Arizona Ames. Zane Grey

jeans of the homesteader, which looked dull and drab beside Rich Ames’ gray fringed buckskin.

      “Sam, it’s shore old Cappy Tanner, my trapper pard,” said Rich. “Cap, meet my friend, Sam Playford.”

      “How do!” greeted Playford, with an honest grin. “What I haven’t heard about you ain’t worth hearin’.”

      “Wal, any friend of Rich’s is mine,” replied Cappy, cordially. “You’re new hyarabouts?”

      “Yes. I come in last April.”

      “Homesteadin’?”

      “I been tryin’ to. But between these two Ames twins I have a plumb job of it.”

      “Twins?—Which ones?”

      The boys laughed uproariously, and Rich jabbed a thumb into Sam’s side.

      “Cappy, it shore’s not Manzi an’ Mescal,” he drawled.

      “Ahuh! Must be Nesta an’ you, then? I’m always forgettin’ you’re twins, too. Though, Lord knows, you look like two peas in a pod.”

      “Yep, Cap, only I take a back seat to Nesta.”

      “Where is thet lass? My pore eyes are achin’ for a sight of her,” returned Tanner.

      “You’ll have them cured pronto, then,” said Rich. “For she’s comin’ along the trail somewheres behind. Mad as a wet hen!”

      “Mad! What’s the matter?”

      “Nothin’. She’s been stayin’ at Snells’, over at Turkey Flat. She an’ Lil Snell have got thick since last winter. I like Lil an’ I reckon she’s all right. But all the same I don’t want Nesta stayin’ long over there. So I went after her.”

      Sam turned down the trail. “She’s comin’ now, an’ I reckon it’ll be safer for me to run along till you cheer her up,” he said.

      “Take my horse with you, Sam, an’ turn him loose in the pasture,” rejoined Rich.

      Cappy strained his eyes up the leafy trail.

      “Wal, I see something,” he said at last. “But if it’s Nesta she’s comin’ awful slow.”

      “Cap, she’s got an eye like a hawk. She sees me, an’ she’ll hang back till I go. . . . Old timer, I’d begun to fear you’d died or somethin’. Dog-gone, but I’m glad you’ve come!”

      In these words and the wistfulness of his glance Rich Ames betrayed not only what he said but the fact that a half year had made him older and graver.

      “You’ve had some trouble, Rich?”

      “Shore have.”

      “Somethin’ beside—Tommy’s death?”

      “Reckon so.”

      “Wal, what is it?”

      “It’s aboot Nesta. An’ it’s got me plumb up a tree . . . . But, Cap, I want more time to tell you. So I’ll run along home while you meet Nesta.”

      A bay pony emerged from the wall of green down the trail. Its rider was a bareheaded girl whose bonnet hung over her shoulders. She sat her saddle sideways. But when she neared the pine log where the trapper leaned watching, she partly turned. Then she sat up, startled. The petulant droop of her vanished and her red lips curled in a smile of surprise and delight. She slid off the saddle to confront him.

      “Cappy Tanner! . . . So it was you Rich was talkin’ to?” she cried.

      “Wal, Nesta, if it’s really you, I’m sayin’ howdy,” rejoined the trapper.

      “It’s me, Cappy. . . . Have I changed so—so much?”

      The beautiful blue-flashing eyes, so characteristic of the Ameses, met his only for a moment. It was the change in her and not the constraint that inhibited Tanner. Hardly more than six months ago she had been a slender, pale-faced girl, pretty with all the fairness of the family. And now she seemed a woman, strange to him, grown tall, full-bosomed, beautiful as one of the golden flowers of the valley. Cappy passed a reluctant gaze from her head to her feet, and back again. He had never seen her dressed becomingly like this. Her thick rich hair, so fair that it was almost silver, was parted in the middle above a low forehead just now marred by a little frown. Under level fine brows her eyes, sky-blue, yet full of fire, roved everywhere, refusing to concentrate upon her old friend. Any stranger who had ever seen Rich Ames would have recognized her as his twin sister, yet the softness of her face, its sweetness, its femininity were features singularly her own.

      “Changed? Wal, lass, you are,” replied the old trapper, slowly, as he took her hands. “Growed into a woman! . . . Nesta, you’re the purtiest thing in all the Tonto.”

      “Ah, Cappy, you haven’t changed,” she replied, suddenly gay and glad. And she kissed him, not with the old innocent freedom, but shyly, in a restraint that did not lack warmth. “Oh, I’m so happy you’re here! I’ve thought of you every day for a month. Did you come today? You must have, for Rich didn’t know.”

      “Jest got in, lass, an’ I never knowed what home seemed like before.”

      She slipped an arm under his, and then, with her horse following, she led him toward the cabin.

      “Cappy, I’m more in need of a true friend than ever before in all my life,” she said, soberly.

      “Why, lass, you talk as if you hadn’t any!” returned Tanner, reprovingly.

      “I haven’t. Not one single friend—unless it’s you.”

      “Wal, Nesta, I don’t savvy thet, but you can depend on me.”

      “Cappy, I don’t mean no one cares for me. . . . Rich, and Sam Playford—and—and others—care for me, far beyond my deserts. But they boss and want and force me. . . . They don’t help. They can’t see my side. . . . Cappy, I’m in the most terrible fix any girl was ever in. I’m caught in a trap. Do you remember the day you took me on a round of your traps? And we came upon a poor little beaver caught by the foot? . . . Well, I’m like that.”

      “Nesta, I’m awful interested, but I reckon not much scared,” replied Cappy, with a laugh that did not quite ring true.

      They reached the three huge spruces overspreading the cabin, and Nesta turned to unsaddle her pony. Sam Playford, who evidently had been waiting, approached from the porch.

      “I’ll tend to him, Nesta,” he said.

      “Thank you, Mr. Playford,” she returned, with sarcasm. “I can manage as well here as I had to at Snells’.”

      Mescal and Manzanita ran out to overwhelm Tanner, shouting gleefully, “Here comes Santa Claus!”

      “Wal, mebbe, when Christmas comes, but not now,” retorted the trapper, resolutely. He had once before encountered a predicament similar to this.

      “Uncle, when will you open the pack?” begged Manzi.

      “Wal, some time after supper.”

      “I can’t eat till you do open it,” declared Mescal, tragically.

      “If I do open it before supper, then you won’t eat nothin’ but candy,” declared Tanner.

      “Candy!” screamed Manzanita. “Who wants to eat deer meat and beans if there’s candy?”

      “Ooooummm!” cried her sister, ecstatically.

      “Wal, let’s have a vote on it,” said the trapper, as if inspired. “Mescal an’ Manzi have declared for openin’ the pack before supper. . . . What do you say, Mrs. Ames?”

      “Supper ain’t ready yet,” she rejoined, significantly.

      “How about you, Nesta?”