Ernest Haycox - The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox

"I can make a guess at it," he muttered, bothered by something else. "I don't just see why you went to all this trouble."

"Don't you, Jim?"

The color came to her cheeks again; her lips were pursed tightly and she held herself very straight and still. He turned his head to the wall, stirred by strange currents. "Well—give me that canteen." He downed the last of the chocolate. Ranzo Taber came back.

"Better be going. How do you stack up, Chaffee?"

"Nothing wrong with me except a weak ankle and an empty stomach. Once I get about haif a cow inside me I'll be ready to r'ar."

He sat up, feeling a little bit giddy, and drew on his socks and boots. But he wasn't ready to stand on his own strength yet, so Ranzo Taber bent a shoulder, and in this manner they left the summit cabin. Chaffee rolled into the sled; Gay Thatcher pulled the blankets around him and stepped back.

"You take 'er down, Miss Gay," said Taber. "I'll trot behind. Mush!"

So in the deepening mists and with the peaks shrilling dismally the dog team snapped into the traces, ran the sled across the level mouth of the pass and down the eastern slopes. Full dark found them inside Taber's ranch house at the foot of the bench, found Jim Chaffee siting up to a table and eating his first good meal in five or six days.

"Once a sourdough, always a sourdough," said Taber, smiling reminiscently. "It's been ten years since I left the Klondike, but I never been without huskies in that time. Folks have always wondered why I fooled with 'em. Well, you're the fourth man I've found up around the peaks. Two of 'em came in stiff. You're lucky. Now it ain't any of my business, But I'm wonderin' what the next play is."

The girl said nothing, leaving the question for Chaffee to answer. She had slipped back to feminine clothing, and the transformation somehow bothered Chaffee. He recollected moments when she had seemed close and intimate, when she had appeared to be fashioned out of the same simple, sturdy clay that he himself was made of. Now she had withdrawn and become silent and aloof; and she added a touch of grace and beauty to the table that marked her of another world. Nothing definite. Only the lamplit casting a glow on her clear profile. The slender suppleness of her fingers twining around the water glass.

"I've got to get into Bannock City and drop Mack a note," said Chaffee. "Then I reckon I'll give my foot a week to limber up. After that I reckon I'll sort of breeze back into Roaring Horse again. Maybe—maybe not. Depends."

"Mack is laid up with a bullet in his shoulder," said the girl.

"Who did it?" demanded Chaffee with so much force that Ranzo Taber's interest switched away from his coffee cup.

The girl went through the story, her soft voice rounding out the details of Stirrup S passing into other hands, of the arrival of the first homesteaders. Chaffee's face settled. "Where's Miz Satterlee?"

"She left. I don't know where she went."

"Where's the crew?"

"Some are at Melotte's, watching over Mack. Others just took the trail. Times have changed, Jim. It is Mr. Woolfridge's country now."

"I suppose," agreed Chaffee, heavy hearted. "It was a sweet little valley. Just made for a man to live out a comfortable life with good friends. Jupiter, but I hate to see that swept from under my feet."

"Aren't things always going out from under our feet?" murmured Gay. "Isn't that life—nothing sure, nothing settled?"

Ranzo Taber looked at her with a significant bobbing of his head. "Now yore talkin' from experience, Miss Gay."

"I suppose. I have never known a certain day since I was fifteen. And the older I grow the less sure I am of anything—even of myself."

"Well," went on Taber, "this is a darned good place to rest up, Chaffee. Make it two weeks. I'll teach you how to run huskies, like I taught Miss Gay when she was a youngster. Both of you stay on. Miss Gay"—and again significance dwelt in Taber's words—"you need a little rest. Won't be anybody around here to pester you. I'll see to that."

"I'm obliged, but I better get on to Bannock City and get in touch with some folks," said Chaffee. Taber's talk concerning the girl stirred his curiosity, though he tried to keep from showing it. She looked across to him in a manner that for a moment reminded him again of the scene in the jail. Wistful—asking him unvoiced questions.

"Thanks, Ranzo. You have always been kind to me. But I must get back to the capital."

Therefore the both of them were in a rig driven by Taber by starlight the following morning. They reached Bannock City an hour or less before the stage started south to the railroad. Chaffee felt a little flimsy and he allowed them to help him into the hotel and up to a second floor room, although it touched his pride to be thus nursed. He had always been self-sufficient, always had leaned confidently on his strength. Ranzo Taber shook hands and left behind him a hearty invitation. Gay walked into the hall and spoke a moment with Taber in a subdued voice; then Taber went away and the girl returned to the room to find Jim Chaffee in a chair and studying the blank walls with a set, grim gaze.

"Well, Jim."

She had meant to say good-bye then and there. But the words got turned aside, and she found herself asking questions. "What are you going to do?"

"The hardest work I ever did in my life for the next ten days," said he. "Rest. Stay off my feet. Eat. And wish to God I was on the other side of the range. Jupiter, but it is going to actually hurt."

"Then back to fight? Oh, Jim, why?"

"It's my country, ain't it?"

"Do you know, I have heard you get stubborn like this before. And somehow I always feel a bit proud of you. But I wish—Isn't there some other little creek with cottonwoods growing around it, and peace for you?"

He shook his head. She saw his rawboned hands come together and grip hard. "I reckon not. Tell me—has Locklear still got all those burglar-jawed gents around him?"

"I have heard by the grapevine route," said she, "that most of them were sent away. When I left I saw only three or four. Perrine and his men are off in the desert somewhere. Everything is on the boom for the new settlers. Mr. Woolfridge has sent his ad through half a dozen states for them to come. Promising them everything when the power company builds its dam in the Roaring Horse. And his name is on about every third building in town. It is his town, Jim."

He absorbed the news silently. By and by he raised his head. "Yes, I'm going back there."

"I knew you would," she murmured. "Good-bye, Jim."

That roused him. He took hold of the chair arms and half rose. "Wait a minute. Now wait. When am I going to see you again—where will you be?"

"Our trails seem to keep crossing, don't they, Jim?" She had a trick of smiling to hide the elusive wistfulness of her heart. "But—it can't go on forever. I don't know when I'll see you next. I don't know where I'll be. There'll come a time, though, when you and I will be far apart. One of these days I am going to leave this country."

"Why?"

Her sturdy shoulders rose. "Isn't it human to be seeking something you haven't got?"

"What would that be?" he persisted, worry creeping along his face.

"I don't even know," said she. "The trouble with me, Jim, is that I have no roots down. They were torn out of the ground a few years ago. There is nothing to hold me steady."

"I sort of hate to hear you talk that way," he protested. "Change—why have things got to change so fast? Here's something else sliding away from me. I wish—" But he never finished the remark, falling instead into another somber study. Presently the girl prompted him with a gentle phrase: "Wish what, Jim?"

"I reckon I've got no right to wish anything at the present state of affairs. I want you to know, Gay, I'm thinkin' of what you've done for me. And I'll remember it a long, long time." His fist doubled. "I'm not sayin' what I want to say."