Ernest Haycox - The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox

She raised her face to him. "When the ground is secure under our feet we are big, important. It takes this to make us humble, Jim Chaffee."

"I don't know of any better medicine to reduce the size of a fellow's pride," said he.

"You haven't any false pride," she told him.

"I've lived too long in the open."

"Why," she asked, "do they call it Roaring Horse canyon?"

He delayed the answer for some moments. "A horse is a tough animal. It never makes much fuss. But there is one time in its life when it makes a sound that will turn a man ice cold all over. And that is when it knowingly goes to death. I have heard animals squeal; I've heard them bellow and groan and scream. But there isn't anything so almighty heartbreaking and pitiful as to hear that half roar and half scream of a horse going down. It's pretty near human. Thats why they named it Roaring Horse. Many a brute has gone over this rim. And nothing lives that goes over."

"I have heard them," she said quietly. "Where are the fords of the river?"

"Lee's Ferry is up five miles nearer the bench. It's a stiff climb down, but that's about the only accessible spot near here, and the only quiet water. Linderman's Ranch, fifteen miles below is the other. The canyon drops toward the desert level there."

"Has anybody ever navigated the gorge?"

"A fellow did it in 1892. Three different parties have tried since. All drowned. One chance in four. It can be done, but a man has to be pretty desperate to try. He's got to hit the rough water just right. The river never lets up from Lee's to Linderman's. I think we'd better start back. Getting late."

They got to their horses and turned silently south. The girl, wondered at the prolonged quietness swung to find him reading the ground; and it surprised her to see the quick change coming over his lean cheeks. His eyes were slightly narrowed and his lips were pressed tightly together. In the grip of such an expression the man's face was neither handsome nor pleasant. It was again the face of a fighter, the same face she had seen at the rodeo. Wondering, she scanned the foreground and saw nothing, save here and there a scuffed trail made either by cattle or horses. Once when the western rim began to blaze with the purple and gold of a setting sun, he slackened the pace and went to one side of his pony. And thereafter, until the outline of the Woolfridge ranch houses grew plain in the distance, he looked straight ahead of him, looked with some kind of a problem. Seeing the houses, he broke away from his preoccupation.

"There's the end of your trip. I'll leave you here."

"It has been a pleasant trip," said she, drawing rein.

Humor flickered a moment in his deep eyes. And that humor covered the profound earnestness of his words. "My luck's gone out. You will be going back to your own country in a few days. I'll not be seeing you again."

"Why not?"

The sun was down and the shadows swirling across the desert. In the dimming light they faced each other, and Jim Chaffee saw in her the vision of the woman he had always carried in his heart. She was fair and sturdy, feminine and desirable; a wisp of brown hair strayed across her cheeks and she lifted a hand to brush it back—a swift and graceful movement that brought with it a faint fragrance of perfume. Her lips were pursed, and her eyes met his glance squarely as if wishing to speak.

"I'll be riding close to my outfit the next week," said he. "Snow's falling up in the peaks. It will be here soon. And—other things are going to happen."

"Is that the only reason, Jim?"

She used his first name. So naturally did it fall into her soft and slightly wistful question that he hardly noticed it. He drew a deep breath. "No. No—it ain't. A man can make his own luck—but he can't change the universe to do it. Ma'am—"

"My name," said she, just above a whisper, "is Gay."

"I have said it many times to myself. Gay. No other name would fit you. And I will be sayin' it many more times—after you're gone. A man's got to play the cards as they fall. He can't stack the deck."

She made a small gesture with her hands. "You don't know me, Jim. You are setting me too high. Oh, see me as I am!" And after another interval she added: "Perhaps I know more about affairs in the country than you think. If I asked you to be—a little careful, would you remember?"

He shook his head. "Now you're setting me too high."

"No, I'm not!" said she, the energy of her answer raising her in the saddle. "You are honest, you are—a gentleman. What more should you be?" She took up the reins and moved away. Ten yards off she turned, and he saw the blurred white oval of her face. "I am asking you to be careful. I know many things I wish I could tell you. Perhaps I'll be here more than a week. Good- night, Jim."

"Good-bye—Gay."

"No—good-night."

She pressed her horse and raced toward the house. A glimmer of light sprang out along the desert. Chaffee watched until she had faded into the falling darkness; and then wheeled and raced northward in the direction of the canyon. The premonition of trouble filled his mind.

"Those tracks struck straight for the middle herd. What else but rustling? I ain't got time to get back home and roust out the boys. I'll have to tackle this alone."

His horse was tired, he himself was weary; yet the farther he rode the more urgent and the more alarming was the warning in his mind. A gray mound stood vaguely toward the bench. The herd was in that vicinity. On he galloped, the horse gallantly stretching out at Chaffee's impatient words. Time passed; he slackened pace and veered along a great circle. Nothing of the herd was visible in the deep darkness. Impelled by the same foreboding, he straightened out for the canyon again. Cattle didn't shift so far of their own accord in the short space of time between midafternoon and night. Reasoning along line of the most probable course of travel rustlers would take with so large a bunch of cows, it seemed to him he ought to swing at right angles and head into the undulating folds of the bench. Yet try as he would, he could not overreach the impulse to keep his present trail.

He pulled up. Away to his left and somewhat ahead he caught the vast and ominous rumbling of a herd in swift motion. Without further thought he raced off at a tangent. The rumbling grew deeper and swelled above the sound of his own progress. All of a sudden he was on the flank of the herd, seeing the dark mass stretch out in an irregular line. He dug his spurs deep into the sides of his exhausted pony and shot forward among the lead steers. As he did so he felt the pressure of another bunch of stock thundering in from his right, converging with the mass he was now abreast. He was trapped in the van of a wide-flung line of onrushing brutes, frenzied by mass fear and mass sound. He thought for a moment to make one effort to break their stride. Drawing his gun he fired point-blank into the weaving formation abreast him. A brute fell, but the bellowing and the fury seemed only to rise higher. And far back he heard what he thought to be a man's voice dimly crying a warning. The warning came to him equally soon; somewhere in the immediate foreground was the canyon. He bent low and slipped his quirt, alternately yelling into the pony's ear and flailing the buckskin thongs. With one last magnificent burst of reserve strength the horse pulled away, yard by yard; and Jim Chaffee, crying, "So long, Buck!" saw a fence post shoot up from the ground and bear abreast of him. He kicked the stirrups, flung his feet far ahead, and let go, the force of the impact rolling him head first. He waited, in that flashing fragment of time, to hear the bursting and shrill singing of barb wire as his horse struck. No such sound came. Still rolling, he caught instead a distant screaming; and then the rush of the cattle engulfed that sound. His hands touched the jagged rocks of the rim; he gripped them with the pressure of death and swung himself down into the black maw. His boots touched a flimsy ledging; he got a new grip on an outcrop just below the rim; and, braced to the shock, he hung there as the dust rolled against his face and the very pit of hell seemed to engulf him.