Silvermane Page 5

  Tappan had the other five bags of gold in his pack, and after hours of hesitation he decided he would not cash them and trust the money to a bank. He would take care of them. For him the value of this gold amounted to a small fortune. Many plans suggested themselves to Tappan, but in the end he grew weary of them. What did he want with a ranch, or cattle, or an outfitting store, or any of the businesses he now had the means to buy? Towns soon palled on Tappan. People did not long please him. Selfish interest and greed seemed paramount everywhere. Besides, if he acquired a place to take up his time, what would become of Jenet? That question decided him. He packed the burro and once more took to the trails.

  A dimly purple, lofty range called alluringly to Tappan. The Superstition Mountains! Somewhere in that purple mass laid the famous treasure called the Lost Dutchman gold mine. Tappan had heard the story often. A Dutch prospector had struck gold in the Superstitions. He had kept the location secret. When he had run short of money, he would disappear for a few weeks, and then return with bags of gold. His strike assuredly had been a rich one. No one ever could trail him or get a word out of him. Time passed. A few years made him old. During this time he conceived a liking for a young man and eventually confided that someday he would tell him the secret of his gold mine. He had drawn a map of the landmarks adjacent to his mine, but he was careful not to put on paper directions how to get there. It chanced that he suddenly fell ill and saw his end was near. Then he summoned this young man who had been so fortunate as to win his regard. Now this individual was a ne’er-do-well, and upon this occasion of his being summoned he was half drunk. The dying Dutchman produced his map and gave it with verbal directions to the young man. Then he died. When the recipient of this fortune recovered from the effects of liquor, he could not remember all the Dutchman had told him. He tortured himself to recall names and places. The mine was up in the Superstition Mountains. He never remembered quite where. He never found the lost mine, although he spent his life at it and died trying. The story passed into legend as the Lost Dutchman Mine.

  Tappan had his try at finding it. For him the shifting sands of the southern California desert or even the barren and desolate Death Valley were preferable to this Superstition Range. It was a harder country than the Pinacate of Sonora. Tappan hated cactus, and the Superstitions were full of it. The huge saguaro stood everywhere, the giant cacti of the Arizona plateaus, tall like branchless trees, fluted and columnar, beautiful and fascinating to gaze upon, but obnoxious to prospector and burro.

  One day from a north slope, Tappan saw afar a wonderful country of black timber that zigzagged for many miles in yellow winding ramparts of rock. This he took to be the rim of the Mogollon Mesa, one of Arizona’s freaks of Nature. Something called to Tappan. He was forever victim to yearnings for the unattainable. He was tired of heat, glare, dust, bare rock, and thorny cactus. The Lost Dutchman gold mine was a myth. Besides, he did not need any more gold.

  Next morning Tappan packed Jenet and worked down off the north slope of the Superstition range. That night about sunset he made camp on the bank of a clear brook, with grass and wood in abundance—such a campsite as a prospector dreamed of but seldom found.

  Before dark Jenet’s long ears told of the advent of strangers. A man and a woman rode down the trail into Tappan’s camp. They had poor horses and led a pack animal that appeared too old and weak to bear up under even the meager pack he carried.

  “Howdy,” said the man.

  Tappan rose from his task to his lofty height and returned the greeting. The man was middle-aged, swarthy, and rugged, a mountaineer, with something about him that relegated him to the men of the open who Tappan instinctively distrusted. The woman was under thirty, comely in a full-blown way, with rich brown skin and glossy dark hair. She had wide-open black eyes that bent a curious, possession-taking gaze upon Tappan. “Care if we camp with you?” she inquired, and she smiled.

  That smile changed Tappan’s habit and conviction of a lifetime. “No, indeed. Reckon I’d like a little company,” he said.

  Very probably Jenet did not understand Tappan’s words, but she dropped one ear, and walked out of camp to the green bank.

  “Thanks, stranger,” replied the woman. “That grub shore smells good.” She hesitated a moment, evidently waiting to catch her companion’s eye, then she continued. “My name’s Madge Beam. He’s my brother Jake. Who might you happen to be?”

  “I’m Tappan, lone prospector, as you see,” replied Tappan.

  “Tappan! What’s your front handle?” she queried.

  “Fact is, I don’t remember,” replied Tappan as he brushed a huge hand through his shaggy hair.

  “Ahuh? Any name’s good enough.”

  When she dismounted, Tappan saw that she was a tall, lithe figure, garbed in rider’s overalls and boots. She unsaddled her horse with a dexterity of long practice. She carried the saddlebags over to the spot Jake had selected to throw the pack.

  Tappan heard them talking in low tones. How strange he felt it was that he did not react as usual to an invasion of his privacy and solitude. Tappan had thrilled under those black eyes, and now a queer sensation of the unusual rose in him. Bending over his campfire tasks, he pondered this and that, but mostly the sense of the nearness of a woman. Like most desert men, Tappan knew little of women. He had never felt the necessity of a woman. A few that he might have been drawn to had gone out of his wandering life as quickly as they had entered it. No woman had ever made him feel as this Madge Beam. In evidence of Tappan’s preoccupation was the fact that he burned his first batch of biscuits, and Tappan felt proud of his culinary ability. He was on his knees, mixing more flour and water, when the woman spoke from right behind him.

  “Tough luck you browned the first pan,” she said. “But it’s a good turn for your burro. That shore is a burro. Biggest I ever saw.” Thereupon she picked up the burned biscuits and tossed them over to Jenet, then she came back to Tappan’s side, rather embarrassingly close. “Tappan, I know how I’ll eat, so I ought to ask you to let me help,” she said with a laugh.

  “No, I don’t need any,” replied Tappan. “You sit down on my roll of beddin’ there. Must be tired, aren’t you?”

  “Not so very,” she returned. “That is, I’m not tired of ridin’.” She spoke the second part of this reply in a lower tone.

  Tappan looked up from his task. The woman had washed her face, brushed her hair, and had put on a skirt—a singularly attractive change. Tappan thought her younger. She was the handsomest woman he had ever seen. The look of her made him clumsy. What eyes she had! They looked through him. Tappan returned to his task, wondering if he was right in his feeling that she wanted to be friendly.

  “Jake an’ I drove a bunch of cattle to Maricopa,” she said. “We sold it, an’ Jake gambled away most of the money. I couldn’t get what I wanted.”

  “Too bad. So you’re ranchers. Once thought I’d like that. Fact is, down here at Globe a few weeks ago I came near buyin’ some rancher out an’ tryin’ the game.”

  “You did?” Her query had a low, quick eagerness that somehow thrilled Tappan, but he did not look up. “I’m a wanderer. I’d never do on a ranch.”

  “But if you had a woman?” Her laugh was subtle and gay.

  “A woman! For me? Oh, Lord, no!”

  “Why not? Are you a woman hater?”

  “I can’t say that,” replied Tappan soberly. “It’s just…I guess…no woman would have me.”

  “Faint heart never won fair lady.”

  Tappan had no reply for that. He surely was making a mess of this second pan of biscuit dough. Manifestly the woman saw this, for, with a laugh, she plumped down on her knees in front of Tappan, and rolled up her sleeves over shapely brown arms.

  “Poor man! Shore you need a woman. Let me show you,” she said, and put her hands right down upon Tappan’s. The touch gave him a strange thrill. He had to pull his
hands away, and, as he wiped them with his scarf, he looked at her. He seemed compelled to look. She was close to him now, smiling in good nature, a little scornful of man’s encroachment upon the housewifely duties of a woman. A subtle something emanated from her—more than kindness or gaiety. Tappan grasped that it was just the woman of her, and it was going to his head.

  “Very well, let’s see you show me,” he replied as he rose to his feet.

  Just then, her brother Jake strolled over, and he had a rather amused and derisive eye for his sister. “Wal, Tappan, she’s not over fond of work, but I reckon she can cook,” he said.

  Tappan felt greatly relieved at the approach of the brother, and he fell into conversation with him, telling something of his prospecting since leaving Globe and listening to the man’s cattle talk. By and by the woman called: “Come an’ get it!” Then they sat down to eat, and as usual with hungry wayfarers they did not talk much until appetite was satisfied. Afterward, before the campfire, they began to talk again, Jake doing the most of it. Tappan conceived the idea that the rancher was rather curious about him and perhaps wanted to sell his ranch. The woman seemed more thoughtful, with her wide black eyes on the fire.

  “Tappan, what way you travelin’?” Beam finally inquired.

  “Can’t say. I just worked down out of the Superstitions. Haven’t any place in mind. Where does this road go?”

  “To the Tonto Basin. Ever heard of it?”

  “Yes, the name isn’t new. What’s in this basin?”

  The man grunted. “Tonto once was home for the Apaches. It’s now got a few sheep an’ cattlemen, lots of rustlers. An’, say, if you like to hunt bear an’ deer, come along with us.”

  “Thanks. I don’t know as I can,” returned Tappan irresolutely. He was not used to such possibilities as this suggested.

  Then Madge Beam spoke up. “It’s a pretty country. Wild an’ different. We live up under Mogollon Rim. There’s minerals in the cañons.”

  Was it what was said about minerals that decided Tappan or the look in her eyes?

  * * * * *

  Tappan’s world of thought and feeling underwent as great a change as this Tonto Basin differed from the stark desert so long his home. The trail to the log cabin of the Beams climbed many a ridge and slope and foothill, all covered with manzanita, mescal, cedar, and juniper, at last reaching the cañons of the rim where lofty pines and spruces lorded it over the under forest of maples and oaks. Although the yellow Mogollon Rim towered high over the site of the cabin, the altitude was still great, close to seven thousand feet above sea level.

  Tappan had fallen in love with this wild wooded and cañoned country. So had Jenet. It was rather funny the way she hung around Tappan, mornings and evenings. She ate luxuriant grass and oak leaves until her sides bulged.

  There did not appear to be any flat places in this country. Every bench was either uphill or downhill. The Beams had no garden or farm or ranch that Tappan could discover. They raised a few acres of sorghum and corn. Their log cabin was of the most primitive kind, and outfitted poorly. Madge Beam explained that this cabin was their winter abode, and that up on the rim they had a good house and ranch. Tappan did not inquire closely into anything. If he had interrogated himself, he would have found out that the reason he did not inquire was because he feared something might remove him from the vicinity of Madge Beam. He had thought it strange the Beams avoided wayfarers they had met on the trail and had gone around a little hamlet Tappan had espied from a hill. Madge Beam, with woman’s intuition, had read his mind and had said: “Jake doesn’t get along so well with some of the villagers. An’ I’ve no hankerin’ for gun play.” That explanation was sufficient for Tappan. He had lived long enough in his wandering years to appreciate that people could have reasons for being solitary.

  This trip up into the rimrock country bade fairly to become Tappan’s one and only adventure of the heart. It was not alone the murmuring clear brook of cold mountain water that enchanted him, nor the stately pines, nor the beautiful silver spruces, nor the wonder of the deep, yellow-walled cañons, so choked with verdure and haunted by wild creatures. He dared not face his soul and ask why this dark-eyed woman sought him more and more, and grew from gay and audacious, even bantering, to sweet and melancholy, and sometimes somber as an Indian. Tappan lived in the moment.

  He was aware that the few mountaineer neighbors who rode that way rather avoided contact with him. Tappan was not so dense but he saw that the Beams would rather keep him from outsiders. This was perhaps owing to their desire to sell Tappan the ranch and cattle. Jake offered to sell at what he called a low figure. Tappan thought it just as well to go out into the forest and hide his bags of gold. He did not trust Jake Beam, and liked less the looks of the men who visited this wilderness ranch. Madge Beam might be related to a rustler and be the associate of rustlers, but that did not necessarily make her a bad woman. Tappan guessed that her attitude was changing, and she seemed to require his respect; all she wanted was his admiration. Tappan’s long unused deference for a woman returned to him, and he saw that Madge Beam was not used to deference. When Tappan saw that it was having some strong softening effect upon her, he redoubled his attentions. They rode and climbed and hunted together. Tappan had pitched his camp not far from the cabin, on a shaded bank of the singing brook. Madge did not leave him much to himself. She was always coming up to his camp on one pretext or another. Often she would bring two horses and make Tappan ride with her. Some of these occasions, Tappan saw, happened to occur while visitors were at the cabin. In three weeks Madge Beam changed from the bold and careless woman who had ridden down into his camp that sunset to a serious and appealing woman, growing more careful of her person and adornment, and manifestly bearing a burden on her mind.

  October came. In the morning white frost glistened on the split-wood shingles of the cabin. The sun soon melted it, and grew warm. The afternoons were still and smoky, melancholy with the enchantment of Indian summer. Tappan hunted wild turkeys and deer with Madge, and revived his boyish love of such pursuits. Madge appeared to be a woman of the woods and had no mean skill with the rifle.

  One day they were high on the Mogollon Rim with the great timbered basin at their feet. They had come up to hunt deer, but got no farther than the wonderful promontory where before they had lingered.

  “Somethin’ will happen to us today,” Madge Beam said enigmatically.

  Tappan never had been much of a talker, but he could listen. The woman unburdened herself this day. She wanted freedom, happiness, a home away from this lonely country, and all the heritage of woman. She confessed it broodingly, passionately, and Tappan recognized truth when he heard it. He was ready to do all in his power for this woman and believed she knew it, but words and acts of sentiment came hard to him.

  “Are you goin’ to buy Jake’s ranch?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Is there any hurry?” returned Tappan.

  “I reckon not. But I think I’ll settle that,” she said decisively.

  “How so?”

  “Well, Jake hasn’t got any ranch,” she answered, and added hastily, “no clear title, I mean. He’s only homesteaded one hundred an’ sixty acres, an’ hasn’t proved up on it yet. But don’t you say I told you.”

  “Was Jake aimin’ to be crooked?”

  “I reckon…an’ I was willin’ at first. But not now.”

  Tappan did not speak at once. He saw the woman was in one of her brooding moods. Besides, he wanted to weigh her words. How significant they were! Today more than ever before she had let down. Humility and simplicity seemed to abide with her, and her brooding boded a storm. Tappan’s heart swelled in his broad breast. Was life going to dawn rosy and bright for the lonely prospector? He had money to make a home for this woman. What lay in the balance of the hour? Tappan waited, slowly realizing the charged atmosphere.

  Madge’s somber eyes gazed out over
the great void, but full of thought and passion, as they were, they did not see the beauty of that scene. Tappan saw it, and in some strange sense the color and wildness and sublimity seemed the expression of a new state of his heart. Under him sheered down the ragged and cracked cliffs of the Mogollon Rim, yellow and gold and gray, full of caves and crevices, ledges for eagles and niches for lions, a thousand feet down to the upward edge of the long green slopes and cañons, and so on down and down into the abyss of forested ravine and ridge, rolling league on league away to the encompassing barrier of purple mountain ranges. The thickets in the cañons called Tappan’s eye back to linger there. How different from the scenes that had used to be perpetually in his sight! What riot of color! The tips of the green pines, the crests of the silver spruces, waved about masses of vivid gold of aspen trees, and wonderful cerise and flaming red of maples, and crags of yellow rock covered with the bronze of frost-bitten sumac. Here was autumn and the colors of Tappan’s favorite season. From below breathed up the roar of plunging brook; an eagle screeched his wild call; an elk bugled his piercing blast. From the rim wisps of pine needles blew away on the breeze and fell into the void. A wild country, colorful, beautiful, bountiful! Tappan imagined he could quell his wandering spirit here, with this dark-eyed woman by his side. Never before had Nature so called him. Here was not the cruelty of the flinty hardness of the desert. The air was keen and sweet, cold in the shade, warm in the sun. A fragrance of balsam and spruce, spiced with pine, made his breathing a thing of difficulty and delight. How for so many years had he endured vast open spaces without such eye-soothing trees as these? Tappan’s back rested against a huge pine that tipped the rim and had stood there, stronger than the storms, for many a hundred years. The rock of the promontory was covered with soft, brown mats of pine needles. A juniper tree, with its bright green foliage and lilac-colored berries, grew near the pine and helped to form a secluded little nook, fragrant and somehow haunting. The woman’s dark head was close to Tappan, as she sat with her elbows on her knees, gazing down into the basin. Tappan saw the strained tensity of her posture, the heaving of her full bosom. He wondered, while his own emotions, so long deadened, roused to the suspense of that hour.