Nevada (1995) Page 27

  "Struthers, I hired you to come up here," returned Ben, deliberately. "I admit I wanted Jim Lacy shot or hanged. But I've changed my mind. He's my friend. I owe my life, my fortune, my family, all to him. There's some mystery--some mistake here.

  That's for me to learn, an' not for you."

  "All right. But I'll take Lacy to Phoenix for trial," replied Struthers.

  "If you do, it'll be over my dead body. Take care, Struthers.

  This isn't Phoenix. You're up in the brakes."

  Thus Ben Ide answered to his few months in Arizona. The situation looked grave again. But Judge Franklidge interposed to push Struthers back.

  "You have no jurisdiction here unless I give it," he said. Then he turned to Ben with courtly kindness. "My son, don't distress yourself further. Just have a little patience."

  "Patience!" ejaculated Ben, as if he had not heard aright Judge Franklidge advanced to place his left hand on Nevada's shoulder and extended his right, which Nevada quickly met.

  "Jack, you may be from Texas, as old Tom here brags, but you sure belong to Arizona," he said, heartily.

  "Wal, I should smile," corroborated Day, heartily.

  Judge Franklidge turned to indicate in slight gesture the dead man on the ground.

  "Dillon, of course, was the leader of this Pine Tree rustler gang," he asserted. "Otherwise you would not have risked revealing yourself here?"

  "Wal, reckon I wouldn't," replied Nevada, with a smile that held no mirth.

  "Dillon!" boomed Tom Day, his eyes rolling at the dead man. "Who was he, Jack?"

  "Ed Richardson, late of New Mexico."

  "Richardson? I know aboot him. Lincoln County war hombre? Billy the Kid outfit?"

  "That's the man, Tom."

  "Wal, I'm a son-of-a-gun!" ejaculated the old rancher. "I begin to see light. Dillon was thick with Stewart. An' Stewart never worked the same for me after Dillon became foreman heah at Ben's.

  This mawnin' he was gone. An' he knowed where we was bound for. . . . Jack, what you make of thet?"

  "Stewart was one of the three Arizonians that Richardson took into his New Mexican outfit."

  "Ahuh! Who's the other two?"

  "Burt Stillwell an' Cedar Hatt."

  "Stillwell! . . . Jack, didn't you--meet thet hombre just lately?" queried Day, his eyes glinting.

  "Yes. It was Stillwell who stole Ben's horse, California Red. I made him send Red back. Reckon that r'iled Stillwell. . . . An'

  Marvie Blaine shot Cedar Hatt to-day. So the Pine Tree outfit is shore broke."

  Ben Ide, in bewildered state, crowded closer to the speakers.

  "Marvie Blaine shot Cedar Hatt?" ejaculated Judge Franklidge.

  "Good Lord!" added Day in his booming voice. "What next? Ben, you listenin' to all this?"

  "Tom--I'm stumped," replied Ben, hoarsely.

  "Spill it, Jack. Tell us about Marvie. Heaven help us now!" went on Day.

  "I happened on Cedar Hatt to-day," replied Nevada. "He was ridin' down in one of the brakes an' I was on top. Wal, I soon saw he was trailin' some one. So I worked ahaid an' got down off the Rim.

  There I happened to run on Marvie an' his girl, Rose Hatt. They were spoonin' under the trees an' never saw me. I was lookin' for Cedar an' I knew Cedar was lookin' for them. So I kept quiet.

  Pretty soon Cedar slips up, right on to them. An' he begins to rave. Rose talked back an' shore Marvie showed spunk. Cedar knocked him down, an' then Rose, too. That riled Marvie an' he tore into Cedar. It looked bad, with Cedar pullin' at his gun. He got it out, but Marvie fought him for it. . . . An', wal, in the fight Cedar dropped the gun an' Marvie quick as a cat snatched it up. Usin' both hands, he throwed it on Cedar an' shore bored him twice."

  "Whoop-ee!" yelled one of the cowboys at the back of the crowd.

  "By thunder! I'd whoop myself if I had any voice left," returned Tom Day. "Where's Marvie? Come heah, you gunslingin' kid!"

  "Rose Hatt is heah, too," said Nevada. "An', Tom, it'd be wal for you an' Judge Franklidge to talk to her. Rose is a good honest girl. Dillon was after her. An' Cedar Hatt had dragged Rose away from home to meet Dillon. That was how Rose found out aboot the Pine Tree outfit. An' she confessed to me."

  "Wal, I'll be darned!" replied Day, feelingly. "The lass looks a little scared an' white, Judge. I reckon we needn't heah her say now, in this crowd. But that kid Marvie--he shore don't look scared."

  "Come here, my lad," called Judge Franklidge, beckoning.

  Marvie slipped off his horse and stalked forward to confront the three men. Hettie thrilled at sight of him, yet she could have wept and screamed with mirth. Marvie, if he were any character at all, was surely Nevada. In look, in walk, in manner! He had a big black gun in his chaps pocket, and another smaller one in his belt.

  What a moment for Marvie Blaine!

  "Son, what's this we heah?" asked Day, bluntly. "Did you shoot Cedar Hatt?"

  "Reckon I did," replied Marvie. "Here's his gun. It happened just about as Nevada told you."

  "Who's Nevada?"

  Marvie laid a hand on his friend.

  "Oho! You mean Jim Lacy heah?"

  "No, I mean Nevada," replied the lad, stoutly. "That Jim Lacy handle doesn't go with me."

  "Marvie, you speak for me," interposed Judge Franklidge. "He may indeed be Nevada and Jim Lacy. But for me he will always be Texas Jack. He has worked for me for two years. And before that for Tom Day. We found him to be the best cowboy who ever threw a rope for us. And more--a splendid honest man whom it is my privilege to call friend--and whom I would be happy to take into my cattle business."

  "Hey, you sheriff rustlers," boomed Tom Day, with loud satisfaction, "did you heah that? Wal, listen to some more. Texas Jack volunteered to clean up this Pine Tree outfit. He had my backin'.

  He had Judge Franklidge's office behind him. He had free hand to become a rustler an' thief, to drink an' gamble an' shoot his way into the secret of the Pine Tree outfit. Do you savvy? Or are you wearin' your hair too long? There won't be any arrest. There won't be anyone danglin' on a rope."

  Chapter twenty-two.

  Hettie lay upon her bed, face to the open window, with the cool sweet sage-laden wind blowing in upon her. Dusk had fallen. The last rose and gold of the afterglow of sunset lingered in the west.

  She never knew how she had gotten from Ben's courtyard to her room.

  Dimly she remembered faces and murmuring voices that had no meaning for her.

  The door opened--closed. Ben knelt beside her bed--took her hands-- kissed her face.

  "Hettie, I came as quick as I could get away," he said, with deep agitation. "I was knocked off my pins. But happy--oh, girl, never so happy before, except on the day Ina married me! . . . When I could think I remembered you. So here I am."

  "Oh--Ben!" she whispered, and clung to him, her slow overburdened heart lifting painfully.

  "Hettie dear--joy never kills," he replied, tenderly.

  "If it were--only joy," mourned Hettie.

  "Child, there's nothing BUT joy," he rushed on. "It was a terrible shock. To find out old Nevada--was Jim Lacy. But we always knew he was somebody bad. No, not bad. But somebody wild an' great.

  You knew--Hettie. . . . An' now he's turned up. The wonder of it is that he had hidden the old identity. He had given up the old wild life. He had found honest work an' had lived clean an' fine.

  As we knew him in those happy days at Forlorn River. So you see all your love an' faith an' hope were justified. He WAS worth it.

  Thank God I never lost--"

  "Hush! You're killing--me!" gasped Hettie, writhing from his embrace.

  "Hettie! Why, sister, this isn't like you," he expostulated, in anxiety. "You're overcome. It has been too much for you."

  "Not the joy--not the excitement," she returned. "I've been a poor miserable creature! . . . A coward! A selfish, headstrong woman!

  Jealous, little! . . . Oh, so poor in love--in faith!"

  It came out then, graduall
y, sometimes incoherently, the story of her meeting with Nevada; and Hettie, in her self-abasement, magnified all the shame and ignominy--all the bitter invective and scorn which she had flung into his face.

  Ben drew her head back to his shoulder and smoothed her disheveled hair.

  "Well! . . . I understand now. Too bad! But there are excuses for you. Didn't you believe in him--love him--keep yourself for him all these years? Some things are too much for anybody."

  "He--will--never--forgive," she sobbed, with the relief that came through his sympathy, his championship.

  "Nevada? Why, that fellow would forgive anythin'."

  "I--can never--forgive myself."

  "Hettie, it will all come right. Don't you remember how you harped on that? Beat it into my poor thick head! . . . An', lo! it has come right. . . . Nevada could not hurt you."

  "I have--hurt myself. I've lost something. My ideal has failed me."

  "No--no. You're just overwrought by this sudden crash. Please, Hettie. I don't mean cheer up. But brace up an' see it through.

  Where's your Ide spunk?"

  "Gone--gone."

  "Well, then, get it back. I swear to you Nevada will be just like I am now. On my knees to you!"

  "Where is he?"

  "I left him in the livin'-room, playin' with Blaine. The kid took a shine to him pronto. An' Nevada. Lord! no one would ever dream of him bein' what we've learned to understand by the name Jim Lacy. . . . Hettie, there's somethin' so simple an' great about Nevada. He's just himself now as we remembered him. He's Nevada, that's all."

  Hettie lay awake many hours, with anguish slowly wearing away to a regurgitation of something quite as full of pangs. The night wind moved through the pines, sweeping, swelling, lulling. Coyotes added their lonesome chorus. White stars shone from the dark blue sky. When she fell asleep she dreamed vague, unreal, distorted dreams, in which she seemed the central shadow among shadows of Nevada, Marvie, Rose, Ben, and that mocking handsome Dillon. But she awoke to a new day--new as the bright morning, and with a dawning hope, like the gold and blue of the Arizona sky.

  She had no time for her own thoughts. Marvie rushed in upon her, in the kitchen, to be followed by Rose, shy, sweet, modest as the wildflower for which she was named. Already they had been out in the woods and now they were as hungry as bears. Mrs. Ide looked upon them with wonder and favor. They wanted to go to Winthrop.

  Would Hettie go? Rose must have clothes and books and things. How Marvie's face glowed under his freckles! And Rose was in a transport. Had she forgotten that sordid home down in the brakes?

  "Not to-day," replied Hettie, to their importunities. "To-morrow, maybe, if Ben consents."

  "What has that Ben Ide to do with my affairs?" demanded Marvie, loftily. "I'd like to have you know _I_ can ride for Franklidge or Tom Day or any other big rancher in Arizona."

  Hettie sensed trouble for Ben when he came to attempt reconciliation with Marvie. Ben would surely need her aid.

  "Marv, boy, of course I know," she said. "But you must use some sense. Rose is to have a home with me. And I shall take her to San Diego for the winter. I should think you would want to be near her this fall, and also go to San Diego, at least for a while."

  Marvie wilted under that. What a master-stroke, thought Hettie.

  "Well, if Ben crawls to me I'll consider comin' back," replied Marvie, condescendingly.

  After breakfast Tom Day came over to pay his respects to Hettie and her mother. How bluff and genial and substantial he was!

  "Wal, lass," he said at parting, "I reckon the Ides an' the Days can go back to ranchin' again, thanks to thet Texas Jack of ours.

  Shore, we'll have rustlin' bees again an' mebbe for years to come.

  But there'll be a spell now, like these Indian-summer days. Folks can sleep an' be happy. An' you youngsters can make love. Haw!

  Haw! . . . Hettie lass, I've been a-wonderin' aboot you. I'm shore a keen old fox. Wal, adios, an' God bless you."

  Later in the morning Ben came to her so utterly abject that he was funny.

  "Now what?" queried Hettie. "You needn't come to me for sympathy."

  "Aw, Hettie, that's what Ina said, an' she stuck to it," said Ben.

  "But I've got to tell somebody. An' Nevada is moonstruck or somethin'. He never heard me."

  "All right, Bennie," smiled Hettie, relenting.

  "You know I fired Raidy--well, of course I had to go to him an' ask him to come back. Reckon the old fellow was hurt deep. He didn't rub it in, but he was sure cold. For a long while I apologized, made excuses, swore, an' did about everythin' before he would take back the old job. But at that he was nothin' compared to Marvie Blaine."

  "Indeed! Yes, I remember you fired Marvie, too," said Hettie.

  "You would have died laughin' to see that kid," went on Ben, ruefully. "I sent for him. Did he come? Not much. He sent word back by my messenger that if I wanted to talk to him I could hunt him up. So I had to. An' I'm darned if I don't believe he watched me an' kept dodgin' me. Well, anyway, I found him at last an' asked him to forget our difference. Whew! . . . Say, he's expanded in this Arizona air. He had an argument that floored me.

  It WAS logic, though I wouldn't admit it. He made me crawl. By George! You know I love Marvie an' I could never let him leave Ina an' me till he's grown up. He had more dignity than Judge Franklidge an' more conceit than any cowboy I ever saw. He swelled up like that Sheriff Macklin. Well, after he got his job back at a higher salary he put on the screws some more. He actually hit me for the reward I offered for any clue leadin' to the apprehension of the Pine Tree outfit. That reward was a thousand dollars.

  Marvie claimed Rose was his clue. The cheeky little rooster! But Nevada backed him up. An' as a matter of fact, 'most everythin' came through Rose. So I promised it to him. . . . Now what do you say?"

  Hettie leaped up gladly. "Good for Marv! Now, Ben, run over and crawl to Inaa. Then we--YOU all can be happy again!"

  "Ahuh! I get the hunch that 'you' aren't included. I'll bet before this day ends you'll be as crazy as Marv an' as mum as his little wood mouse, Rose."

  Still Hettie was not to have any of the solitude she craved. No sooner had Ben gone than Judge Franklidge appeared.

  "I've come over to bid you and Mrs. Ide good-by," he said, in his kindly way. "It has been a rather staggering time. But we're on our feet again, and 'ridin' pretty,' as the cowboys say."

  Then leaning closer to Hettie he continued in lower tone: "You recall one day at my home--when you said somethin' mysterious to me then, but pertinent now. It was about--NEVADA."

  "I remember--Judge Franklidge," murmured Hettie, trembling.

  "Well, would I be correct if I--sort of put two and two together-- or perhaps I should say one and one? . . . Nevada and Hettie, for instance?"

  His persuasive voice, deep with understanding, and his linking together the two names, quite subdued her poor and rebellious resistance. She dropped her head, murmuring a faint affirmative.

  "I'm glad I hit upon the truth," he said, with eagerness. "I watched you yesterday and I believe I saw then something of your ordeal. And I see now in your face the havoc that tells of your pain. It is my earnest hope to soothe that pain, Hettie Ide, and I know I can do so. Listen. It has been a terrible shock for you to find in your Texas Jack--or Nevada, as you call him--no other than the infamous or famous Jim Lacy. This is natural, but it is all wrong. There need be no shame, no fear, no shrinking in your acceptance of this fact. I've met and trusted no finer man than this same Jim Lacy. But I did not come to eulogize him. . . . I want to make clear in your mind just what such men as Jim Lacy mean to me. I have lived most of my life on the frontier and I know what its wilderness has been, and still is. There are bad men and bad men. It is a distinction with a vast difference. I have met or seen many of the noted killers. Wild Bill, Wess Hardin, Kingfisher, Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, an' a host of others.

  These men are not bloody murderers. They are a product of the times. The We
st could never have been populated without them.

  They strike a balance between the hordes of ruffians, outlaws, strong evil characters like Dillon, and the wild life of a wild era. It is the West as any Westerner knows it now. And as such we could not be pioneers, we could not progress without this violence.

  Without the snuffing out of dissolute and desperate men such as Dillon, Cedar Hatt, Stillwell, and so on. The rub is that only hard iron-nerved youths like Billy the Kid, or Jim Lacy, can meet such men on their own ground. That is all I wanted you to know.

  And also, that if my daughter cared for Jim Lacy I would be proud to give her to him."

  "Thank you, Judge Franklidge," replied Hettie, lifting her head to look straight into his eyes. "But you misunderstand my--my case.

  I do not mind--that Nevada has been Jim Lacy."

  "For Heaven's sake! Then, why all this--this--I don't know what?" burst out the judge, in smiling amaze.

  Hettie glanced away, out into the green black-striped forest.

  "I scorned him. I believed him lost to--to . . . I failed in faith. And I fear he will never forgive."

  "Hettie Ide," returned Franklidge, with solemn finality, "this Texas Jack won't even know he has anything to forgive."

  Before Hettie could recover from this ultimatum Marvie waylaid her.

  Full of importance and authority, added to something of mystery, he hauled Hettie off the porch and out under the trees.

  "Hettie," he whispered in her ear, "I fixed it for you."

  "Marvie! . . . Are you--Oh, if you--"

  "Keep in the saddle," he interrupted, shaking her. "Nevada just told me he was dyin' of love for you. . . . There now, Hettie, don't look like that. I'm dead serious. Honest to God! Cross my heart! . . . Didn't you make my Rose happy? Why, I'd go to hell for you. An' Nevada knows it. He's sufferin'. He thinks you ought to send for him, if you can forgive him for bein' Jim Lacy."

  Hettie could only cling mutely to this glad-eyed boy who was torturing her.