Black Mesa. Zane Grey

so,” replied Paul with a smile. “I don’t remember being so popular before.”

      “It was kind of you to take him up,” she said, and coming forward she bent to lift the baby from Paul’s lap. The baby had other ideas about that. He clung to his refuge, and a slight struggle ensued before the girl could lift the child into the hollow of her elbow. A vivid blush directed Paul’s closer attention to her face.

      “I—I did not know anyone was here—in this room, or I should not have let him out,” she said.

      “My name is Paul Manning,” he replied. “I am going to be a partner of Belmont’s in the cattle business.”

      “Partner?” she echoed.

      “Yes. And live here.”

      “Live—here!” she ejaculated incredulously.

      By this time Paul had discerned that she was more than pretty, though it took an effort to remove his gaze from her eyes. They were large, and either their dark topaz hue or their expression gave them a singular, haunting beauty. For the rest she had a pale oval face, sweet lips youthful in color and curve but old in wistful sadness, a broad low forehead crowned by rippling bronze hair with glints of gold in it.

      “Yes, I’m going to live here for a while, until I can build a shack,” replied Paul. “I’m a quiet fellow and won’t be in the way.”

      “Oh! I—I didn’t mean . . . You’re welcome indeed. I was just surprised.”

      “You are Belmont’s daughter?” asked Paul.

      “No.”

      “A relative, then—or maybe working here?” went on Paul kindly, wanting her to introduce herself.

      “Working, yes. But I’m neither relative nor servant.”

      That low reply, tinged with bitterness, effectually checked Paul’s curiosity. But he could scarcely restrain his gaze. And suddenly he became aware of a change in the girl, as well as of the fact that he had not really observed her closely.

      “I am Louise—this baby’s mother—and Belmont’s wife,” she added, a curious dullness about her tone.

      “My God! Mother? Why, you can’t be more than a child,” Paul blurted out, shocked out of his composure.

      “I am seventeen years old,” she said, and if one were to judge from the solemnity of her tone she might have been fifty.

      “Seventeen!” echoed Paul, and became suddenly silent, aware of an expression of intolerable pain in her eyes. It was the look of a hunted fugitive—of a creature fettered, tortured. It called to the depths of Paul, in a message that fired his pity and understanding. Through his own suffering he comprehended her trouble. She was literally a child, already forced into motherhood. If she had told him in so many words that her life was despair and misery—that she hated the father of this baby—the fact could not have been any clearer. And he had raved about his own loss, his own grief! What did he know of either?

      Paul stared up at her, conscious of the significance of the moment, released and delivered from the past, flooded by the appalling reality of life; while she stared down at him, wide-eyed and wondering, somehow transfixed by what she had suddenly felt in this stranger but could not understand.

CHAPTER 2

      Paul sat upon the porch of the trading post awaiting the arrival of Kintell and Belmont, who were expected that morning.

      The noonday hour in the sun was pleasantly warm. Paul had discovered a penchant for getting out of the bleak desert wind into the lee of a wall. A new direction of thought made all his hours increasingly acceptable. Everything pertaining to this trading post and to the cattle project he had entered was now a matter of interest. He tried in vain to dismiss the disquieting suspicion as to why he had changed his mind about building a little cabin up on the ridge. The lame reasons he gave himself would not down. And the dismaying moment came when he confessed that the girl Louise presented the most tragic, baffling and fascinating study he had ever known.

      A farmer up from one of the scattered homesteads to the south came out of the post loaded with purchases. “Makin’ hay cause the sun’s goin’ to shine,” he remarked. “We’re in for the spring thaw an’ then damn few wheels will turn on these ’dobe roads until she dries up.”

      “How will we get around?” inquired Paul.

      “Shanks’ mare and ’dobe pancakes,” the old fellow replied enigmatically, and left Paul to ponder that cryptic remark.

      Paul enjoyed watching the Indians ride in on their ragged mustangs, hang around the porch and inside the post for hours before trading, and then ride away. He had at last seen some picturesque braves and squaws. But Natasha, despite her unkempt garb, was, so far, the one nearest approaching beauty. She lived back in one of the hogans behind the knoll and spent a good part of her time idling at the post.

      It was surprising how many Indians came and went during the hours of midday. Paul seldom failed to see one or two dark riders on the horizon line. And there were a dozen or more ponies haltered at the rail or standing bridles down. Sheep and goat pelts, coyote hides, bags of wool and blankets were the principal articles of barter. The fact that very often a squaw brought in something to trade and went away without leaving it had strengthened Paul’s conviction that the trader drove close bargains. Paul did not like the woman Belmont called Sister and had not been able to define her status there to his complete satisfaction. She appeared to be cook, housekeeper, saleswoman, and was never idle. She was a large woman, under forty, dark-eyed and hard-featured, and seemed to be a silent, watchful, repressed person of strong passions.

      Paul had watched the woman wait upon half a dozen Indians, and though he could not understand a word of the language spoken, he deduced much from her look, her tone, her deliberation and care in weighing sugar or cutting goods, and from the sloe-black, sullen eyes of her customers. These Indians had become dependent upon the whites and they were a driven race. Right at the outset, Paul divined that which stirred his pity and augmented his antagonism.

      While Paul sat there, thinking of these things, and using his eyes, the girl Natasha came out, sucking a red-and-white stick of candy.

      How wonderfully dark was her hair—a soft dead black! Her eyes matched it. Her skin was dark too, the color of bronze. It had a suggestion of red. She wore a band of colored beads round her head and her hair was tied up behind in a short braid wound with white cord. Paul made a guess at her age—about sixteen. These Indian girls matured early and Natasha appeared to be developing voluptuously out of the girlhood stage.

      It increased Paul’s interest in her to become aware that, shy and wild as she was, she was covertly observing him. And when he was sure that her dusky, fleeting glances returned again and again to him he felt bound to admit that Natasha possessed at least one of the same rather disconcerting tendencies of the young female of the white race.

      Kintell’s arrival with Belmont in a much overloaded wagon put an end to Paul’s mild flirtation. It also, he was quick to notice, put an end to Natasha’s mood. As Belmont leaped out she flounced away with a whirl of skirts that showed her bare, shapely brown legs above her moccasins. Paul wondered why her expression had changed so suddenly, and why she had vanished at the mere sight of the trader.

      “Hyar you are, Manning,” called Belmont boisterously, handing Paul some documents. “All fixed up, money got an’ receipted. When you sign on the dotted line we’re set to make a million.”

      “Thanks. If they need only my signature we’ll be on our way in a jiffy,” replied Paul with a laugh.

      “Babbit’s runnin’ eighty thousand head of cattle, Miller brothers most as many, Cartwright cattle outfit fifty thousand—all on range no better’n ours. Kintell had it wrong about the price of cattle. Thirty-eight dollars a head for two-year-olds! Manning, there’s millions in it!”

      “Wal, boss, heah’s mail from Kansas City,” drawled