Tonto Basin Read online

  The trail divided at this pond. Jean had no idea which branch he ought to take. “Reckon it doesn’t matter,” he muttered, as he was about to remount. His horse was standing with ears up, looking back along the trail. Then Jean heard a clip-clop of trotting hoofs and presently espied a horseman.

  Jean made a pretense of tightening his saddle girths while he peered over his horse at the approaching rider. All men in this country were going to be of exceeding interest to Jean Isbel. This man at a distance rode and looked like all the Arizonians Jean had seen. He had a superb seat in the saddle, and he was long and lean. He wore a huge black sombrero and a soiled red scarf. His vest was open, and he was without a coat.

  The rider came trotting up and halted several paces from Jean.

  “Hullo, stranger,” he said gruffly.

  “Howdy yourself,” replied Jean. He felt an instinctive importance in the meeting with the man. Never had sharper eyes flashed over Jean and his outfit. The stranger had a dust-colored, sunburned face, long, lean, and hard, a huge sandy mustache that hid his mouth, and eyes of light, piercing intensity. Not very much hard Western experience had passed by this man, yet he was not old, measured by years.

  When he dismounted, Jean saw he was tall, even for an Arizonian.

  “Seen your tracks back a ways,” he said, as he slipped the bit to let his horse drink. “Where bound?”

  “Reckon I’m lost all right,” replied Jean. “New country for me.”

  “Shore. I seen that from your tracks an’ your last camp. Wal, where was you headin’ before you got lost?”

  The query was deliberately cool with a dry, crisp ring. Jean felt the lack of friendliness or kindliness in it.

  “Grass Valley. My name’s Isbel,” he replied shortly.

  The rider attended to his drinking horse and presently rebridled him, then with long swing of leg he appeared to step into the saddle.

  “Shore I knowed you was Jean Isbel,” he said. “Everybody in the Tonto has heered old Gass Isbel sent fer his boy.”

  “Well, then, why did you ask?” inquired Jean bluntly.

  “Reckon I wanted to see what you’d say.”

  “So? All right. But I’m not carin’ very much for what you say.”

  Their glances locked steadily then and each measured the other by the intangible conflict of spirit.

  “Shore thet’s natural,” replied the rider. His speech was slow, and the motions of his long, brown hand, as he took a cigarette from his vest, kept time with his words. “But seein’ you’re one of the Isbels, I’ll hev’ my say whether you want it or not. My name’s Colter, an’ I’m one of the sheepmen Gass Isbel’s riled with.”

  “Colter. Glad to meet you,” replied Jean. “An’ I reckon who riled my father is goin’ to rile me.”

  “Shore. If thet wasn’t so, you’d not be an Isbel,” returned Colter with a grim little laugh. “It’s easy to see you ain’t run into any Tonto Basin fellers yet. Wal, I’m goin’ to tell you thet your old man gabbed like a woman down at Greaves’s store. Bragged about you an’ how you could fight an’ how you could shoot an’ how you could track a hoss or a man! Bragged how you’d chase every sheepherder back up to the Tonto Rim! I’m tellin’ you because we want you to git our stand right. We’re goin’ to run sheep down in Grass Valley.”

  “A-huh! Well, who’s we?” queried Jean curtly.

  “Wha-at? … we … I mean the sheepmen rangin’ this rim from Black Butte to the Apache country.”

  “Colter, I’m a stranger in Arizona,” said Jean slowly. “I know little about ranchers or sheepmen. It’s true my father sent for me. It’s true, I daresay, that he bragged, for he’s given to bluster an’ blow. An’ he’s old now. I can’t help it if he bragged about me. But if he has, an’ if he’s justified in his stand against you sheepmen, I’m goin’ to do my best to live up to his brag.”

  “I get your hunch. Shore we understand each other an’ that’s a powerful help. You take my hunch to your old man,” replied Colter, as he turned his horse away toward the left. “That trail leadin’ south is yours. When you come to the rim, you’ll see a bare spot down in the basin. That’ll be Grass Valley.”

  He rode away out of sight into the woods. Jean leaned against his horse and pondered. It seemed difficult to be just to this Colter, not because of his claims, but because of a subtle hostility that emanated from him. Colter had the hard face, the masked intent, the turn of speech that Jean had come to associate with dishonest men. Even if Jean had not been prejudiced, if he had known nothing of his father’s trouble with these sheepmen, and if Colter had met him only to exchange glances and greetings, still Jean would never have had a favorable impression. Colter grated upon him, roused an antagonism seldom felt.

  “Heigh-ho,” sighed the young man. “Good bye to huntin’ an’ fishin’. Dad’s given me a man’s job.”

  With that, he mounted his horse and started the pack mule into the right-hand trail. Walking and trotting, he traveled all afternoon, toward sunset getting into heavy forests of pine. More than one snowbank showed white through the green, sheltered on the north slopes of shady ravines. It was upon entering this zone of richer, deeper forestland that Jean sloughed off his gloomy forebodings. These stately pines were not the giant firs of Oregon, but any lover of the woods could be happy under them. Higher still he climbed until the forest spread before and around him like a level park, with thicketed ravines here and there on each side. Presently that deceptive level led to a higher bench upon which the pines towered and were matched by beautiful trees he took for spruce. Heavily barked, with regular spreading branches, these conifers rose in symmetrical shape to spear the sky with silver plumes. A graceful, gray-green moss waved like veils from the branches. The air was not so dry and it was colder, with a scent and touch of snow. Jean made camp at the first likely site, taking the precaution to unroll his bed some little distance from his fire. Under the softly moaning pines he felt comfortable, having lost the sense of an immeasurable open space falling away from all around him.

  The gobbling of wild turkeys awakened Jean. Chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug-chug. There was not a great difference between the gobble of a wild turkey and that of a tame one. Jean got up and, taking his rifle, went out into the gray obscurity of dawn to try to locate the turkeys. But it was too dark, and finally, when daylight came, they appeared to be gone. The mule had strayed, and what with finding it and cooking breakfast, and packing, Jean did not make a very early start. On this last lap of his long journey he had slowed down. He was weary of hurrying. The change from weeks in the glaring sun and dust-laden wind to this sweet, cool, darkly green and brown forest was very welcome. He wanted to linger along the shaded trail. This day he made sure would see him reach the Tonto Rim. By and by he lost the trail. It had just worn out from lack of use. But every now and then Jean would cross the old trail again, and, as he penetrated deeper into the forest, every damp or dusty spot showed tracks of turkey, deer, and bear. The amount of bear sign surprised him. Presently his keen nostrils were assailed by a smell of sheep, and soon he rode into a broad sheep trail. From the tracks Jean calculated that the sheep had passed there the day before.

  An unreasonable antipathy seemed born in him. To be sure he had been prepared to dislike sheep, and that was why he was unreasonable. But on the other hand this band of sheep had left a broad, bare swath, weedless, grassless, flowerless, in their wake. Where sheep grazed, they destroyed. That was what Jean had against them.

  An hour later he rode to the crest of a long, park-like slope where new green grass was sprouting and flowers peeped everywhere. The pines appeared far apart; gnarled oak trees showed rugged and gray against the green wall of woods. A white strip of snow gleamed like a moving stream away down in the woods.

  Jean heard the musical tinkle of bells and the baa-baa of sheep and the faint, sweet, bleating of lambs. As he rode toward these sounds, a dog ran out from an oak thicket and barked at him. Next Jean smelled a campfire, and soon he caught sight of a curling blue column of smoke, and then a small peaked tent. Beyond the clump of oaks Jean encountered a Mexican lad, carrying a carbine. The boy had a swarthy, pleasant face, and to Jean’s greeting he replied: “Buenas días.” Jean understood little Spanish and about all he gathered from his simple queries was that the lad was not alone—and that it was lambing time.

  This latter circumstance grew noisily manifest. The forest seemed shrilly full of incessant baas and plaintive bleats. All about the camp, on the slope, in the glades, and everywhere, were sheep. A few were grazing; many were lying down; most of them were ewes suckling white, fleecy, little lambs that staggered on their feet. Everywhere Jean saw tiny lambs just born. Their pinpointed bleats pierced the heavier baa-baa of their mothers.

  Jean dismounted, and led his horse down toward the camp, where he rather expected to see another and older Mexican from whom he might get information. The lad had walked with him. Down this way the plaintive uproar made by the sheep was not so loud.

  “Hello there!” called Jean cheerfully, as he approached the tent. No answer was forthcoming. Dropping his bridle, he went on rather slowly, looking for someone to appear. Then a voice from one side startled him.

  “ ’Mawnin’, stranger.”

  A girl stepped out from beside a pine. She carried a rifle. Her face flashed richly brown, but she was not Mexican. This fact, and the sudden conviction that she had been watching him, somewhat disconcerted Jean.

  “Beg pardon … miss,” he floundered. “Didn’t expect to see a … a girl.… I’m sort of lost … lookin’ for the Tonto Rim … an’ thought I’d find a sheepherder who’d show me. I can’t savvy this boy’s lingo.”

  While he spoke, it seemed to him an intentness of expression, a strain relaxed from her f
ace. A faint suggestion of hostility likewise disappeared. Jean was not even sure that he had caught it, but there had been something that now was gone.

  “Shore I’ll be glad to show you,” she said.

  “Thanks, miss. Reckon I can breathe easy now,” he replied. “It’s a long ride from San Diego. Hot an’ dusty! I’m pretty tired. An’ maybe this woods isn’t good medicine to achin’ eyes.”

  “San Diego! You’re from the Coast?”

  “Yes.”

  Jean had doffed his sombrero at sight of her and he still held it, rather deferentially perhaps. It seemed to attract her attention.

  “Put on your hat, stranger. Shore I cain’t recollect when any man bared his haid to me.” She uttered a little laugh in which surprise and frankness mingled with a taint of bitterness.

  Jean sat down with his back to a pine, and, laying the sombrero by his side, he looked fully at her, conscious of a singular eagerness, as if he wanted to verify by close scrutiny a first hasty impression. If there had been an instinct in his meeting with Colter, there was more in this. The girl half sat, half leaned against a log, with the shiny little carbine across her knees. She had a level, curious gaze on him, and Jean had never met one just like it. Her eyes were rather a wide oval in shape, clear and steady, with shadows of thought in their amber-brown depths. They seemed to look through Jean, and his gaze dropped first. Then it was he saw her ragged homespun skirt and a few inches of brown bare ankles, strong and round, and crude, worn-out moccasins that failed to hide the shapeliness of her feet. Suddenly she drew back her stockingless ankles and ill-shod little feet. When Jean lifted his gaze again, he found her face half averted and a stain of red in the gold tan of her cheek. That touch of embarrassment somehow removed her from this strong, raw, wild woodland setting. It changed her poise. It detracted from the curious, unabashed, almost bold look that he had encountered in her eyes.

  “Reckon you’re from Texas,” said Jean presently.

  “Shore am,” she drawled. She had a lazy Southern voice, pleasant to hear. “How’d you-all guess that?”

  “Anybody can tell a Texan. Where I came from, there were a good many pioneers an’ ranchers from the old Lone Star state. I’ve worked for several … an’, come to think of it, I’d rather hear a Texas girl talk than anybody.”

  “Did you know many Texas girls?” she inquired, turning again to face him.

  “Reckon I did … quite a good many.”

  “Did you go with them?”

  “Go with them? Reckon you mean keep company. Why, yes, I guess I did … a little.” Jean laughed. “Sometimes on a Sunday, or a dance once in a blue moon, an’ occasionally a ride.”

  “Shore that accounts,” said the girl wistfully.

  “For what?” asked Jean.

  “Your bein’ a gentleman,” she replied with force. “Oh, I’ve not forgotten. I had friends when we lived in Texas … three years ago. Shore it seems longer. Three miserable years in this damned country!”

  Then she bit her lip, evidently to keep back further unwitting utterance to a total stranger. It was that biting of her lip that drew Jean’s attention to her mouth. It held beauty of curve and fullness and color that could not hide a certain sadness and bitterness. Then the whole flashing brown face changed for Jean. He saw that it was young, full of passion and restraint, possessing a power that grew on him. This, with her shame and pathos and familiar utterance of profanity, and the fact that she craved respect, gave a leap to Jean’s interest.

  “Well, I reckon you flatter me,” he said, hoping to put her at her ease again. “I’m only a rough hunter an’ fisherman … woodchopper an’ horse tracker. Never had all the school I needed … nor had enough company of nice girls like you.”

  “Am I nice?” she asked quickly.

  “You sure are,” he replied, smiling.

  “In these rags?” she demanded, with a sudden flash of passion that thrilled him. “Look at the holes.” She showed rips and worn-out places in the sleeves of her buckskin blouse, through which gleamed a round brown arm. “I sew when I have anythin’ to sew with.… Look at my skirt … a dirty rag. An’ I have only one other to my name … look!” Again a color tinged her cheeks, most becoming, and giving the lie to her action. But shame could not check her violence now. A dammed up resentment seemed to have broken out in flood. She lifted the ragged skirt almost to her knees. “No stockings! No shoes! … how can a girl be nice when she has no clean decent woman’s clothes to wear?”

  “How … how can … a girl … ,” began Jean, “see here, miss, I’m beggin’ your pardon for … sort of stirrin’ you to forget yourself a little. Reckon I understand. You don’t meet many strangers an’ I sort of hit you wrong … makin’ you feel too much … an’ talk too much. Who an’ what you are is none of my business. But we met … an’ I reckon somethin’ has happened … perhaps more to me than to you.… Now let me put you straight about clothes an’ women. Reckon I know most women love nice things to wear, an’ think because clothes make them look pretty that they’re nicer or better. But they’re wrong. You’re wrong. Maybe it’d be too much for a girl like you to be happy without clothes. But you can be … you are just as nice an’ … an’ fine … an’, for all you know, a good deal more appealin’ to some men.”

  “Stranger, you shore must excuse my temper an’ the show I made of myself,” replied the girl with composure. “That, to say the least, was not nice. An’ I don’t want anyone thinkin’ better of me than I deserve. My mother died in Texas, an’ I’ve lived out heah in this wild country … a girl alone among rough men. Meetin’ you today makes me see what a hard lot they are … an’ what it’s done to me.”

  Jean smothered his curiosity and tried to put out of his mind a growing sense that he pitied her, liked her.

  “Are you a sheepherder?” he asked.

  “Shore I am now an’ then. My father lives back heah in a cañon. He’s a sheepman. Lately there’s been herders shot at. Just now we’re short, an’ I have to fill in. But I like shepherdin’ an’ I love the woods, the rim rock, an’ all the Tonto. If they were all, I’d shore be happy.”

  “Herders shot at!” exclaimed Jean thoughtfully. “By whom? An’ what for?”

  “Trouble brewin’ between the cattlemen down in the basin an’ the sheepmen up on the rim. Dad says there’ll shore be hell to pay. I tell him I hope the cattlemen chase him back to Texas.”

  “Then … are you on the ranchers’ side?” queried Jean, trying to pretend casual interest.

  “No. I’ll always be on my father’s side,” she replied with spirit. “But I’m bound to admit I think the cattlemen have the fair side of the argument.”

  “How so?”

  “Because there’s grass everywhere. I see no sense in a sheepman goin’ out of his way to surround a cattleman an’ sheep off his range. That started the row. Lord knows how it’ll end. For ‘most all of them heah are from Texas.”

  “So I was told,” replied Jean. “An’ I heard most all these Texans got run out of Texas. Any truth in that?”

  “Shore I reckon there is,” she replied seriously. “But, stranger, it might not be healthy for you to say that anywhere. My dad for one was not run out of Texas. Shore I never can see why he came heah. He’s accumulated stock, but he’s not rich, nor so well off, as he was back home.”

  “Are you goin’ to stay here always?” queried Jean suddenly.

  “If I do, it’ll be in my grave,” she answered darkly. “But what’s the use of thinkin’? People stay places until they drift away. You can never tell.… Well, stranger, this talk is keepin’ you.”