Dorn Of The Mountains Read online

  “Then to Pine…to my uncle…Al Auchincloss?”

  “Yes, I’m goin’ to try hard.”

  Helen caught her breath. She divined that some peril menaced her. She looked steadily, with all a woman’s keenness, into this man’s face. The moment was one of the fateful decisions she knew the West had in store for her. Her future and that of Bo’s were now to be dependent upon her judgments. It was a hard moment, and, although she shivered inwardly, she welcomed the initial and inevitable step. This man Dorn, by his dress of buckskin, must be either scout or hunter. His size, his action, the tone of his voice had been reassuring. But Helen must decide from what she saw in his face whether or not to trust him. And that face was clear bronze, unlined, unshadowed, like a tranquil mask, clean-cut, strong jawed, with eyes of wonderful transparent gray.

  “Yes, I’ll trust you,” she said. “Get in and let us hurry. Then you can explain.”

  “All ready, Bill. Send ’em along!” called Dorn.

  He had to stoop to enter the stage, and, once in, he appeared to fill that side upon which he sat. Then the driver cracked his whip; the stage lurched and began to roll; the motley crowd was left behind. Helen awakened to the reality, as she saw Bo staring with big eyes at the hunter, that a stranger adventure than she had ever dreamed of had begun with the rattling roll of that old stagecoach.

  Dorn laid off his sombrero and leaned forward, holding his rifle between his knees. The light shone better upon his features now that he was bareheaded. Helen had never seen a face like that, which at first glance appeared darkly bronzed and hard, and then became clear, cold, aloof, still, intense. She wished she might see a smile upon it. And now that the die was cast she could not tell why she had trusted it. There was singular force in it, but she did not recognize what kind of force. One instant she thought it was stern, and the next that it was sweet, and again that it was neither.

  “I’m glad you’ve got your sister,” he said.

  “How did you know she’s my sister?”

  “I reckon she looks like you.”

  “No one else ever thought so,” replied Helen, trying to smile.

  Bo had no difficulty in smiling as she said: “Wish I was half as pretty as Nell.”

  “Nell. Isn’t your name Helen?” queried Dorn.

  “Yes. But my…some few call me Nell.”

  “I like Nell better than Helen. An’ what’s yours?” went on Dorn, looking at Bo.

  “Mine’s Bo. Just plain B-o. Isn’t it silly? But I wasn’t asked when they gave it to me,” she replied.

  “Bo. It’s nice an’ short. Never heard it before. But I haven’t met many people for years.”

  “Oh! We’ve left the town!” cried Bo. “Look, Nell! How bare! It’s just like desert.”

  “It is desert. We’ve forty miles of that before we come to a hill or a tree.”

  Helen glanced out. A flat dull green expanse waved away from the road on and on to a bright dark horizon line where the sun was setting rayless on a clear sky. Open, desolate, and lonely, the scene gave her a cold thrill.

  “Did your Uncle Al ever write anythin’ about a man named Beasley?” asked Dorn.

  “Indeed he did,” replied Helen with a start of surprise. “Beasley! That name is familiar to us…and detestable. My uncle complained of this man for years. Then he grew bitter…accused Beasley. But the last year or so, not a word.”

  “Well, now,” began the hunter earnestly. “Let’s get the bad news over. I’m sorry you must be worried. But you must learn to take the West as it is. There’s good and bad, maybe more bad. That’s because the country’s young…so to come right out with it…this Beasley hired a gang of outlaws to meet the stage you was goin’ in to Snowdrop…tomorrow…an’ to make off with you.”

  “Make off with me?” ejaculated Helen, bewildered.

  “Kidnap you! Which in that gang would be worse than killin’ you,” declared Dorn grimly, and he closed a huge fist on his knee.

  Helen was utterly astounded. “How horrible!” she gasped out. “Make off with me! What in heaven’s name for?”

  Bo gave vent to a fierce little utterance.

  “For reasons you ought to guess,” replied Dorn, and he leaned forward again. Neither his voice nor face changed in the least, but yet there was a something about him that fascinated Helen. “I’m a hunter. I live in the woods. A few nights ago I happened to be caught out in a storm an’ I took to an old log cabin. Soon as I got there, I heard horses. I hid up in the loft. Some men rode up an’ come in. It was dark. They couldn’t see me. An’ they talked. It turned out they were Snake Anson an’ his gang of sheep thieves. They expected to meet Beasley there. Pretty soon he came. He told Anson how old Al, your uncle, was on his last legs…how he had sent for you to have his property when he died…. Beasley swore he had claims on Al. An’ he made a deal with Anson to get you out of the way. He named the day you were to reach Magdalena. With Al dead an’ you not there, Beasley could get the property. An’ then he wouldn’t care if you did come to claim it. It’d be too late…. Well, they rode away that night. An’ next day I rustled down to Pine. They’re all my friends at Pine, except old Al. But they think I’m queer. I didn’t want to confide in many people. Beasley is strong in Pine, an’ for that matter I suspect Snake Anson has other friends there besides Beasley…. So I went to see your uncle. He never had any use for me because he thought I was lazy like an Indian. Old Al hates lazy men. Then we fell out…or he fell out…because he believed a tame lion of mine had killed some of his sheep. An’ now I reckon that Tom might have done it…. I tried to lead up to this deal of Beasley’s about you, but old Al wouldn’t listen. He’s cross…very cross. An’ when I tried to tell him, why he went right out of his head. Sent me off the ranch.

  “Now I reckon you begin to see what a pickle I was in. Finally I went to four friends I could trust. They’re Mormon boys…brothers. That’s Joe out on top with the driver. I told them all about Beasley’s deal an’ asked them to help me. So we planned to beat Anson an’ his gang to Magdalena. It happens that Beasley is as strong in Magdalena as he is in Pine. An’ we had to go careful. But the boys had a couple of friends here…Mormons, too, who agreed to help us. They had this old stage…. An’ here you are.”

  Dorn spread out his big hands and looked gravely at Helen, and then at Bo.

  “You’re perfectly splendid!” cried Bo ringingly. She was white; her fingers were clenched; her eyes blazed.

  Dorn appeared startled out of his gravity, and surprised, then pleased. A smile made his face like a boy’s.

  Helen felt her body all rigid, yet slightly trembling. Her hands were cold. The horror of this revelation held her speechless. But in her heart she echoed Bo’s exclamation of admiration and gratitude.

  “So far then,” resumed Dorn, with a heavy breath of relief. “No wonder you’re upset. I’ve a blunt way of talkin’…. Now we’ve thirty miles to ride on this Snowdrop road before we can turn off. Today, sometime, the rest of the boys…Roy, John, an’ Hal were to leave Show Down, which is a town farther on from Snowdrop. They have my horses an’ packs besides their own. Somewhere on the road we’ll meet them…tonight maybe…or tomorrow. I hope not tonight because that’d mean Anson’s gang was ridin’ in to Magdalena.”

  Helen wrung her hands helplessly. “Oh, have I no courage,” she whispered.

  “Nell, I’m as scared as you are,” said Bo consolingly, embracing her sister.

  “I reckon that’s natural,” said Dorn, as if excusing them. “But scared or not you both brace up. It’s a bad job. But I’ve done my best. An’ you’ll be safer with me an’ the Beeman boys than you’d be in Magdalena, or anywhere else, except your uncle’s.”

  “Mister…Mister Dorn,” faltered Helen, with her tears falling. “Don’t think me a coward…or…or ungrateful. I’m neither. It’s only I’m so…so shocked. After all we hoped and expected…this…this is such a…a terrible surprise.”

  “Never mind, Nell dear. Let’s take wh
at comes,” murmured Bo.

  “That’s the talk,” said Dorn. “You see I’ve come right out with the worst. Maybe we’ll get through easy. When we meet the boys, we’ll take to the horses an’ the trails. Can you ride?”

  “Bo has been used to hosses all her life and I ride fairly well,” responded Helen. The idea of riding quickened her spirit.

  “Good! We may have some hard ridin’ before I get you up to Pine…. Hello, what’s that?”

  Above the creaking, rattling, rolling roar of the stage Helen heard a rapid beat of hoofs. A horse flashed by, galloping hard.

  Dorn opened the door and peered out. The stage rolled to a halt. Dorn stepped down and peered ahead.

  “Joe, who was that?” he queried.

  “Nary me. An’ Bill didn’t know him, either,” replied Joe. “I seen him ‘way back. He was ridin’ some. An’ he slowed up goin’ past us. Now he’s runnin’ again.”

  Dorn shook his head as if he did not like the circumstance.

  “Milt, he’ll never get by Roy on this road,” said Joe.

  “Maybe he’ll get by before Roy strikes in on the road.”

  “It ain’t likely.”

  Helen could not restrain her fears. “Mister Dorn, you think he was a messenger…going ahead to pass that…that Anson gang?”

  “He might be,” replied Dorn simply.

  Then the young man called Joe leaned out from the seat above and called: “Miss Helen, don’t you worry, thet fellar is more liable to stop lead than anythin’ else!”

  His words, meant to be kind and reasoning, were about as sinister to Helen as the menace to her own life. Long had she known how cheap life was held in the West, but she had only known it abstractly, and she had never let the fact remain before her consciousness. This cheerful young man spoke calmly of spilling blood on her behalf. The thought it roused was tragic…for bloodshed was insupportable to her…and then the thrills that followed now so new, strange, bold, and tingling that they were revolting. Helen grew conscious of unplumbed depths, of instincts at which she was amazed and ashamed.

  “Joe, hand down that basket of grub…the small one with the canteen,” said Dorn, reaching out a long arm. Presently he placed a cloth-covered basket inside the stage. “Girls, eat all you want an’ then some.”

  “We have a basket half full yet,” replied Helen.

  “You’ll need it all before we get to Pine…. Now I’ll ride up on top with the boys an’ eat my supper. It’ll be dark presently, an’ we’ll stop often to listen. But don’t be scared.”

  With that he took his rifle and, closing the door, clambered up to the driver’s seat. Then the stage lurched again and began to roll along.

  Not the least thing to wonder at of this eventful evening was the way Bo reached for the basket of food. Helen simply stared at her.

  “Bo, you can’t eat!” she exclaimed.

  “I should smile I can,” replied that practical young lady. “And you’re going to if I have to stuff things in your mouth. Where’s your wits, Nell? He said we must eat. That means our strength is going to have some pretty severe trials…. Gee, it’s all great…just like a story! The unexpected…why, he looks like a prince turned hunter…long dark stage journey…held up…fight…escape…wild ride on horses…woods and camps and wild places…pursued…hidden in the forest…more hard rides…then safe at the ranch. And of course he falls madly in love with me…no you, for I’d be true to my Las Vegas lover….”

  “Hush, silly! Bo, tell me, aren’t you scared?”

  “Scared! I’m scared stiff. But if Western girls stand such things, we can. No Western girl is going to beat me!”

  That brought Helen to a realization of the brave place she had given herself in dreams, and she was at once ashamed of herself, and wildly proud of this little sister.

  “Bo, thank heaven I brought you with me!” exclaimed Helen fervently. “I’ll eat if it chokes me.”

  Whereupon she found herself actually hungry, and, while she ate, she glanced out of the stage, first from one side, and then from the other. These windows had no glass and they let the cool night air blow in. The sun had long since sunk. Out to the west, where a long bold black horizon line swept away suddenly, the sky was clear gold shading to yellow and blue above. Stars were out, pale and wan, but growing brighter. The earth appeared bare and heaving, like a calm sea. The wind bore a fragrance new to Helen, acridly sweet and clean, and it was so cold it made her fingers numb.

  “I heard some animal yelp,” said Bo suddenly, and she listened with head poised.

  But Helen heard nothing save the steady clip-clop of hoofs, the clink of chains, the creak and rattle of the old stage, and occasionally the low voices of the men above.

  When the girls had satisfied hunger and thirst, night had settled down black. They pulled the cloaks up over them and, close together, leaned back in a corner of the seat and talked in whispers. Helen did not have much to say, but Bo was talkative.

  “This beats me,” she said once, after an interval. “Where are we, Nell? Those men up there are Mormons. Maybe they are abducting us.”

  “Mister Dorn isn’t a Mormon,” replied Helen.

  “How do you know?”

  “I could tell by the way he spoke of his friends.”

  “Well, I wish it wasn’t so dark. I’m not afraid of men in daylight…. Nell, did you ever see such a wonderful-looking fellow? What’d they call him? Milt…Milt Dorn. He said he lived in the woods. If I hadn’t fallen in love with that cowboy who called me…well, I’d be a goner now.”

  After an interval of silence Bo whispered startlingly: “Wonder if Harve Riggs is following us now?”

  “Of course he is,” replied Helen hopelessly.

  “He’d better look out. Why, Nell, he never saw…he never…what did Uncle Al used to call it?…saw…savvied…that’s it. Riggs never savvied that hunter. But I did, you bet.”

  “Savvied! What do you mean, Bo?”

  “I mean that long-haired galoot never saw his real danger. But I felt it. Something went tight inside me. Dorn never took him seriously at all.”

  “Riggs will turn up at Uncle Al’s sure as I’m born,” said Helen.

  “Let him turn,” replied Bo contemptuously. “Nell, don’t you ever bother your head again about him. I’ll bet they’re all men out here. And I wouldn’t be in Harve Riggs’s boots for a lot.”

  After that Bo talked of her uncle, and his fatal illness, and from that she drifted back to the loved ones at home, now seemingly at the other side of the world, and then she broke down and cried, after which she fell asleep on Helen’s shoulder.

  But Helen could not have fallen asleep if she had wanted to.

  She had always, since she could remember, longed for a moving active life, and for want of a better ideal she had chosen to dream of Gypsies. And now it struck her grimly that, if these first few hours of her advent in the West were forecasts of the future, she was destined to have her longings fulfilled with a vengeance.

  Presently the stage rolled slower and slower until it came to a halt. Then the horses heaved, the harnesses clinked, the men whispered. Otherwise, there was an intense quiet. She looked out, expecting to find it pitch dark. It was black, yet a transparent blackness. To her surprise she could see a long way. A shooting star electrified her. The men were listening. She listened, too, but, beyond the slight sounds about the stage, she heard nothing. Presently the driver clucked his horses, and travel was resumed.

  For a while the stage rolled on rapidly, evidently downhill, swaying from side to side, and rolling as if about to fall to pieces. Then it slowed on a level, and again it halted for a few moments, and once more in motion it began a laborsome climb. Helen imagined miles had been covered. The desert appeared to heave into billows, growing rougher, and dark round bushes dimly stood out. The road grew uneven and rocky, and, when the stage began another descent, its violent rocking jolted Bo out of her sleep, and in fact almost out of Helen’s arms.

&nbs
p; “Where am I?” asked Bo dazedly.

  “Bo, you’re having your heart’s desire, but I can’t tell you where you are,” replied Helen.

  Bo awakened thoroughly, which fact was now no wonder, considering the jostling of the old stage.

  “Hold on to me, Nell! Is it a runaway?”

  “We’ve come about a thousand miles like this, I think,” replied Helen. “I’ve not a whole bone in my body.”

  Bo peered out of the window. “Oh, how dark and lonesome! But it’d be nice if it wasn’t so cold. I’m freezing.”

  “I thought you loved cold air,” taunted Helen.

  “Say, Nell, you begin to talk like yourself,” responded Bo.

  It was difficult to hold on to the stage and each other and the cloak all at once, but they succeeded except on the roughest places, when from time to time they were bounced around. Bo sustained a sharp rap on the head.

  “Ooooo!” she moaned. “Nell Rayner, I’ll never forgive you for fetching me on this awful trip.”

  “Just think of your handsome Las Vegas cowboy,” replied Helen.

  Either this remark squelched Bo or the suggestion sufficed to reconcile her to the hardships of the ride.

  Meanwhile, as they talked and maintained silence and tried to sleep, the driver of that stage kept at his task after the manner of Western men who knew how to get the best out of horses and bad roads and distance.

  By and by the stage halted again and remained at a standstill for so long, with the men whispering on top, that Helen and Bo were roused to apprehension.

  Suddenly a sharp whistle came from the darkness ahead.

  “Thet’s Roy,” said Joe Beeman in a low voice.

  “I reckon. An’ meetin’ us so quick looks bad,” replied Dorn. “Drive on, Bill.”

  “Mebbe it seems quick to you,” muttered the driver. “But if we hain’t come thirty miles, an’ if thet ridge thar hasn’t your turnin’ off place, why I don’t know nuthin’.”

  The stage rolled on a little farther while Helen and Bo sat clasping each other tightly, wondering with bated breath what was to be the next thing to happen.