Читать книгу Forlorn River - Zane Grey - Страница 7

HONK! honk! honk! The coarse wild notes pierced Ina Blaine’s slumbers. She opened her eyes, and in the dim room with cool gray dawn at the window she did not recognize where she was. Honk! honk! honk!

“Oh, wild geese!” she cried out suddenly, with rapturous recognition. “Oh, I’m home—home!”

All the time Ina had been away at school she had never heard the melodious cry of a wild goose. She had forgotten, perhaps, the most significant feature of the wild life about Tule Lake. But once the loved honk penetrated her mind, what hosts of sweet memories, stretching back to childhood! It was a welcome home. The sound offered some little compensation for the loss of the lake. Ina had been astounded and dismayed to see vast green and yellow and brown fields, crisscrossed by irrigation ditches, where once Tule Lake had rippled and smiled, a great shining oval of water lying between the gray sage hills and the black lava beds. Tule Lake was gone. It seemed to change even the towering white glory of Mount Shasta.

Ina lay there watching the dawn brighten through the casement. This large luxurious room was not the one in which she had spent her childhood and girlhood. That had been a tiny one, whitewashed, with a low slanted ceiling and one small window. “The days that are no more,” she whispered. That dear room, sacred to her dreams, was gone as Tule Lake was gone. The childhood days, so sweet and stinging now in memory, had passed away forever. Her old home was not the same. Father, mother, sisters, and brothers had changed. She realized all this with sadness. While she had been away at school, growing up, nothing at home had stood still.

The sun rose red over the sage hills and streamed in at her window, gilding the new furniture. A cool breath of morning, with a hint of frost, made her snuggle down under the warm blankets. She had awakened happily, but there had come with memory and thought a check to her joy. She had not anticipated change. Yet all was changed. Even she? Yet the honk of wild geese had found her heart true to the old life, the old order.

Ina Blaine was the third child of a family of four boys and three girls, the favorite of a Kansas farmer who had emigrated to northern California and had taken up a great tract of marshland along Tule Lake. In wet seasons his land was under water. He had labored there, along with several other farsighted pioneers. And when the government drained Tule Lake it was as if their fortunes had been touched by the magic of Aladdin.

But he had sent Ina to a Kansas college long before fortune had smiled upon him. He had a brother at Lawrence, in whose home Ina was welcome during the period of her schooling. It had not been his intention to leave Ina there all this time. But one thing and another, including lack of funds and illness in her uncle’s family, had prevented Ina from spending a vacation at home. So she had been away four years, during which wealth had come, as if overnight, to the Blaines.

To revel in being home, to delight in her freedom, to play a little after the long years of study, to put off the inevitable settling down to the serious things of life—these had been Ina’s cherished hopes.

“I must see the funny side of it,” she soliloquized, with a little laugh. “For it is funny. Dad so important and pompous—mother fussed over a multitude of new fandangles—Archie impressed with his destiny as the eldest son of a cattle king—Fred and Bob leaning away from farm work to white collars and city girls. Kate engaged to a Klamath lawyer! I really can’t savvy her. The kids, though, will make up for much. We’ll get along, when once they remember me.

“To begin, then,” said Ina, resolutely, and she got up on the right side of the bed. She was home. Whatever had been the changes in country and family, here was where she had longed to be and meant to live and serve. She had spent time in St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, San Francisco, the last of which she had found most interesting. But she would never be happy in the confines of a city. She loved northern California—the vastness of it, the great white mountains, the ranges of soft round sage hills, lakes and rivers and streams, and in the midst of them the little villages here and there, not too close together, and the green flat ranches, still few in number.

“Last night when I said I’d teach school some day, didn’t dad roar?” she mused. “And mother looked offended. What has happened to my dear parents? I fear they must suffer for my education. I wonder what they have in mind. Heigho! I feel tremendously old and learned. . . . Back to the tomboy days for Ina! I’ll slide down the haymow with Dall. I’ll fish and ride and swim with Marvie. How keen he was to ask me that! . . . And Ben Ide? . . . Not a letter from him all these years. Dear old Ben! I seem to have forgotten much until now. How time flies! They wrote me Ben had gone to the bad. I never believed it—I think I didn’t. Ben was queer, not like the other boys, but he was good. . . . Has he forgotten me? Ben was a year younger than Archie. He’s twenty-four now. Quite a man! Five years didn’t make such difference when I was fifteen.”

Ina peeped out of her window. The east above the gray range blazed brightly gold, and the glow of the spring morning shone over the level waving plain where Tule Lake had once shimmered. Flocks of ducks dotted the rosy sky, and a triangle of wild geese headed toward the dim blue swamp land under the black lava mounds. Old Mount Shasta stood up majestically, snow-crowned and sunrise-flushed. The fresh keen air vibrated with sounds—honk of geese, song of spring birds, bawl of calf and low of cow. The pasture was alive with horses, cattle, pigs. Cocks were crowing, and out by the jumble of barns a cowboy whistled merrily.

Ina went downstairs and through the wide new hallway that connected with what had been the old house. Her father had made the mistake of erecting a large frame structure as an addition to the old half-log, half-stone house. It was significant that despite his rise in the ranching world he could not quite forsake his humble abode. And indeed he had his room and office there still. A kitchen had been added to the living room, which evidently, from the long tables and benches, was now a dining room for her father’s horde of cowboys.

Ina peeped into this dining room before she ventured farther. It was empty. Then she heard her mother in the kitchen. Ina ran through to surprise Mrs. Blaine helping the man-cook.

“Good morning, Mother. Where’s everybody?” cried Ina, gayly.

“Bless your heart, how you scared me!” ejaculated her mother, quite manifestly embarrassed. She was a large woman, gray-haired and somewhat hard-featured. “Nobody’s up yet, except me an’ your father.”

“Well! Why, Mother, Archie used to clean out the horse stalls, and Kate used to milk the cows!” retorted Ina, laughingly.

“They don’t any more,” replied Mrs. Blaine, shortly.

“I shall try, at least, to milk the cows.”

“Ina, your father didn’t give you a college education for that,” protested her mother, in vague alarm.

“But you used to milk cows and I’d never be above what you did,” said Ina, sweetly, and embraced her mother.

“Father has some big hopes for you, Ina,” returned Mrs. Blaine, dubiously. She did not quite know this long-lost, grown-up daughter. She seemed bewildered by circumstances of monumental importance, but which were unnatural.

“The cow-hands will be comin’ in for breakfast any minute,” she said. “You’d better go.”

“Why? I’d like to see them.”

“Your father said he’d not have any cowboys gallivantin’ round after you.”

“Indeed! But suppose I liked it,” retorted Ina, merrily. “You married dad when he was a cowboy.”

“But that was different, Ina.”

“I’d like to know how.”

“My child, I was a milkmaid on the Kansas farm where Hart Blaine was a hand. You’re the daughter of a rancher who will be a millionaire some day.”

“Mother, that last is very high-sounding, but it doesn’t impress me,” returned Ina, with seriousness. “Dad and I are going to have some arguments.”

“Ina, you were our most obedient child,” said Mrs. Blaine, divided between conjecture and doubt.

“I’ll still be, Mother dear—with reservations. And I’ll begin now by running off so the interesting cowboys will not get to see me, this time.”

Ina returned to the other part of the house, with a thoughtfulness edging into her happy mood. Her mother was plodding amid perplexities and complexities beyond her ken. The old simple hard-working farm life seemed to have been disrupted. Ina went to the sitting room, which she had explored yesterday and had found attractive in spite of its newness. There were some sticks of burning wood in the open fireplace. Ina liked that. A familiar fragrance, not experienced for a long time, assailed her nostrils. How warm and stirring the emotions it roused! Her girlhood again, trails and ponies and camp fires!

Ina curled up in a big chair before the fire, as she had been wont to do as a dreamy child, and was about to give herself up to the pleasure of retrospection when Dall came bounding in, pursued by Marvie. Sight of Ina interrupted hostilities. Dall was a gawky, growing girl of twelve and Marvie a handsome lad of fourteen, tow-headed and blue-eyed, as were all the Blaines except Ina. An animated conversation ensued, in which Dall reverted to her endless queries about college, Kansas, towns, and travel, while Marvie tried to tell about his horse and that on Saturday Ina must ride with him and go fishing.

In due time the oldest girl, Kate, came down wearing a dress rather unsuited to morning, Ina thought, and certainly not becoming. Kate Blaine was twenty-two, tall and spare, resembling her mother somewhat, but sharper of face and eye. She had not manifested any great delight in Ina’s return. Yesterday Ina had become aware of Kate’s close observance, flattering, yet somehow vaguely disconcerting. Ina’s consciousness had never been crossed by a thought other than loving all her people. She had been compelled to thrust something away from her mind.

“Marvie, you an’ Dall needn’t eat Ina,” said Kate, with a sniff. “She’s home for good. An’ ma says you’re to hurry up with breakfast, or be late for school.”

Ina followed them into the dining room, where Mrs. Blaine was waiting. It was a cheerful sunny room, well appointed, though elaborate for a rancher’s home.

“Where are dad and the boys?” asked Ina, as she seated herself.

“Bob an’ Fred have early breakfast with the cow-hands,” replied Mrs. Blaine, then added, reluctantly, “an’ sometimes your father does, too.”

Dall and Marvie sat one on each side of Ina, and she felt that they would save any situation for her. They were still too young to be greatly affected by whatever it was that had changed the elder Blaines. Ina sensed happily that she could bring much to her younger sister and brother. As for her mother and Kate, they began to force Ina to face the establishing of ideas that would be far from humorous.

“Ina, we ride in a buggy to school,” announced Dall, with just a hint of the importance so obvious in the others.

“I used to have to walk,” declared Ina. “Oh, maybe I don’t remember that long muddy road in the winter—dusty in summer!”

“Aw, I like the ridin’, but I hate the hitchin’ up,” said Marvie. “Say, Ina, paw lets me have the horse and buggy on Saturdays. Day after to-morrow is Saturday.”

“I’ll go anywhere with you,” replied Ina. “I want to ride horseback, too, Marvie. Has dad any saddle horses?”

“Say, where have your eyes been?” demanded the boy. “Pasture’s full of horses. So’s the corral and barn. An’ the cowboys tell me paw has ranches full of horses. He’s gone in with a big horse dealer, Less Setter, who has outfits all over the country. I’ve got two horses. Dall has a pony. Bob an’ Fred have a whole string. Just you tell paw you want California Red an’ see what happens.”

“Who’s California Red?” asked Ina, with interest. “Is he a cowboy or a horse?”

“He’s a wild stallion, the swiftest an’ beautifulest ever heard of. Red as fire! Too smart for all the wild-horse hunters. . . . Aw, Ina, I’d sure like to see you get California Red.”

“Marvie, you thrill me, but I want a tame horse, one I can saddle myself and ride and pet.”

“Wild mustangs make wonderful pets, once they’re broke proper.”

“Well, then, just for fun I’ll tell dad I want California Red, to see what happens.”

It was Kate who broke up this conversation and hurried Marvie and Dall to get ready for school. Ina went out with them, and made them let her ride as far as the end of the lane, to their immense delight.

The long lane had not changed. She remembered it, and the trees and rocks and bushes that bordered it. Facing back, she saw the green grove half hiding the white house, and the cluster of barns, new and old, and all around and beyond the wonderful level ranch land that had once been under water. Spring was keen in the morning air. Flocks of blackbirds swooped low and high. From somewhere came the honk of wild geese. Far beyond the level expanse rose the brown lava mounds, rising to the dignity of hills, step by step, until they changed their hard bronze for the green of pine. Above them white Shasta gleamed like a sharp cloud, piercing the blue. To the south and east the soft gray sage mountains barred the way to the wild country beyond. Ina breathed it all in, color and fragrance and music, the sweet freedom of that ranch surrounded by wild mountains. It filled her heart to overflowing. Here she had been born. The dear sad happy memories of childhood flooded her mind. She realized now that she had never changed. All she had learned had only strengthened her hold upon the simple natural things that had come to her first.

Ina lingered long in the grove of pines and maples that, happily for her, had not been touched in the improvement of Tule Lake Ranch. The fork of a gnarled old maple seemed precisely the same as when she had perched there in her bare legs and feet. And the spreading pines gave no hint of the passing of years. It frightened her to realize the growth and change in herself while these beloved trees had remained the same as in her earliest remembrance. How incredible the power of a few years over human life! There was one pine, her favorite, a great old monarch that split just above the ground and rose in separate trunks, sending low branches spreading down, affording the shelter of a natural tent. Many a storm she had weathered there.

Suddenly another memory picture flashed upon her inward eye. She and Ben Ide had quarreled only once and this had been the scene of that youthful difference. What had been the cause? Ina blushed as she leaned between the tree trunks. It had been because of Ben’s one and only departure from their tranquil Platonic comradeship. The thought held a pervading sweet melancholy, somehow disturbing. She would meet Ben presently, as she expected to meet all her other schoolmates. And she wanted to, yet, as far as Ben was concerned, she guessed she would rather not see him very soon. About the old pine tree clung vague haunting scenes, dim and imperfect, all of which Ben shared.

Ina’s prolonged walk brought her at length to the picturesque old corral and barn, which, strange to note, had not been altered with the advent of newer structures. Hart Blaine had, unconsciously perhaps, preserved some of the old atmosphere of Tule Lake Ranch.

She espied her father’s tall spare form, not quite familiar in severe shiny black. She remembered him in soiled overalls and top boots. He was bareheaded now and his gray locks waved in the breeze. He was talking to a man seated in a buckboard, holding the reins of a spirited team. They did not observe Ina’s approach. The several cowboys near by, however, were keen to see her, and as she passed them, frankly interested in their presence, they appeared to be strangely disrupted from their work.

“. . . tell you, Setter, it’s a deal I don’t like,” her father was saying, impatiently, as Ina approached.

Then the man in the buckboard sat up quickly and Blaine turned to see Ina. His seamed hard face lost its craggyness in a smile of surprise, love, pride. Ina was the apple of his eye.

“Hello, Dad!” she said, gayly. “I’m poking around to see what you’ve done to my Tule Lake Ranch.”

“Mawnin’, lass,” he replied, extending his long arm. He had big gray eyes, still keen, a hooked nose like the beak of an eagle, and a large mouth, showing under a grizzled mustache.

“Ina, this is one of my pardners, Less Setter, from Nevada,” went on Blaine. Then he faced the man, drawing Ina forward with arm round her shoulder. “My blue-ribbon lass, just home from school.”

“Proud to meet you, Miss Ina,” returned Setter, gallantly, with a gloved hand touching his sombrero. As Ina acknowledged the introduction she looked up into a yellow-bearded mask of a face, with almond-shaped, heavily-lidded eyes that seemed to devour her. Setter did not appear young, yet he looked vigorous, intense, different from men Ina had been in the habit of seeing. Even in that casual moment, when she was not interested, he made such impression upon her that it broke her mood of gayety. She felt instant distrust of her father’s partner, and she had impatiently to force herself from intuitive womanly convictions. Suddenly Marvie’s talk about horses flashed into her mind, and she grasped with relief at something to say.

“Dad, I want a saddle horse,” she said, brightly, turning to him.

“Lass, you can have a string of horses,” he replied. “We’ve got in a lot of stock. Mr. Setter just sold me a hundred head, all from Nevada, an’ some of them are beauties. I’ve a big order from Seattle, so you must take your pick.”

“But, Dad, I always dreamed of a really grand horse,” went on Ina, which was telling the truth.

“Lass, I don’t recollect you bein’ keen over any kind of horses,” observed her father.

“We were very poor,” she said, softly. “You must recollect that I walked to school, winter and summer.”

“Haw! Haw! Yes, Ina, I sure do, an’ somehow it’s good to think of. . . . Wal, my daughter, we’re not poor now, an’ if you want the best hoss in all this country you’re only to say so.”

“Dad, I want California Red,” she rejoined, swiftly.

“What! That wild stallion?” ejaculated Blaine, in amaze. “Why, lass, all the hoss outfits in three States have swallowed the dust of that sorrel.”

“Oh, he must be grand!” exclaimed Ina, now thrilled about what had grown out of a joke.

“Miss Ina, he is indeed a grand horse,” interposed Setter. “I saw him once, two years ago. He’s a racy, fine, clean-limbed animal, red as fire, with a mane like a flame. An’ he’s not a killer of horses, as so many stallions are. Most of the riders an’ hunters think he’d break gentle. So you get your dad to promise. . . . I’m witness, Blaine, mind you, of your word.”

“California Red is yours, Ina, if he can be caught,” replied her father.

“He can be, I reckon,” said Setter, meditatively. “There’s only a few outfits after him. That is they claim to be wild-horse hunters, but it’s only a blind to hide their thieving of cattle and range horses. Hall an’ his outfit are workin’ close to Silver Meadow now. Probably the only hunters really chasin’ Red are this Ide boy an’ his pards. They’re leanin’ to crooked deals, too, but I reckon Ide wants Red so bad—”

“Ide!” interrupted Ina, quickly. “Do you mean Ben Ide?”

“Yes, his name’s Ben,” replied Setter.

“You lie! Ben Ide is no horse thief,” flashed Ina, hotly.

“See here, lass, easy, easy,” interposed her father. “You’ve been away from home a long time. Much has happened to others, as well as to your folks. Bad as well as good!”

Then he addressed Setter.

“You see, Less, it’s news to Ina. She an’ Ben went to school together. They used to play here as kids. An’ I reckon it’s a kind of a blow to learn—”

“Dad, I don’t believe it,” spoke up Ina, still with heat, her voice breaking.

“It’s too bad, Miss Ina,” said Setter. “I’m sorry I was the one to hurt your feelin’s. But it does appear your boy schoolmate has gone to the bad.”

Ina turned her back upon Setter, suddenly gripped by an unfamiliar fury and pain. Surprise at these feelings had a part in her agitation.

“Dad,” she said, striving to hide it, “has any—any dishonest thing ever been traced to Ben Ide?”

“Lass, there’s been a lot of talk,” replied her father. “Soon after you left home Ben took to the hills, crazy about wild hosses. Amos Ide, if you remember, was a religious man, an’ I reckon Ben represented to him somethin’ you do to me. Anyway, Amos couldn’t break the boy—make him settle down to work. They had a final quarrel. Ben’s been gone ever since. I’ve never seen him, though others have. Mrs. Ide takes it hard, they say. I drop in to see them now an’ then. But Ben’s name ain’t never mentioned. The last two years we’ve begun to run cattle out in the valleys an’ flat along Forlorn River. Ben lives over there. An’ a good many cattle an’ hosses have—wal, disappeared. So Ben had worse said about him. But I can’t say anythin’ has ever been proved.”

“It’s not easy to fix rustlin’ an’ hoss stealin’ on any one in an unsettled country,” cut in the cold voice of Setter, with its note of authority. “Stock missed by your father or other ranchers is never seen again. That means it goes over the line into Nevada or down across the high Sierras.”

“All the more reason a young man of good family—once a neighbor and—and friend of ours should not be accused of being a—”

As Ina halted over the unspeakable word Setter flicked the ashes from his cigar and then bent his inscrutable colorless eyes upon her.

“Any man is known by the company he keeps,” he asserted. “Young Ide lives with a renegade Modoc Indian, an’ a cowboy who was run out of Nevada for bein’ a horse thief.”

The pointed positiveness of the man struck Ina strangely even while his information made her heart sick. She stared at Setter until his cool assurance seemed slightly to change. Ina caught a glimpse of what hid behind that mask. She was fascinated by something impossible to grasp. Forced to listen to damning statements, she was unconsciously peering, with a woman’s strange inconsistency, at a man whose face and voice and look struck antagonism from her. There was no reason in the attitude of her mind.

“Dad, what Mr. Setter said does not strike me quite right,” she declared, frankly. “It makes me remember Ben Ide more than I thought I did. Dad, I don’t believe Ben would steal to save his life. How could any boy change so in a few years?”

Then she deliberately faced her father’s new partner.

“Mr. Setter, if I remember Ben Ide at all you will have to prove what you say. I shall certainly see him and tell him.”

“Ina, what’re you talkin’ about?” queried Blaine, impatiently. “That’s ’most an insult to Setter. An’ you can’t hunt up this Ide boy. I wouldn’t let you be seen talkin’ to him.”

“I should think you would take me to see Ben, so I—”

Ina saw the leap of red to her father’s craggy face and suddenly remembered his temper; she also saw several cowboys that had edged closer and now stood gaping.

“Girl, you’ve come back with queer ideas,” declared Blaine. “If that’s all school’s done for you I’m sorry I sent you.”

“Dad, I have a mind of my own—I can think,” replied Ina, feelingly.

“Wal, you needn’t do any thinkin’ about seein’ Ben Ide, an’ that’s all there is to that.”

“My dear father, I shall most certainly see Ben Ide,” said Ina.

“Go in the house,” ordered Blaine, harshly.

Ina strode away with her head high and face burning, and it was certain that she looked straight at the cowboys.

She heard Setter say: “Spunky girl, Hart, an’ you have your hands full.”

“Why’d you rub it in about young Ide?” demanded her father, angrily. “Seems you’re set on it, blowin’ at Hammell an’ all over—”

Ina passed out of hearing, and when she was also out of sight she slipped through the bars of a gate and went back to the grove. Here she found a seat under the double pine tree, and the act of returning there established a link between the past and the lamentable news she had just heard. Whereupon she went over the whole conversation. It left her with a desire to feel grieved at instantly distrusting a man close to her father, and at the ensuing clash, but she could not feel in the least sorry. Instead, she found she was angry and hurt.

“If it’s—true,” she faltered, “I’ll—I’ll—somehow I’ll bring Ben back to his old self.”