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

>“Nell, just now — when you’re overcome — rash with

feelin’s — don’t say to me — a word — a —”

 

He broke down huskily.

 

“My first friend — my — Oh Dale, I KNOW you love me! she

whispered. And she hid her face on his breast, there to feel

a tremendous tumult.

 

“Oh, don’t you?” she cried, in low, smothered voice, as his

silence drove her farther on this mad, yet glorious purpose.

 

“If you need to be told — yes — I reckon I do love you,

Nell Rayner,” he replied.

 

It seemed to Helen that he spoke from far off. She lifted

her face, her heart on her lips.

 

“If you kill Beasley I’ll never marry you,” she said.

 

“Who’s expectin’ you to?” he asked, with low, hoarse laugh.

“Do you think you have to marry me to square accounts?

This’s the only time you ever hurt me, Nell Rayner… .

I’m ‘shamed you could think I’d expect you — out of

gratitude —”

 

“Oh — you — you are as dense as the forest where you

live,” she cried. And then she shut her eyes again, the

better to remember that transfiguration of his face, the

better to betray herself.

 

“Man — I love you!” Full and deep, yet tremulous, the words

burst from her heart that had been burdened with them for

many a day.

 

Then it seemed, in the throbbing riot of her senses, that

she was lifted and swung into his arms, and handled with a

great and terrible tenderness, and hugged and kissed with

the hunger and awkwardness of a bear, and held with her feet

off the ground, and rendered blind, dizzy, rapturous, and

frightened, and utterly torn asunder from her old calm,

thinking self.

 

He put her down — released her.

 

“Nothin’ could have made me so happy as what you said.” He

finished with a strong sigh of unutterable, wondering joy.

 

“Then you will not go to — to meet —”

 

Helen’s happy query froze on her lips.

 

“I’ve got to go!” he rejoined, with his old, quiet voice.

“Hurry in to Bo… . An’ don’t worry. Try to think of

things as I taught you up in the woods.”

 

Helen heard his soft, padded footfalls swiftly pass away.

She was left there, alone in the darkening twilight,

suddenly cold and stricken, as if turned to stone.

 

Thus she stood an age-long moment until the upflashing truth

galvanized her into action. Then she flew in pursuit of

Dale. The truth was that, in spite of Dale’s’ early training

in the East and the long years of solitude which had made

him wonderful in thought and feeling, he had also become a

part of this raw, bold, and violent West.

 

It was quite dark now and she had run quite some distance

before she saw Dale’s tall, dark form against the yellow

light of Turner’s saloon.

 

Somehow, in that poignant moment, when her flying feet kept

pace with her heart, Helen felt in herself a force opposing

itself against this raw, primitive justice of the West. She

was one of the first influences emanating from civilized

life, from law and order. In that flash of truth she saw the

West as it would be some future time, when through women and

children these wild frontier days would be gone forever.

Also, just as clearly she saw the present need of men like

Roy Beeman and Dale and the fire-blooded Carmichael. Beasley

and his kind must be killed. But Helen did not want her

lover, her future husband, and the probable father of her

children to commit what she held to be murder.

 

At the door of the saloon she caught up with Dale.

 

“Milt — oh — wait!’ — wait!” she panted.

 

She heard him curse under his breath as he turned. They were

alone in the yellow flare of light. Horses were champing

bits and drooping before the rails.

 

“You go back!” ordered Dale, sternly. His face was pale, his

eyes were gleaming.

 

“No! Not till — you take me — or carry me!” she replied,

resolutely, with all a woman’s positive and inevitable

assurance.

 

Then he laid hold of her with ungentle hands. His violence,

especially the look on his face, terrified Helen, rendered

her weak. But nothing could have shaken her resolve. She

felt victory. Her sex, her love, and her presence would be

too much for Dale.

 

As he swung Helen around, the low hum of voices inside the

saloon suddenly rose to sharp, hoarse roars, accompanied by

a scuffling of feet and crashing of violently sliding chairs

or tables. Dale let go of Helen and leaped toward the door.

But a silence inside, quicker and stranger than the roar,

halted him. Helen’s heart contracted, then seemed to cease

beating. There was absolutely not a perceptible sound. Even

the horses appeared, like Dale, to have turned to statues.

 

Two thundering shots annihilated this silence. Then quickly

came a lighter shot — the smash of glass. Dale ran into the

saloon. The horses began to snort, to rear, to pound. A low,

muffled murmur terrified Helen even as it drew her. Dashing

at the door, she swung it in and entered.

 

The place was dim, blue-hazed, smelling of smoke. Dale stood

just inside the door. On the floor lay two men. Chairs and

tables were overturned. A motley, dark, shirt-sleeved,

booted, and belted crowd of men appeared hunched against the

opposite wall, with pale, set faces, turned to the bar.

Turner, the proprietor, stood at one end, his face livid,

his hands aloft and shaking. Carmichael leaned against the

middle of the bar. He held a gun low down. It was smoking.

 

With a gasp Helen flashed her eyes back to Dale. He had seen

her — was reaching an arm toward her. Then she saw the man

lying almost at her feet. Jeff Mulvey — her uncle’s old

foreman! His face was awful to behold. A smoking gun lay

near his inert hand. The other man had fallen on his face.

His garb proclaimed him a Mexican. He was not yet dead. Then

Helen, as she felt Dale’s arm encircle her, looked farther,

because she could not prevent it — looked on at that

strange figure against the bar — this boy who had been such

a friend in her hour of need — this naive and frank

sweetheart of her sister’s.

 

She saw a man now — wild, white, intense as fire, with some

terrible cool kind of deadliness in his mien. His left elbow

rested upon the bar, and his hand held a glass of red

liquor. The big gun, low down in his other hand, seemed as

steady as if it were a fixture.

 

“Heah’s to thet — half-breed Beasley an’ his outfit!”

 

Carmichael drank, while his flaming eyes held the crowd;

then with savage action of terrible passion he flung the

glass at the quivering form of the still living Mexican on

the floor.

 

Helen felt herself slipping. All seemed to darken around

her. She could not see Dale, though she knew he held her.

Then she fainted.