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

have anything to do with him?”

 

“I won’t if I can help it.”

 

Other passengers boarded the train, dusty, uncouth, ragged

men, and some hard-featured, poorly clad women, marked by

toil, and several more Mexicans. With bustle and loud talk

they found their several seats.

 

Then Helen saw Harve Riggs enter, burdened with much

luggage. He was a man of about medium height, of dark,

flashy appearance, cultivating long black mustache and hair.

His apparel was striking, as it consisted of black

frock-coat, black trousers stuffed in high, fancy-topped

boots, an embroidered vest, and flowing tie, and a black

sombrero. His belt and gun were prominent. It was

significant that he excited comment among the other

passengers.

 

When he had deposited his pieces of baggage he seemed to

square himself, and, turning abruptly, approached the seat

occupied by the girls. When he reached it he sat down upon

the arm of the one opposite, took off his sombrero, and

deliberately looked at Helen. His eyes were light, glinting,

with hard, restless quiver, and his mouth was coarse and

arrogant. Helen had never seen him detached from her home

surroundings, and now the difference struck cold upon her

heart.

 

“Hello, Nell!” he said. “Surprised to see me?”

 

“No,” she replied, coldly.

 

“I’ll gamble you are.”

 

“Harve Riggs, I told you the day before I left home that

nothing you could do or say mattered to me.”

 

“Reckon that ain’t so, Nell. Any woman I keep track of has

reason to think. An’ you know it.”

 

“Then you followed me — out here?” demanded Helen, and her

voice, despite her control, quivered with anger.

 

“I sure did,” he replied, and there was as much thought of

himself in the act as there was of her.

 

“Why? Why? It’s useless — hopeless.”

 

“I swore I’d have you, or nobody else would,” he replied,

and here, in the passion of his voice there sounded egotism

rather than hunger for a woman’s love. “But I reckon I’d

have struck West anyhow, sooner or later.”

 

“You’re not going to — all the way — to Pine?” faltered

Helen, momentarily weakening.

 

“Nell, I’ll camp on your trail from now on,” he declared.

 

Then Bo sat bolt-upright, with pale face and flashing eyes.

 

“Harve Riggs, you leave Nell alone,” she burst out, in

ringing, brave young voice. “I’ll tell you what — I’ll bet

— if you follow her and nag her any more, my uncle Al or

some cowboy will run you out of the country.”

 

“Hello, Pepper!” replied Riggs, coolly. “I see your manners

haven’t improved an’ you’re still wild about cowboys.”

 

“People don’t have good manners with — with —”

 

“Bo, hush!” admonished Helen. It was difficult to reprove Bo

just then, for that young lady had not the slightest fear of

Riggs. Indeed, she looked as if she could slap his face. And

Helen realized that however her intelligence had grasped the

possibilities of leaving home for a wild country, and

whatever her determination to be brave, the actual beginning

of self-reliance had left her spirit weak. She would rise

out of that. But just now this flashing-eyed little sister

seemed a protector. Bo would readily adapt herself to the

West, Helen thought, because she was so young, primitive,

elemental.

 

Whereupon Bo turned her back to Riggs and looked out of the

window. The man laughed. Then he stood up and leaned over

Helen.

 

“Nell, I’m goin’ wherever you go,” he said, steadily. “You

can take that friendly or not, just as it pleases you. But

if you’ve got any sense you’ll not give these people out

here a hunch against me. I might hurt somebody… . An’

wouldn’t it be better — to act friends? For I’m goin’ to

look after you, whether you like it or not.”

 

Helen had considered this man an annoyance, and later a

menace, and now she must declare open enmity with him.

However disgusting the idea that he considered himself a

factor in her new life, it was the truth. He existed, he had

control over his movements. She could not change that. She

hated the need of thinking so much about him; and suddenly,

with a hot, bursting anger, she hated the man.

 

“You’ll not look after me. I’ll take care of myself,” she

said, and she turned her back upon him. She heard him mutter

under his breath and slowly move away down the car. Then Bo

slipped a hand in hers.

 

“Never mind, Nell,” she whispered. “You know what old

Sheriff Haines said about Harve Riggs. ‘A four-flush

would-be gun-fighter! If he ever strikes a real Western town

he’ll get run out of it.’ I just wish my red-faced cowboy

had got on this train!”

 

Helen felt a rush of gladness that she had yielded to Bo’s

wild importunities to take her West. The spirit which had

made Bo incorrigible at home probably would make her react

happily to life out in this free country. Yet Helen, with

all her warmth and gratefulness, had to laugh at her sister.

 

“Your red-faced cowboy! Why, Bo, you were scared stiff. And

now you claim him!”

 

“I certainly could love that fellow,” replied Bo, dreamily.

 

“Child, you’ve been saying that about fellows for a long

time. And you’ve never looked twice at any of them yet.”

 

“He was different… . Nell, I’ll bet he comes to Pine.”

 

“I hope he does. I wish he was on this train. I liked his

looks, Bo.”

 

“Well, Nell dear, he looked at ME first and last — so don’t

get your hopes up… . Oh, the train’s starting! …

Good-by, Albu-ker — what’s that awful name? … Nell,

let’s eat dinner. I’m starved.”

 

Then Helen forgot her troubles and the uncertain future, and

what with listening to Bo’s chatter, and partaking again of

the endless good things to eat in the huge basket, and

watching the noble mountains, she drew once more into happy

mood.

 

The valley of the Rio Grande opened to view, wide near at

hand in a great gray-green gap between the bare black

mountains, narrow in the distance, where the yellow river

wound away, glistening under a hot sun. Bo squealed in glee

at sight of naked little Mexican children that darted into

adobe huts as the train clattered by, and she exclaimed her

pleasure in the Indians, and the mustangs, and particularly

in a group of cowboys riding into town on spirited horses.

Helen saw all Bo pointed out, but it was to the wonderful

rolling valley that her gaze clung longest, and to the dim

purple distance that seemed to hold something from her. She

had never before experienced any feeling like that; she had

never seen a tenth so far. And the sight awoke something

strange in her. The sun was burning hot, as she could tell

when she put a hand outside the window, and a strong wind

blew sheets of dry dust at the train. She gathered at once

what tremendous factors in the Southwest were the sun and

the dust and the wind. And her realization made her love

them. It was there; the open, the wild, the beautiful, the

lonely land; and she felt the poignant call of blood in her

— to seek, to strive, to find, to live. One look down that

yellow valley, endless between its dark iron ramparts, had

given her understanding of her uncle. She must be like him

in spirit, as it was claimed she resembled him otherwise.

 

At length Bo grew tired of watching scenery that contained

no life, and, with her bright head on the faded cloak, she

went to sleep. But Helen kept steady, farseeing gaze out

upon that land of rock and plain; and during the long hours,

as she watched through clouds of dust and veils of heat,

some strong and doubtful and restless sentiment seemed to

change and then to fix. It was her physical acceptance —

her eyes and her senses taking the West as she had already

taken it in spirit.

 

A woman should love her home wherever fate placed her, Helen

believed, and not so much from duty as from delight and

romance and living. How could life ever be tedious or

monotonous out here in this tremendous vastness of bare

earth and open sky, where the need to achieve made thinking

and pondering superficial?

 

It was with regret that she saw the last of the valley of

the Rio Grande, and then of its paralleled mountain ranges.

But the miles brought compensation in other valleys, other

bold, black upheavals of rock, and then again bare,

boundless yellow plains, and sparsely cedared ridges, and

white dry washes, ghastly in the sunlight, and dazzling beds

of alkali, and then a desert space where golden and blue

flowers bloomed.

 

She noted, too, that the whites and yellows of earth and

rock had begun to shade to red — and this she knew meant an

approach to Arizona. Arizona, the wild, the lonely, the red

desert, the green plateau — Arizona with its thundering

rivers, its unknown spaces, its pasture-lands and

timber-lands, its wild horses, cowboys, outlaws, wolves and

lions and savages! As to a boy, that name stirred and

thrilled and sang to her of nameless, sweet, intangible

things, mysterious and all of adventure. But she, being a

girl of twenty, who had accepted responsibilities, must

conceal the depths of her heart and that which her mother

had complained was her misfortune in not being born a boy.

 

Time passed, while Helen watched and learned and dreamed.

The train stopped, at long intervals, at wayside stations

where there seemed nothing but adobe sheds and lazy

Mexicans, and dust and heat. Bo awoke and began to chatter,

and to dig into the basket. She learned from the conductor

that Magdalena was only two stations on. And she was full of

conjectures as to who would meet them, what would happen. So

Helen was drawn back to sober realities, in which there was

considerable zest. Assuredly she did not know what was going

to happen. Twice Riggs passed up and down the aisle, his

dark face and light eyes and sardonic smile deliberately

forced upon her sight. But again Helen fought a growing

dread with contemptuous scorn. This fellow was not half a

man. It was not conceivable what he could do, except annoy

her, until she arrived at Pine. Her uncle was to meet her or

send for her at Snowdrop, which place, Helen knew, was

distant a good long ride by stage from Magdalena. This

stage-ride was the climax and the dread of all the long

journey, in Helen’s considerations.

 

“Oh, Nell!” cried Bo, with delight. “We’re nearly there!

Next station, the conductor said.”

 

“I wonder if the stage travels at night,” said Helen,

thoughtfully.

 

“Sure it does!” replied the irrepressible Bo.

 

The train, though it clattered along as usual, seemed to

Helen to fly. There the sun was setting over bleak New

Mexican bluffs, Magdalena was at hand, and night, and

adventure. Helen’s heart beat fast. She watched the yellow

plains where the cattle grazed; their presence, and

irrigation ditches and cottonwood-trees told her that the

railroad part of the journey was nearly ended. Then, at Bo’s

little scream, she looked across the car and out of the

window to see a line of low, flat, red-adobe houses. The

train began to slow down. Helen saw children run, white

children and Mexican together; then more houses, and high

upon a hill an immense adobe church, crude and glaring, yet

somehow beautiful.

 

Helen told Bo to put on her bonnet, and, performing a like

office for herself, she was ashamed of the