.

 

“Where IS he?” asked Bo.

 

“Who? Riggs? Wal, I don’t know. But I reckon he’s somewhere

out in the woods nursin’ himself.”

 

“Not Riggs. First tell me where HE is.”

 

“Shore, then, you must mean Las Vegas. I just left him down

at the cabin. He was gettin’ ready for bed, early as it is.

All tired out he was an’ thet white you wouldn’t have knowed

him. But he looked happy at thet, an’ the last words he

said, more to himself than to me, I reckon, was, ‘I’m some

locoed gent, but if she doesn’t call me Tom now she’s no

good!’”

 

Bo actually clapped her hands, notwithstanding that one of

them was bandaged.

 

“Call him Tom? I should smile I will,” she declared, in

delight. “Hurry now — what ‘d —”

 

“It’s shore powerful strange how he hates thet handle Las

Vegas,” went on Roy, imperturbably.

 

“Roy, tell me what he did — what TOM did — or I’ll

scream,” cried Bo.

 

“Miss Helen, did you ever see the likes of thet girl?” asked

Roy, appealing to Helen.

 

“No, Roy, I never did,” agreed Helen. “But please — please

tell us what has happened.”

 

Roy grinned and rubbed his hands together in a dark delight,

almost fiendish in its sudden revelation of a gulf of

strange emotion deep within him. Whatever had happened to

Riggs had not been too much for Roy Beeman. Helen remembered

hearing her uncle say that a real Westerner hated nothing so

hard as the swaggering desperado, the make-believe gunman

who pretended to sail under the true, wild, and reckoning

colors of the West.

 

Roy leaned his lithe, tall form against the stone

mantelpiece and faced the girls.

 

“When I rode out after Las Vegas I seen him ‘way down the

road,” began Roy, rapidly. “An’ I seen another man ridin’

down into Pine from the other side. Thet was Riggs, only I

didn’t know it then. Las Vegas rode up to the store, where

some fellars was hangin’ round, an’ he spoke to them. When I

come up they was all headin’ for Turner’s saloon. I seen a

dozen hosses hitched to the rails. Las Vegas rode on. But I

got off at Turner’s an’ went in with the bunch. Whatever it

was Las Vegas said to them fellars, shore they didn’t give

him away. Pretty soon more men strolled into Turner’s an’

there got to be ‘most twenty altogether, I reckon. Jeff

Mulvey was there with his pards. They had been drinkin’

sorta free. An’ I didn’t like the way Mulvey watched me. So

I went out an’ into the store, but kept a-lookin’ for Las

Vegas. He wasn’t in sight. But I seen Riggs ridin’ up. Now,

Turner’s is where Riggs hangs out an’ does his braggin’. He

looked powerful deep an’ thoughtful, dismounted slow without

seein’ the unusual number of hosses there, an’ then he

slouches into Turner’s. No more ‘n a minute after Las Vegas

rode down there like a streak. An’ just as quick he was off

an’ through thet door.”

 

Roy paused as if to gain force or to choose his words. His

tale now appeared all directed to Bo, who gazed at him,

spellbound, a fascinated listener.

 

“Before I got to Turner’s door — an’ thet was only a little

ways — I heard Las Vegas yell. Did you ever hear him? Wal,

he’s got the wildest yell of any cowpuncher I ever beard.

Quicklike I opened the door an’ slipped in. There was Riggs

an’ Las Vegas alone in the center of the big saloon, with

the crowd edgin’ to the walls an’ slidin’ back of the bar.

Riggs was whiter ‘n a dead man. I didn’t hear an’ I don’t

know what Las Vegas yelled at him. But Riggs knew an’ so did

the gang. All of a sudden every man there shore seen in Las

Vegas what Riggs had always bragged HE was. Thet time comes

to every man like Riggs.

 

“‘What ‘d you call me?’ he asked, his jaw shakin’.

 

“‘I ‘ain’t called you yet,’ answered Las Vegas. ‘I just

whooped.’

 

“‘What d’ye want?’

 

“‘You scared my girl.’

 

“‘The hell ye say! Who’s she?’ blustered Riggs, an’ he began

to take quick looks ‘round. But he never moved a hand. There

was somethin’ tight about the way he stood. Las Vegas had

both arms half out, stretched as if he meant to leap. But he

wasn’t. I never seen Las Vegas do thet, but when I seen him

then I understood it.

 

“‘You know. An’ you threatened her an’ her sister. Go for

your gun,’ called Las Vegas, low an’ sharp.

 

“Thet put the crowd right an’ nobody moved. Riggs turned

green then. I almost felt sorry for him. He began to shake

so he’d dropped a gun if he had pulled one.

 

“‘Hyar, you’re off — some mistake — I ‘ain’t seen no gurls

— I —’

 

“‘Shut up an’ draw!’ yelled Las Vegas. His voice just

pierced holes in the roof, an’ it might have been a bullet

from the way Riggs collapsed. Every man seen in a second

more thet Riggs wouldn’t an’ couldn’t draw. He was afraid

for his life. He was not what he had claimed to be. I don’t

know if he had any friends there. But in the West good men

an’ bad men, all alike, have no use for Riggs’s kind. An’

thet stony quiet broke with haw — haw. It shore was as

pitiful to see Riggs as it was fine to see Las Vegas.

 

“When he dropped his arms then I knowed there would be no

gun-play. An’ then Las Vegas got red in the face. He slapped

Riggs with one hand, then with the other. An’ he began to

cuss him. I shore never knowed thet nice-spoken Las Vegas

Carmichael could use such language. It was a stream of the

baddest names known out here, an’ lots I never heard of. Now

an’ then I caught somethin’ like lowdown an’ sneak an’

four-flush an’ long-haired skunk, but for