Ernest Haycox - The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox

He was so engrossed in his own problems that he almost ran headlong into Mark Eagle, the bank cashier. Mark's round moon face was always grave; now it seemed overcast with an unwonted solemnity. Chaffee stopped and forgot his own affairs. "You look like a heavy load of grief, Mark."

The Indian never circled a subject. He spoke directly always. "My father is very sick up in Oregon. I've got a letter from him. He ought to go to the city and see a good doctor."

"Won't he listen to anybody but the tribe medicine man, Mark?"

"No, he's civilized, Jim, like me. He'd go to a doctor. But that's a hundred mile trip and it takes money." Mark looked across the building tops, dusky eyes roaming the distant peaks. It was always this way with the man. He went quietly about his business, obeying his mind while his heart seemed to pull him away to a wilder country. "My father is not old. And he is a chief. I am not a good son to be here and unable to help him."

Jim Chaffee's hand worked on impulse, reaching down to the pocket that carried his last material wealth. "You're on the wrong track, Mark. You've got friends, lots of them. What's a friend for? Here's eighty dollars. You get that to him. Quick."

The Indian's hands were stiff at his sides, and Chaffee knowing the danger of prolonging a scene like this, tucked the bills into the other's coat. Mark Eagle's copper cheeks contracted, "You need your money, Jim. I'll be a long time paying it back."

"Who said anything about that? Get it mailed off in a hurry."

Mark Eagle straightened. A burst of light came through the dark eyes. He placed an arm on Jim's shoulder and spoke with a sonorous dignity that somehow carried him back to his forebears. "You are my friend. You will never regret that. An Indian never forgets."

"You'll maybe be doin' me a favor some of these days," drawled Chaffee.

"Sooner than you think," said Mark Eagle. And he moved swiftly away, which was also his manner. Chaffee got his horse and swung out of town, his mind dwelling for a moment on Mark Eagle's last phrase. Few people made any pretense at understanding the Indian; nor did Chaffee try to understand him. But he liked Mark, and since he liked the man he was instantly ready to help. There was nothing complex about Jim Chaffee's nature.

Outside of town Chaffee left the main trail and quartered into the desert; this was a habit he had been trained to since boyhood. He had never forgotten the shrewd maxim laid down by his father. "The beaten trails don't teach you nothin', Jim. Ride open country with yore eyes propped apart. Yuh may never be no world beater, but if yuh learn to read the good Lord's signs yuh won't never be a fool." The early afternoon's sun came out of a cloudless sky, the breath of winter blew over the eastern peaks. Chaffee soon forgot his problems; this land had the power to completely absorb him, to mold him to its own mood. Up and down the rolling reaches he traveled, blue eyes questing the horizons or dwelling upon the nunute testimony unfolding along the ground. A jack had scurried off here; a coyote's tracks zigzagged east and west aimlessly. One clear mark of a shod horse struck along the bottom of a minor draw, traveling fast. He spent more than a casual glance at this. Somebody riding from the road due east to Woolfridge's ranch. Rising over a billow of the desert, he found a rider about a quarter mile in front and going at a sedate pace. His own rate of speed soon closed the distance and presently he recognized Gay Thatcher. She turned and saw him; reined in and waited until he came abreast.

"Lost?" he asked her, raising his Stetson.

"No, I'm exploring. I started out for the Woolfridge ranch. But it is so glorious an afternoon that I just gave my pony free head and told him to go wherever he wished. I think I'm headed for Roaring Horse canyon. I want to see it. Can you make it and get to Woolfridge's by sundown?"

"I think so. That's the way I'm heading. If you don't mind company I'll trail along."

"That will be fun." They rode side by side, silent for a spell. The girl made a wholly different picture to Chaffee. The shimmering dress and the lamplit softness of her features these were gone. She wore a buckskin riding skirt, stitched boots, and a loose jersey that seemed to have been long used for just such excursions as these. She was still feminine, still graceful and poised; but the change of clothing at once fitted her into the country. A passer-by would have looked once and decided she had lived hereabout all her life. Jim Chaffee marked the lax sureness of her riding. That was a trick that didn't come out of an Eastern riding school.

She turned her head slightly and looked up at him, her eyes smiling beneath the brim of her hat. "What are you thinking?"

"Asking myself questions."

"So am I. If you will ask them out aloud perhaps we can get better acquainted. I'd like to—and I believe you would. Or am I taking in too much territory, Jim Chaffee?"

"You're not a pilgrim," said he.

"No, I'm not," she answered. "I was born and raised in the West. I went East to school. I came back and both of my folks died. I have been doing many things in many places since then. There. I am answering questions you didn't ask. Now it's my turn. What's ahead of you?"

"Sixty dollars a month and found, I reckon."

"You're not fair to yourself, my dear man. Nobody looking at you in the rodeo yesterday would ever think you were easily whipped. You're not either." That last sentence rang quite strongly. He turned to her a little surprised.

"Now what—"

"That's fair, isn't it?" she broke in, her cheeks pink. "We're asking questions."

A tension inside him snapped and left him smiling at the horizons. All at once he was a slim and lazy and slightly reckless figure. Fine sprays of humor wrinkled his bronzed temples. "Maybe my luck is changin', but I don't think so."

"I have often found that a person makes his own luck," said she, and gravely folded her hands on the horn. "Whose cattle off to the right?"

He studied a scattered band in the distance. "Stirrup S. Well, a man can make his luck up to a certain point, but he can't change the universe to do it. Now look at me and then look—" Right there he stopped. This was going pretty far. But the surprising and insouciant Gay Thatcher blandly finished the thought for him.

"—Then look at me. All right Jim Chaffee, just you look at me. I don't think you have seen me yet. Oh, I know—but I mean you haven't really seen me . How far is it to the rim?"

"Just a little piece now. I can judge men, but not women. I reckon I'll have to pass that bet."

"They told me you were a man of courage," said the girl in a mildly plaintive voice. And as an apparent afterthought she added: "They also told me you knew something about women."

He said nothing to that, and she tucked one sure observation in the back of her head. "He is a gentleman." They worked up along a slight incline. Fence posts spread before them. The canyon's black and foreboding depths yawned abysmally beyond the wire. They got down. Chaffee helped her through the barbed strands and took her arm as they advanced to the precipice and looked below. He didn't want her to think he was assuming an undue freedom, so he explained.

"Some people get dizzy looking down there. It ain't only the distance, but when the light hits that moving water it does funny things to the eyes."

She said nothing for several minutes, but he felt her body alternately lighten and relax and sway slightly as she studied the grim, sheer walls and the remote river heaving itself turbulently onward. The immensity of the picture, the solemn and inspiring force of it seemed to grip her as it always gripped him. Steadied by his arm, she leaned a little forward, her clear face utterly absorbed, her eyes somehow puzzled. It reminded Chaffee at the moment of a child watching the heart of a fire and unconsciously captured by the eternal lure of the mystery of life. The knowledge that she, too, was affected by the elemental rawness of the canyon immeasurably warmed his heart.