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

in a day or so this gang will go to

pieces.”

 

“I’m feared you spoke what’s been crowdin’ to git in my

mind,” replied Anson. Then he threw up his hands in a

strange gesture of resignation. The outlaw was brave, but

all men of the wilds recognized a force stronger than

themselves. He sat there resembling a brooding snake with

basilisk eyes upon the fire. At length he arose, and without

another word to his comrade he walked wearily to where lay

the dark, quiet forms of the sleepers.

 

Jim Wilson remained beside the flickering fire. He was

reading something in the red embers, perhaps the past.

Shadows were on his face, not all from the fading flames or

the towering spruces. Ever and anon he raised his head to

listen, not apparently that he expected any unusual sound,

but as if involuntarily. Indeed, as Anson had said, there

was something nameless in the air. The black forest breathed

heavily, in fitful moans of wind. It had its secrets. The

glances Wilson threw on all sides betrayed that any hunted

man did not love the dark night, though it hid him. Wilson

seemed fascinated by the life inclosed there by the black

circle of spruce. He might have been reflecting on the

strange reaction happening to every man in that group, since

a girl had been brought among them. Nothing was clear,

however; the forest kept its secret, as did the melancholy

wind; the outlaws were sleeping like tired beasts, with

their dark secrets locked in their hearts.

 

After a while Wilson put some sticks on the red embers, then

pulled the end of a log over them. A blaze sputtered up,

changing the dark circle and showing the sleepers with their

set, shadowed faces upturned. Wilson gazed on all of them, a

sardonic smile on his lips, and then his look fixed upon the

sleeper apart from the others — Riggs. It might have been

the false light of flame and shadow that created Wilson’s

expression of dark and terrible hate. Or it might have been

the truth, expressed in that lonely, unguarded hour, from

the depths of a man born in the South — a man who by his

inheritance of race had reverence for all womanhood — by

whose strange, wild, outlawed bloody life of a gun-fighter

he must hate with the deadliest hate this type that aped and

mocked his fame.

 

It was a long gaze Wilson rested upon Riggs — as strange

and secretive as the forest wind moaning down the great

aisles — and when that dark gaze was withdrawn Wilson

stalked away to make his bed with the stride of one ill whom

spirit had liberated force.

 

He laid his saddle in front of the spruce shelter where the

girl had entered, and his tarpaulin and blankets likewise

and then wearily stretched his long length to rest.

 

The campfire blazed up, showing the exquisite green and

brown-flecked festooning of the spruce branches, symmetrical

and perfect, yet so irregular, and then it burned out and

died down, leaving all in the dim gray starlight. The horses

were not moving around; the moan of night wind had grown

fainter; the low hum of insects was dying away; even the

tinkle of the brook had diminished. And that growth toward

absolute silence continued, yet absolute silence was never

attained. Life abided in the forest; only it had changed its

form for the dark hours.

 

Anson’s gang did not bestir themselves at the usual early

sunrise hour common to all woodsmen, hunters, or outlaws, to

whom the break of day was welcome. These companions — Anson

and Riggs included — might have hated to see the dawn come.

It meant only another meager meal, then the weary packing

and the long, long ride to nowhere in particular, and

another meager meal — all toiled for without even the

necessities of satisfactory living, and assuredly without

the thrilling hopes that made their life significant, and

certainly with a growing sense of approaching calamity.

 

The outlaw leader rose surly and cross-grained. He had to

boot Burt to drive him out for the horses. Riggs followed

him. Shady Jones did nothing except grumble. Wilson, by

common consent, always made the sour-dough bread, and he was

slow about it this morning. Anson and Moze did the rest of

the work, without alacrity. The girl did not appear.

 

“Is she dead?” growled Anson.

 

“No, she ain’t,” replied Wilson, looking up. “She’s

sleepin’. Let her sleep. She’d shore be a sight better off

if she was daid.”

 

“A-huh! So would all of this hyar outfit,” was Anson’s

response.

 

“Wal, Sna-ake, I shore reckon we’ll all be thet there soon,”

drawled Wilson, in his familiar cool and irritating tone

that said so much more than the content of the words.

 

Anson did not address the Texas member of his party again.

 

Burt rode bareback into camp, driving half the number of the

horses; Riggs followed shortly with several more. But three

were missed, one of them being Anson’s favorite. He would

not have budged without that horse. During breakfast he

growled about his lazy men, and after the meal tried to urge

them off. Riggs went unwillingly. Burt refused to go at all.

 

“Nix. I footed them hills all I’m a-goin’ to,” he said. “An’

from now on I rustle my own hoss.”

 

The leader glared his reception of this opposition. Perhaps

his sense of fairness actuated him once more, for he ordered

Shady and Moze out to do their share.

 

“Jim, you’re the best tracker in this outfit. Suppose you

go,” suggested Anson. “You allus used to be the first one

off.”

 

“Times has changed, Snake,” was the imperturbable reply.

 

“Wal, won’t you go?” demanded the leader, impatiently.

 

“I shore won’t.”

 

Wilson did not look or intimate in any way that he would not

leave the girl in camp with one or any or all of Anson’s

gang, but the truth was as significant as if he had shouted

it. The slow-thinking Moze gave Wilson a sinister look.

 

“Boss, ain’t it funny how a pretty wench —?” began Shady

Jones, sarcastically.

 

“Shut up, you fool!” broke in Anson. “Come on, I’ll help

rustle them hosses.”

 

After they had gone Burt took his rifle and strolled off

into the forest. Then the girl appeared. Her hair was down,

her face pale, with dark shadows. She asked for water to

wash her face. Wilson pointed to the brook, and as she

walked slowly toward it he took a comb and a clean scarf

from his pack and carried them to her.

 

Upon her return to the campfire she looked very different

with her hair arranged and the red stains in her cheeks.

 

“Miss, air you hungry?” asked Wilson.

 

“Yes, I am,” she replied.

 

He helped her to portions of bread, venison and gravy, and a

cup of coffee. Evidently she relished the meat, but she had

to force down the rest.

 

“Where are they all?” she asked.

 

“Rustlin’ the hosses.”

 

Probably she divined that he did not want to talk, for the

fleeting glance she gave him attested to a thought that his

voice or demeanor had changed. Presently she sought a seat

under the aspen-tree, out of the sun, and the smoke

continually blowing in her face; and there she stayed, a

forlorn little figure, for all the resolute lips and defiant

eyes.

 

The Texan paced to and fro beside the campfire with bent

head, and hands locked behind him. But for the swinging gun

he would have resembled a lanky farmer, coatless and

hatless, with his brown vest open, his trousers stuck in the

top of the high boots.

 

And neither he nor the girl changed their positions

relatively for a long time. At length, however, after

peering into the woods, and listening, he remarked to the

girl that he would be back in a moment, and then walked off

around the spruces.

 

No sooner had he disappeared — in fact, so quickly

afterward that it presupposed design instead of accident —

than Riggs came running from the opposite side of the glade.

He ran straight to the girl, who sprang to her feet.

 

“I hid — two of the — horses,” he panted, husky with

excitement. “I’ll take — two saddles. You grab some grub.

We’ll run for it.”

 

“No,” she cried, stepping back.

 

“But it’s not safe — for us — here,” he said, hurriedly,

glancing all around. “I’ll take you — home. I swear… .

Not safe — I tell you — this gang’s after me. Hurry!”

 

He laid hold of two saddles, one with each hand. The moment

had reddened his face, brightened his eyes, made his action

strong.

 

“I’m safer — here with this outlaw gang,” she replied.

 

“You won’t come!” His color began to lighten then, and his

face to distort. He dropped his hold on the saddles.

 

“Harve Riggs, I’d rather become a toy and a rag for these

ruffians than spend an hour alone with you,” she flashed at

him, in unquenchable hate.

 

“I’ll drag you!”

 

He seized her, but could not hold her. Breaking away, she

screamed.

 

“Help!”

 

That whitened his face, drove him to frenzy. Leaping

forward, he struck her a hard blow across the mouth. It

staggered her, and, tripping on a saddle, she fell. His

hands flew to her throat, ready to choke her. But she lay

still and held her tongue. Then he dragged her to her feet.

 

“Hurry now — grab that pack — an’ follow me.” Again Riggs

laid hold of the two saddles. A desperate gleam, baleful and

vainglorious, flashed over his face. He was living his one

great adventure.

 

The girl’s eyes dilated. They looked beyond him. Her lips

opened.

 

“Scream again an’ I’ll kill you!” he cried, hoarsely and

swiftly. The very opening of her lips had terrified Riggs.

 

“Reckon one scream was enough,” spoke a voice, slow, but

without the drawl, easy and cool, yet incalculable in some

terrible sense.

 

Riggs wheeled with inarticulate cry. Wilson stood a few

paces off, with his gun half leveled, low down. His face

seemed as usual, only his eyes held a quivering, light

intensity, like boiling molten silver.

 

“Girl, what made thet blood on your mouth?”

 

“Riggs hit me!” she whispered. Then at something she feared

or saw or divined she shrank back, dropped on her knees, and

crawled into the spruce shelter.

 

“Wal, Riggs, I’d invite you to draw if thet ‘d be any use,”

said Wilson. This speech was reflective, yet it hurried a

little.

 

Riggs could not draw nor move nor speak. He seemed turned to

stone, except his jaw, which slowly fell.

 

“Harve Riggs, gunman from down Missouri way,” continued the

voice of incalculable intent, “reckon you’ve looked into a

heap of gun-barrels in your day. Shore! Wal, look in this

heah one!”

 

Wilson deliberately leveled the gun on a line with Riggs’s

starting eyes.

 

“Wasn’t you heard to brag in Turner’s saloon — thet you

could see lead comin’ — an’ dodge it? Shore you must be

swift! … DODGE THIS HEAH BULLET!”

 

The gun spouted flame and boomed. One of Riggs’s starting,

popping eyes — the right one — went out, like a lamp. The

other rolled horribly, then set in blank dead fixedness.

Riggs swayed in slow motion until a lost balance felled him

heavily, an inert mass.

 

Wilson bent over the prostrate form. Strange, violent

contrast to the cool scorn of the preceding moment! Hissing,

spitting, as if poisoned by passion, he burst with the hate

that his character