30,000 On the Hoof. Zane Grey

gladness. Small wonder—a fellow’s bride came only once!

      Presently Logan saw the dusty brown train, like a long scaly snake coiling behind a puffing black head, come into sight to straighten out and rapidly draw near. The engine passed with a steaming roar. Logan counted the cars. Then with a grinding of steel on steel the train came to a halt.

Chapter Two

      Lucinda Baker’s dreams of romance and adventure had been secrets no one had ever guessed; but none of them had ever transcended this actual journey of hers to the far West to become the wife of her girlhood sweetheart. Yet it seemed she had been preparing for some incredible adventure ever since Logan had left Independence. How else could she account for having become a school teacher at sixteen, working through the long vacations, her strong application to household duties? She had always known that Logan Huett would never return home again, and that the great unknown West had claimed him. For this reason, if any, she had been training herself to become a pioneer’s wife.

      She was thrillingly happy. She had left her family well and comfortable. She was inexpressably glad to be away from persistent suitors. She was free to be herself—the half savage yearning creature she knew under her skin. Steady, plodding, dutiful, unsentimental Lucinda Baker was relegated to the past.

      Kansas in autumn was one vast seared rolling prairie, dotted with hamlets and towns along the steel highway. Lucinda grew tired watching the endless roll and stretch of barren land. She interested herself in her fellow-passengers and their children, all simple middle-class people like herself, journeying West to take up that beckoning life of the ranges. But what she saw of Colorado before dark, the gray swelling slopes toward the heave and bulk of dim mountains, gave her an uneasy, awesome premonition of a fearful wildness and ruggedness of nature much different from the pictures she had imagined. She awoke in New Mexico, to gaze in rapture at its silver valleys, its dark forests, its sharp peaks white against the blue.

      But Arizona, the next day, crowned Lucinda’s magnified expectations. During the night the train had traversed nearly half of this strange glorious wilderness of purple land. Sunshine, Canyon Diablo were but wayside stations. Were there no towns in this tremendous country? Her query to the porter brought the information that Flagg was the next stop, two hours later. Yet still Lucinda feasted her gaze and tried not to think of Logan. Would he disappoint her? She had loved him since she was a little girl when he had rescued her from some beastly boys who had dragged her into a mud puddle. But not forgetting Logan’s few and practical letters she argued that his proposal of marriage was conclusive.

      What changes would this hard country have wrought in Logan Huett? What would it do to her? Lucinda gazed with awe and fear out across this purple land, monotonous for leagues on leagues, then startling with magnificent red walls, towering and steep, that wandered away into the dim mystic blue, and again shooting spear-pointed, black-belted peaks skyward; and once the vista was bisected by a deep narrow yellow gorge, dreadful to gaze down into and justifying its diabolic name.

      After long deliberation Lucinda reasoned that Logan probably would not have changed much from the serious practical boy to whom action was almost as necessary as breathing. He would own a ranch somewhere close to a town, perhaps near Flagg, and he would have friends among these westerners. In this loyal way Lucinda subdued her qualms and shut her eyes so she could not see the dense monotonous forest the train had entered. Surrendering to thought of Logan then, she found less concern in how she would react to him than how he would discover her. Lucinda knew that she had grown and changed more after fifteen than was usual in girls. What her friends and family had said about her improvement, and especially the boys who had courted her, was far more flattering than justified, she felt. But perhaps it might be enough to make Logan fail to recognize her.

      A shrill whistle disrupted Lucinda’s meditation. The train was now clattering down grade and emerging from the green into a clearing. A trainman opened the coach-door to call out in sing-song voice: “Flagg. Stop five minutes.”

      Lucinda’s eyes dimmed. She wiped them so she could see out. The Forest had given place to a ghastly area of bleached and burned stumps of trees. That led to a huge hideous structure with blue smoke belching from a great boiler-like chimney. Around it and beyond were piles of yellow lumber as high as houses. This was a sawmill. Lucinda preferred the forest to this crude and raw evidence of man’s labors. Beyond were scattered little cabins made of slabs and shacks, all dreary and drab, unrelieved by any green.

      As the train slowed down with a grind of wheels there was a noisy bustle in the coach. Many passengers were getting off here. Lucinda marked several young girls, one of them pretty with snapping eyes, who were excited beyond due. What would they have shown had they Lucinda’s cue for feeling? She felt a growing tumult within, but outwardly she was composed.

      When the train jarred to a stop, Lucinda lifted her two grips onto the seat and crossed the aisle to look out on that side. She saw up above the track a long block of queer, high, board fronted buildings all adjoining. They fitted her first impression of Flagg. Above the town block loomed a grand mountain, black and white in its magnificent aloof distance. Lucinda gasped at the grandeur of it. Then the moving and colorful throng on the platform claimed her quick attention.

      First she saw Indians of a different type, slender, lithe, with cord bands around their black hair. They had lean clear-cut faces, sombre as masks. Mexicans in huge sombreros lolled in the background.

      Then Lucinda’s swift gaze alighted upon a broad-shouldered, powerfully built young man, in his shirt sleeves and with his blue jeans tucked in high boots. Logan! She sustained a combined shock and thrill. She would have known that strong tanned face anywhere. He stood bareheaded, with piercing eyes on the alighting passengers. Lucinda felt a rush of pride. The boy she knew had grown into a man, hard, stern, even in that expectant moment. But he was more than merely handsome. There appeared to be something proven about him.

      Lucinda suddenly realized she must follow the porter, who took her grips, out of the coach. She could not resist a pat to her hair and a readjustment of her hat. Then she went out.

      The porter was not quick enough to help her down the steep steps. That act was performed gallantly by a strange youthful individual, no less than Lucinda’s first cowboy, red-haired, keen-faced, with a blue dancing devil in his eyes. He squeezed her arm.

      “Lady, air yu meetin’ anyone?” he queried, as if his life depended on her answer.

      Lucinda looked over his head as if he had not been there. But she liked him. Leaving her grips where the porter had set them she walked up the platform, passing less then ten feet from Logan. He did not recognize her. That failure both delighted and frightened her. She would return and give him another chance.

      She walked a few rods up the platform, and when she turned back she was reveling in the situation. Logan Huett had sent for his bride and did not know her when she looked point-blank at him. He had left his post at the rail. She located him coming up the platform. A moment later she found herself an object of undisguised speculation by three cowboys, one of whom was the red-head.

      Lucinda slowed her pace. It would be fun to accost Logan before these bold westerners. This was an unfortunate impulse, as through it she heard remarks that made her neck and face burn.

      Logan had halted just beyond the red-haired cowboy. His gray glance took Lucinda in from head to foot and back again—a swift questioning baffled look. Then Lucinda swept by the cowboys and spoke:

      “Logan, don’t you know me?”

      “Ah!—no, you can’t be her,” he blurted out. “Lucinda! It is you!”

      “Yes, Logan. I knew you from the train.”

      He made a lunge for her, eager and clumsy, and kissed her heartily, missing her lips. “To think I didn’t know my old sweetheart!” His gray eyes, that had been like bits of ice glistening in the sun, shaded and softened with a warm glad light that satisfied Lucinda’s yearning heart.

      “Have I changed so much?” she asked, happily, and that nameless dread broke and vanished in the released tumult within her breast.