Название | Arizona Ames |
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Автор произведения | Zane Grey |
Жанр | Вестерны |
Серия | |
Издательство | Вестерны |
Год выпуска | 0 |
isbn | 9781479454211 |
“Wal, wal, this is news,” rejoined Tanner, thoughtfully, as he kept looking toward the cabin. “Where’s Tommy? I reckoned I’d see him first off.”
Mescal’s blue eyes darkened and dimmed with tears. Manzanita averted her face. And then something struck cold at the old trapper’s heart.
“Tommy’s dead,” whispered Mescal.
“Aw, no!” burst out Cappy, poignantly.
“Yes. It was in June. He fell off the rocks. Hurt himself. Rich an’ Nesta weren’t home. We couldn’t get a doctor. An’ he died.”
“Lord! I’m sorry!” exclaimed the trapper.
“It hurt us all—an’ near broke Rich’s heart.”
At this juncture the mother of the girls appeared on the cabin porch, wiping flour from her strong brown arms. She was under forty and still handsome, fair-haired, tall and strong, a pioneer woman whom the recent Tonto war had made a widow.
“If it ain’t Uncle Cappy!” she ejaculated, warmly. “I wondered what-all the twins was yelling at. Then I seen the burros. . . . Old timer, you’re welcome as mayflowers.”
“Thanks, an’ you’re shore lookin’ fine, Mrs. Ames,” replied Cappy, shaking her hand. “I’m awful glad to get back to Mescal Ridge. It’s about the only home I ever had—of late years, anyhow. . . . Thet about Tommy digs me deep. . . . I—I’m shore surprised an’ sorry.”
“It wouldn’t have been so hard for us if he’d been killed outright,” she rejoined, sadly. “But the hell of it was he might have been saved if we could have got him out.”
“Wal—wal! . . . I reckon I’d better move along. I’ve fetched some things for you-all. I’ll drop them off here, then go on to my cabin, an’ soon as I unpack I’ll come back.”
“An’ have supper. Rich will be back an’ mebbe Nesta.”
“You bet I’ll have supper,” returned Cappy. Then he loosened a pack from one of the burros, and carrying it to the porch he deposited it there. The twins, radiantly expectant, hung mutely upon his movements.
“See hyar, Mescal Ames,” declared Cappy, shaking a horny finger at one of the glowing faces, “if you——”
“But I’m Manzi, Uncle Cappy,” interrupted the girl, archly.
“Aw—so you are,” went on Cappy, discomfited.
“You’ve forgotten the way to tell us,” interposed Mescal, gayly.
“Wal, I reckon so. . . . But no matter, I’ll remember soon. . . . An’ see hyar, Manzi, an’ Mescal—don’t you dare open this pack.”
“But, uncle, you’ll be so long!” wailed the twins together.
“No I won’t, either. Not an hour. Promise you’ll wait. Why, girls, I wouldn’t miss seein’ your faces when I undo thet pack—not for a whole winter’s trappin’.”
“We’ll promise—if you’ll hurry back.”
Mrs. Ames vowed she would have to fight temptation herself and besought him to make haste.
“I’ll not be long,” called Tanner, and slapping the tired burros out of the shade he headed them into the trail.
At the end of the clearing, the level narrowed to a strip of land, high above the creek, and the trail led under huge pines and cone-shaped spruces and birches to a shady leaf-strewn opening in the rocky bluff, from which a tiny stream flowed in cascades and deep brown pools. This was a gateway to a high-walled canyon, into which the sun shone only part of the day. It opened out above the break in the bluff into a miniature valley, isolated and lonely, rich in evergreens, and shadowed by stained cliffs and mossy ledges.
Cappy arrived at his little log cabin with a sense of profound gratitude.
“By gum! I’m glad to be home,” he said, as if the picturesque little abode had ears. He had built this house three years before, aided now and then by Rich Ames. Before that time he had lived up at the head of Doubtful Canyon, where that “rough Jasper,” as Rich called it, yawned black and doubtful under the great wall of the mesa.
Throwing packs, he strapped bells on the burros, and giving them a slap he called cheerily: “Get out an’ rustle, you tin-can-label-eatin’ flop-ears! You’ve got a long rest, an’ if you’ve sense you’ll stay in the canyon.”
The door of the cabin was half ajar. Cappy pushed it all the way open. An odor of bear assailed his nostrils. Had he left a bearskin there, or had Rich Ames, in his absence? No, the cabin walls and floor were uncovered. But his trained eyes quickly detected a round depression in the thick mat of pine needles that covered his bough couch. A good-sized bear must have used it for a bed. In the dust of the floor bear tracks showed distinctly, and the left hind foot was minus a toe. Cappy recognized that track. The bear that had made it had once blundered into one of Cappy’s fox traps, had broken the trap and left part of his foot in it.
“Wal, the son-of-a-gun!” ejaculated the old trapper. “Addin’ insult to injury. I’ll jest bet he knowed this was my cabin. . . . Wonder why Rich didn’t shoot him.”
Cappy swept out, carried his packs inside, and opening one of them he took out his lantern and fuel, cooking utensils, and camp tools, which he put in their places. Then he unrolled his bed of blankets and spread it on the couch. “Reckon I won’t light no fire tonight, but I’ll fix one ready, anyhow,” he decided, and repairing to his woodpile he discovered very little left of the dry hardwood that he had cut the winter before. Rich Ames, the lonely fire-gazer, had been burning it! Presently Cappy was ready to go back to the Ames’ cabin. But he bethought himself of his unkempt appearance. That was because he remembered Nesta Ames. So he tarried to remedy the defect. He shaved, washed, and put on a new flannel shirt of gorgeous hue, which he had purchased solely to dazzle the color-loving Nesta. Then he sallied forth.
A thick amber light hung under the trees, heavy as if it had substance. A strong exhilaration possessed Tanner. He was growing old, but the effect of the Tonto seemed to renew his youth. The solitude of the slopes and valleys, the signs of wild game in the dust of the trail, the babble of the brook, the penetrating fragrance of pine and spruce, the brush, the dead leaves, the fallen cones, the mat of needles, the lichened rocks—these were physical proofs that he had come home to the environment he loved best.
“Reckon I’ll not go away no more,” he muttered as he trudged through the gap in the cliff, up and down over the gray stones. “Onless, of course, the Ameses go,” he added as an afterthought. “Shore was a good idee thet I planned to send my winter’s catch out by stage.”
The valley of the Tonto was full of golden light. The sun had just set behind the bold brow of Mescal Ridge, and a wonderful flare of gold, thrown up against a dark bank of purple cloud, seemed to be reflected down into the valley. Cappy sat down on a log above the creek, where many a time he had rested before, and watched the magic glow on field and slope and water. Already the air had begun to cool. The gold swept by as if it had been the transparent shadow of a cloud, swift and evanescent, like a dream, or a fleeting happiness. Wild ducks went whirring down the creek, the white bars on their wings twinkling. A big buck, his coat the gray-blue of fall, crossed an opening in the brush. Up high somewhere an old gobbler was calling his flock to roost.
Tanner’s watch and reverie were interrupted by the cracking of hoofs on the rocks of the trail up the creek. Soon two riders emerged from the green, and the first was Rich Ames. He waved a glad hand, then came on at a trot. Cappy stood up, conscious of how good it was to see this Tonto lad again. Rich Ames on horseback was surely pleasant to gaze upon, but when he slid out of his saddle, in one long lithe step, he sent a thrill to the old trapper’s heart.
“Wal, lad, hyar I am, an’ damn glad to see you,” said Tanner, as he swung on the extended hand and gripped it hard.
“Same