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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Arizona Ames," Zane Grey crafts a gripping tale that intertwines adventure, romance, and the stark realities of frontier life in the American West. The narrative unfolds around the life of its titular character, Arizona Ames, a hard-edged yet honorable man grappling with the conflicts of duty and desire. Grey's vivid descriptions immerse readers in the rugged beauty of the Arizona landscape while exploring themes of loyalty and moral complexity, characteristic of his preceding works. The prose is imbued with a sense of authenticity, reflecting the harshness and beauty of the Western frontier, and is written in a style that combines melodrama with poetic imagery, which was highly popular in early 20th-century American literature. Zane Grey, a major figure in American literature, was inspired by his own experiences in the West, having spent his childhood in Pennsylvania, a region far removed from the landscapes he later romanticized. His fascination with the cowboy ethos and Native American cultures, as well as his background as a sportsman and fisherman, deeply influenced his storytelling. These personal passions drove him to create characters who embody the enduring spirit of the West, making his stories not merely nostalgic but also deeply reflective of the era's cultural tensions. "Arizona Ames" is highly recommended for both aficionados of Western literature and newcomers alike. It offers a rich tapestry of human emotion set against the backdrop of a lawless land, making it a compelling read for those who appreciate a blend of adventure and introspective character study. Grey's masterful storytelling invites readers to traverse the rugged terrain of Arizona while engaging with profound moral dilemmas, ensuring an unforgettable literary journey. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Arizona Ames
Table of Contents
Introduction
On the raw edge of the American frontier, a solitary rider, indelibly linked to the land that names him, must weigh justice against survival as the vast desert exposes every choice, tests every allegiance, and turns private conviction into public consequence.
Arizona Ames is a Western novel by Zane Grey, a bestselling American author whose work helped popularize the genre in the first half of the twentieth century. Set against the wide horizons and stark canyons of the Arizona frontier, the book draws on Grey’s hallmark interest in landscape as both setting and moral arena. Published during the period when Western fiction was a dominant force in popular reading, it reflects the era’s appetite for tales of struggle, endurance, and hard-won order. Within this context, Grey offers a story shaped by open country, sparse law, and the persistent question of what justice looks like at the margins.
The premise centers on the eponymous figure navigating hazards and loyalties in a country where reputations travel faster than riders and danger can emerge from any arroyo. Readers encounter a world of long trails, wary towns, and sudden reckonings, rendered with a voice that blends directness with quiet lyricism. Action unfolds in bursts—clean and swift—balanced by moments of solitude beneath immense skies. Without divulging turns of plot, it is fair to say the tale delivers the classic experience many seek in Grey: a rugged journey that challenges a capable but burdened protagonist to decide who he is when no one is watching.
Themes flow naturally from the terrain: individual conscience contending with violence, the tension between frontier necessity and enduring ideals, and the formation of identity under pressure. Grey repeatedly frames honor as a lived practice rather than a slogan, tested in the spaces where formal law thins out. The book also traces how memory, reputation, and choice intersect, asking whether a person can change the story others tell about him by changing the story he tells himself through action. At its core lies a question of belonging—what it means to stake a claim not only to land, but to a way of life.
Grey’s craftsmanship is evident in his descriptive precision and control of pace. The landscape is not mere backdrop; it shapes tactics, tempers, and time, so that cliffs, washes, and weather exert real narrative pressure. Dialogue carries the rhythms of the country—spare and purposeful—while the prose opens into expansive cadence when horizons demand it. Scenes of pursuit or confrontation are choreographed for clarity, with distances, angles, and risks made tangible. Yet the novel also leaves room for reflection, allowing the reader to inhabit moments of silence, watchfulness, and resolve that give the story its moral texture.
For contemporary readers, Arizona Ames offers both immersion and interrogation. It invites engagement with the American myth of the West—its allure and its blind spots—prompting questions about law, legitimacy, and the costs of order. The novel’s environmental sensibility, in which land confers both beauty and limit, resonates amid current concerns about stewardship and belonging. As with many works from its period, some attitudes and assumptions reflect their time; approaching the text critically can illuminate how cultural narratives take shape and endure. The reward is a narrative that pairs momentum with meditation, asking what strength and decency look like under strain.
Within Zane Grey’s body of work, this novel stands as a concentrated expression of the elements that made his Westerns widely read: a capable central figure, a moral landscape as demanding as it is majestic, and a plot that tests character more than it celebrates violence. It contributes to the tradition that later storytellers would inherit and revise, showing how the Western can be both adventure and inquiry. Readers drawn to tales of endurance and choice will find here a measured, resonant journey that honors the genre’s classic appeal while inviting reflection on the durable questions beneath the dust and sun.
Synopsis
Arizona Ames enters the story as a seasoned rider crossing lonely Arizona range country, intent on finding quiet work far from the fame that follows his gun. The land he enters is harsh, with scattered ranches, troubled towns, and long stretches where no badge holds sway. Rumors of theft and sudden violence travel ahead of him, and he senses a country poised on the edge of a wider trouble. Seeking anonymity, Ames hires on with cattlemen who need a steady hand more than a fast draw, but his presence alone begins to attract attention from men who recognize his name and reputation.
Grey traces Ames’s reputation without lingering on legend. The man is known for speed and accuracy, yet he carries an inner resolve to avoid bloodshed whenever possible. He rides light, speaks little, and judges quickly between bluff and real danger. Lawmen respect him but cannot always accept his independence; outlaws fear him yet try to test him. In this opening phase, the narrative establishes a code that guides his choices: protect the weak, keep promises, and never draw first without cause. That code, while admirable, complicates his wish to live unremarked, because conflict has a way of finding him on the trail.
Ames’s search for ordinary ranch work settles him near a struggling community where cattle go missing, brands are altered, and riders vanish on routine errands. Ranch families feel pressure from an unseen hand, while saloon talk splits neighbors into wary camps. The county seat lies distant, and the nearest sheriff lacks men enough to patrol the wide country. Ames notices trails that do not square with chance losses and hears of long-standing grudges that give cover to new crimes. Reluctant to be drawn in, he nonetheless stays, reasoning that steady wages and watchful eyes might help stabilize the range before it breaks.
Subtle signs lead Ames to suspect organized rustling rather than scattered theft. Tracks are laid to confuse, and cattle vanish into rough country where only practiced riders can travel. He forms quiet alliances with a few reliable hands and an old-timer who reads sign as well as he does. Long rides, storm-battered camps, and tense night watches build a picture of routes, caches, and rendezvous points. As he proves his worth branding, riding drag, and fixing windmills, the ranch community shifts from wary curiosity to guarded trust. With patience, Ames traces a thread from the open range toward town interests.
Ames’s work brings him into contact with families at the heart of the range: a determined ranch widow holding land against debt, a young woman whose courage softens the edges of hardship, and cowboys whose loyalty runs deeper than their pay. In town, a smooth gambler and trader expands his influence, lending money, hosting games, and quietly fanning old resentments. Ames keeps to the shadows, yet his measured courtesy and unflinching calm draw notice. A tentative bond forms between him and the young woman, not as a distraction but as a reminder of the life he hopes to claim beyond violence.
When ambushes and stampedes strike close, Ames concludes that the rustlers answer to leadership more calculating than raw greed. To learn more, he lets word spread that he is restless and might leave, creating space to move without broadcasting his purpose. Trails into hidden canyons reveal caches of supplies and sign of disciplined riders. A chance encounter with scouts confirms his suspicion that the trouble ties town money to range muscle. Ames’s responses stay deliberate: disarm when possible, warn when it will help, and fight only when no other choice exists. Each move narrows the distance between him and the organizers.
Pressure mounts as neighbors take sides, and a spark could set the range ablaze. Ames works quietly to keep hotheaded riders from rushing into traps, sharing what he can without exposing sources. The sheriff, honest but outmatched, accepts Ames’s counsel while insisting that arrests stand on proof, not rumor. This uneasy balance tests Ames’s patience and principles; he will not be drawn into private war, yet he cannot ignore pleas for help. He plans for converging rides, watchers on ridgelines, and signals to warn ranches. The narrative tightens, emphasizing preparation and restraint while hinting that a decisive break is near.
The convergence arrives in stages: a tense meeting in town, a chase through badlands, and a stand in country where echoes carry shots for miles. Ames’s strategy favors position over speed, trusting time, terrain, and steady nerves. Identities behind the thefts surface under pressure, and alliances shift as truths come to light. The fighting is brief but costly, described with the clarity of cause and effect rather than spectacle. Without revealing outcomes, the episode resolves the immediate threat, closes the circle on the rustling ring, and prevents a wider feud, while leaving room for consequences that continue after the gun smoke lifts.
In the aftermath, the story turns to reckoning and renewal. Ranchers count losses, rebuild herds, and reconsider the lines that divided them. The sheriff’s authority gains footing, signaling a slow transition from private justice to public law. For Ames, the hard-won quiet offers a chance to decide whether to keep riding alone or root himself in the community he helped steady. The novel’s closing movement underscores its central message: courage is measured as much by restraint as by skill, and the West’s future rests on replacing fear with fairness. Arizona Ames remains true to his code while facing the cost of keeping it.
Historical Context
Zane Grey’s Arizona Ames unfolds in the late nineteenth century American Southwest, principally within the Arizona Territory and the adjoining U.S.–Mexico borderlands. The setting spans ranch country along the Mogollon Rim, the Sonoran Desert’s arroyos and mesas, and boomtown corridors linking Prescott, Tucson, and Tombstone. Sparse courts and county sheriffs contend with wide-open ranges, stage routes, and, later, rail spurs. Mining camps and cattle spreads coexist with Indigenous homelands under military pressure. The period is transitional: post–Civil War migration and capital surge into Arizona meet the older rhythms of frontier barter and kin loyalty, creating a volatile world of ranch wars, rustling, and contested sovereignties.
The final phase of the Apache Wars (1861–1886) shaped settlement patterns, military logistics, and territorial politics. U.S. forces under Generals George Crook and Nelson A. Miles pursued Yavapai and Chiricahua Apache groups, culminating in Geronimo’s 1886 surrender at Skeleton Canyon and removals to San Carlos and Florida. Earlier, the Bascom Affair (1861) and campaigns of 1872–1873 had already seeded mutual distrust. This hard militarized landscape—scouting, ambush, and the ever-present risk of reprisal—forms the backdrop to Arizona Ames. The novel reflects a society trained by conflict to prize tracking skills, self-reliance, and alliances of convenience, even as formal peace brought only gradual security to ranchers and travelers.
Arizona’s mining booms radically accelerated migration and violence. Ed Schieffelin’s 1877 silver strike created Tombstone; by 1881 the town was a symbol of boomtown anarchy and factional law, epitomized by the gunfight near the O.K. Corral on 26 October 1881, involving the Earps and the Cochise County Cowboys. Copper districts at Bisbee (Copper Queen, 1877 onward) and Jerome (United Verde, 1883) embedded corporate power and transient labor into frontier life. Arizona Ames mirrors the churn of saloons, claim disputes, and county alignments these booms produced, presenting a world where mineral wealth financed both law enforcement and outlaw networks, and where political offices could be battlegrounds for private interests.
The cattle boom and the evolution of the open range between the 1870s and 1890s most decisively frame the novel’s conflicts. After the Civil War, Texas herds poured into Arizona, expanding trail and drift routes toward watercourses like the Gila, San Pedro, and Little Colorado. The absence of fencing, combined with thin judicial reach, fostered large outfits, brand subterfuge, and predatory rustling rings. Joseph Glidden’s 1874 barbed wire and stock associations promised order, yet also sparked lethal disputes over access to grass and waterholes. The 1886–1887 blizzards and die-offs across the West, followed by early-1890s drought in the Southwest, crashed overstocked ranges and pressured cowhands, foremen, and smallholders into desperate measures. Arizona witnessed notorious range tensions: the Hashknife Outfit (Aztec Land and Cattle Company, relocated to northern Arizona in 1884) dominated ranges near Holbrook and Winslow, its riders acquiring reputations—fairly or not—for intimidation and theft in a climate of contested brands and weak courts. Most emblematic, the Pleasant Valley War (1882–1892) in and around Tonto Basin pitted the Tewksbury and Graham factions in a feud blending cattle and sheep competition, ethnic and kin rivalries, and claims of rustling; it left dozens dead and terrorized settlements from Payson to the Mogollon Rim. Arizona Ames channels this precise milieu: a seasoned gunman navigates feuds, ambush trails, and the uneasy line between ranch protection and vigilantism. Grey had mined oral histories from Arizona trips in the 1910s–1920s—research that also underpinned To the Last Man (1921)—and he uses similar dynamics here: drifting riders hired as extra-legal enforcers, stockmen’s alliances, and vendetta codes arising where territorial law moved slower than a night herd.
Railroads remade the territory’s economy and tempo. The Southern Pacific reached Yuma in 1877, Tucson in March 1880, and linked at Deming, New Mexico, on 8 March 1881, creating a second transcontinental route. The Atlantic & Pacific (a Santa Fe affiliate) crossed northern Arizona by 1883, establishing depots at Winslow, Flagstaff, and Kingman. Telegraphed warrants, rapid troop and cattle shipments, and boomtown supply chains followed. Arizona Ames registers this compression of distance: the hero’s ability to flee, pursue, or disappear is constrained by rail and telegraph, while new markets amplify the stakes of rustling, forcing ranch conflicts from local quarrels into region-wide contests.
Borderland dynamics with Sonora under Porfirio Díaz (1876–1911) created zones of both commerce and evasion. Smuggling, cattle theft, and outlaw retreats threaded the San Rafael Valley, the Santa Cruz corridor to Nogales, and the Altar Valley toward the Papago (Tohono O’odham) country. U.S. Army posts and customs houses cooperated unevenly with rurales and Mexican authorities; jurisdiction dissolved quickly in canyons and sierras. The novel reflects this porous frontier: trails vanish into Mexico, posses balk at crossing the line, and alliances with vaqueros, scouts, and merchants become crucial. Arizona Ames uses the border to dramatize how sovereignty and law fracture under economic incentive and rugged geography.
Territorial governance lagged behind realities on the ground. Capitals shifted—Prescott (1864–1867), Tucson (1867–1877), back to Prescott (1877–1889), then Phoenix (from 1889)—mirroring regional rivalries. County sheriffs, U.S. Marshals, and sometimes company guards enforced a patchwork justice system; lynchings and vigilance committees punctuated the 1880s. To professionalize response to rustling and banditry, the Arizona Rangers were created in 1901, with Captain Burton C. Mossman the first commander; they were disbanded in 1909. Although Arizona Ames is set earlier, it anticipates the Rangers’ mandate by portraying private riders performing quasi-public policing, revealing how order emerged through ad hoc compacts long before statehood in 1912.
The book functions as a critique of privatized justice and the asymmetries of power on the frontier. By staging conflicts among cattle barons, drifting hands, sheriffs beholden to factions, and communities shadowed by dispossession of Native peoples, Arizona Ames exposes a system where wealth and proximity to force determine outcomes more than statute. It highlights the social costs of speculative booms—precarious labor, violent dispute resolution, and political capture—and the moral corrosion that follows when the law trails investment. The novel’s ambivalent hero underscores the era’s paradox: survival demands skill and honor codes, yet those very codes perpetuate cycles of vengeance that formal institutions failed to break.
Arizona Ames
Chapter One
IT WAS November in the Tonto Basin.
From Mescal Ridge the jagged white teeth of the ranges pierced the blue sky on three horizons—to the west the wild ragged Mazatzals; to the south the lofty symmetrical Four Peaks; and far away to the east the dim blue-white Sierra Ancas. Behind and above Mescal Ridge—forbiddingly close the rarefied atmosphere made it—towered the black-fringed, snow-belted rim of the Mogallan Mesa, blocking the whole north with its three hundred miles of bold promontories and purple canyons.
But though it was winter on the heights, down on the innumerable ridges of the Basin, which slanted like the ribs of a colossal washboard, late fall lingered. In sheltered nooks, deep down where the sun could reach through gaps, sycamores shone with green-gold leaves, and oaks smoldered in rich bronze, standing out vividly from the steel-gray shaggy slopes. Tonto Creek wound down between them, a shining strip of water, here white in rushing rapids and there circling in green eddies or long leaf-spotted pools. The ridge tops waved away from Mescal Ridge, a sea of evergreen, pine and spruce and cedar and piñon, a thick dark mantle in the distance, but close at hand showing bare spots, gray rocks and red cliffs, patches of brown pine needles, scarlet sumac and blue juniper.
Mescal Ridge was high and long and winding and rough, yet its crest curved gracefully, open and bare, covered by many acres of silver grass, where flourished abundantly the short, spiked, pale-green clusters of cactus—mescal, which gave the ridge its name. The tips of mescal leaves narrowed to hard black thorns, much dreaded by cattle and horses. Like the thorns of the cholla cactus, these mescal points broke off in flesh and worked in. Mescal, both in its deadly thorns and the liquor distilled from its heart, typified the hard and acrid nature of the Tonto.
Old Cappy Tanner[3], trapper, had driven his seven burros in from the south this year; and this time he was later than on any other of the many autumns he had returned to the Tonto. His last two trapping seasons had been prosperous ones, which accounted partly for his late arrival. He had tarried in Prescott and Maricopa to buy presents for his good friends, the Ames family. For Tanner that had been a labor of love, but nevertheless a most perplexing one.
Three miles west of Tonto Creek the trail to Mescal Ridge left the road. Cappy turned into it, glad to reach the last leg of his long tramp. Every giant pine seemed to greet him. He knew them all, and the logs, and the checker-barked junipers, and even the manzanita bushes, bare this year of their yellow berries. No cattle or horse tracks showed in the grass-grown trail. That surprised him. There had been no rain along there for weeks, and if any hoofs had stepped on this trail lately the tracks would have shown.
Cappy sat down against a huge pine to rest and to eat a little bread and meat. The sun shone hot and the shade was pleasant. His burros began to graze on the long grass. It occurred to him that he had rested often on the six weeks’ walk north. He seemed to realize he was a little slower than last year.
The old familiar sough of the wind in the pines was music to him, and the sweet, dry, pungent odor of the evergreens was medicine. What soothing relief and rest after the desert! Cappy watched the burros, the slow shadows of the pine boughs, the squalling blue jays. He had been six months away from the Tonto, and the preceding night, at the tavern in Shelby, he had listened to disturbing gossip that involved his friends and their neighbors, the Tates.
It had occupied his mind all during the eighteen-mile journey from Shelby; to such significance that he had not stopped at Spring Valley to pay his respects to the Tates, an omission they would be sure to note.
“Reckon thet Pleasant Valley war left bitter feelin’ which never will die out,” soliloquized Tanner, wagging his head sadly. He had been in the Tonto during the climax of the terrible feud among cattlemen, sheepmen, and rustlers; and he had seen it end in extermination of every faction. But the heritage of bad blood had descended on the few families left in that wild north section of the Tonto Basin.
Having finished his lunch and rested, Tanner resumed his journey, growing more at ease as he drew farther from the road, deeper into the forest. When he began to catch glimpses of deer and flocks of wild turkeys, and to see where bears had broken the branches of the junipers to feed off the berries, he knew he was getting near home.
At length the trail led out of the deep shade of the forest into open sunlight, that shone on rough oak ridges, with dense thickets in the gulches between. The trail headed many draws all sloping down in the same direction. Here and there glimpses of the rough canyon country framed themselves in notches of the ridges—wild dark purple canyon, powerfully suggestive of the haunts of bear and panther.
He turned abruptly round an oak-thicketed corner to emerge on the high slope of Tonto Canyon. The scene was magnificent, lonely and wild and rugged in the extreme. A melodious murmur of running water made memory active. How would he find the Ameses—Nesta and Rich and the younger twins?
The deep canyon yawned narrow and blue, with rough rock slopes and patches of spruce and oak on the opposite side; and it deepened and constricted to dark bronze walls leading into the gloomy and inaccessible chasm called Hell Gate. When the hounds pursued a bear down that canyon the chase ended. Bears would take to the deep pools and rapids where no dogs could follow.
The whole length of Mescal Ridge stretched away before Tanner’s eager gaze. Silver and black and green, a mighty hog-back among all those Tonto ridges, it lay somewhat below Tanner, open to his gaze. Cattle and deer dotted the gray patches of grass. This was the range where the Ames family ran the few cattle they owned, and it struck Tanner that their stock had increased, if all he saw belonged to them.
He strode on down, then, and for some time lost the beautiful panorama. When again he came out upon a jutting point of the trail he was halfway down, and could see the colorful flat nestling under the beetling brow of Mescal Ridge. The log cabin shone brown and tiny beside the three great spruce trees; patches of the garden, like green and gray squares, led to the cornfield, where horses browsed on the stalks; the rail fences, which Tanner had helped Rich Ames to build, were now overgrown with wine-colored vines.
The old trapper showed the same eagerness that animated his burros, and strode swiftly down the remaining zigzag stretches of the trail, out across the sandy, oak-shaded flat to the creek. The water was low and sycamore leaves floated with the swift current. Cappy went above the ford where his burros were drinking, and throwing aside his hat he stretched himself on a flat rock and drank his fill.
“Augh!” he exclaimed, as he got up, wiping his wet beard. Tonto Creek! Snow water that flowed through granite! It took a desert man, or a trapper long away from the rocky hills, to appreciate fully that pure, cold, clear water.
Beyond the ford the trail led along the bank which sloped up to the flat and around to the three spruce trees and the moss-greened cabin. Dogs heralded Tanner’s arrival, not by any means in a welcoming manner. But upon recognizing the trapper they quieted down and the big red leader condescended to wag his tail. Then shrill girlish shrieks attested further to Tanner’s arrival. Two young girls came tearing out, their bright hair flying.
“Oh, Uncle Cappy!” they screamed in unison, and made at him, breathless, wild with the delight of lonesome souls at the advent of a beloved friend.
“Wal! Wal!—Mescal an’ Manzanita!—I shore am glad to see you.... How you have growed!”
“It’s been so—so long,” panted the one he took for Mescal, as she clung to him.
“We—we was afraid you wasn’t never comin’,” added Manzanita.
The twins were six years old, if Cappy’s memory served him well. It had been one of Cappy’s proud boasts that he could distinguish which was Mescal and which was Manzanita, but he did not dare risk it yet. How the warmth of their flashing blue eyes thrilled him, and the rose bloom in the brown cheeks and the parted red lips! Cappy feared his eyes were not so good as they used to be, or maybe they had dimmed for the moment.
“Wal, now, girls, you knowed I’d come back,” replied Tanner, reprovingly.
“Mother always said you would,” replied one of the twins.
“An’ Rich he’d always laugh an’ tell as you couldn’t stay away from Mescal Ridge,” added the other.
“Rich is shore right. Wal, how are you-all?”
“Mother is well. We’re all fine. But Nesta is away visitin’. She’ll be back today, an’ won’t she be glad? ... Rich is out huntin’ with Sam.”
“Sam who?” queried Cappy, remembering that Rich seldom hunted with anyone.
“Sam Playford. He’s been here since last spring. Homesteaded up the creek near Doubtful. Rich is with him a lot. We all like him fine, Uncle Cappy. He’s terrible sweet on Nesta.”
“Ahuh! Small wonder. An’ is Nesta sweet on him?”
“Mother says she is an’ Rich says she isn’t,” laughed Mescal.
“Humph! What does Nesta say?” asked Cappy, conscious of misgivings.
“Nesta! You know her. She tosses her head,” replied Manzanita.
“But she did like Sam,” protested Mescal, seriously. “We saw her let Sam kiss her.”
“That was ages ago, Manzi.” When she spoke this name, Cappy realized he had taken Mescal for Manzanita. “Lee Tate is runnin’ her hard now, uncle.”
“No!—Lee Tate?” returned the old trapper, incredulously.
“Yes. It was a secret,” said Mescal, most seriously. “But Rich found Nesta out.... An’ say, didn’t he lay into her! It didn’t do no good. Nesta is as crazy as a young hen-turkey, so mother says.”
“Wal, wal, this is news,” rejoined Tanner, thoughtfully, as he kept looking toward the cabin. “Where’s Tommy[1]? I reckoned I’d see him first off.”
Mescal’s blue eyes darkened and dimmed with tears. Manzanita averted her face. And then something struck cold at the old trapper’s heart.
“Tommy’s dead,” whispered Mescal.
“Aw, no!” burst out Cappy, poignantly.
“Yes. It was in June. He fell off the rocks. Hurt himself. Rich an’ Nesta weren’t home. We couldn’t get a doctor. An’ he died.”
“Lord! I’m sorry!” exclaimed the trapper.
“It hurt us all—an’ near broke Rich’s heart.”
At this juncture the mother of the girls appeared on the cabin porch, wiping flour from her strong brown arms. She was under forty and still handsome, fair-haired, tall and strong, a pioneer woman whom the recent Tonto war had made a widow.
“If it ain’t Uncle Cappy!” she ejaculated, warmly. “I wondered what-all the twins was yelling at. Then I seen the burros.... Old timer, you’re welcome as mayflowers.”
“Thanks, an’ you’re shore lookin’ fine, Mrs. Ames,” replied Cappy, shaking her hand. “I’m awful glad to get back to Mescal Ridge. It’s about the only home I ever had—of late years, anyhow.... Thet about Tommy digs me deep.... I—I’m shore surprised an’ sorry.”
“It wouldn’t have been so hard for us if he’d been killed outright,” she rejoined, sadly. “But the hell of it was he might have been saved if we could have got him out.”
“Wal—wal! ... I reckon I’d better move along. I’ve fetched some things for you-all. I’ll drop them off here, then go on to my cabin, an’ soon as I unpack I’ll come back.”
“An’ have supper. Rich will be back an’ mebbe Nesta.”
“You bet I’ll have supper,” returned Cappy. Then he loosened a pack from one of the burros, and carrying it to the porch he deposited it there. The twins, radiantly expectant, hung mutely upon his movements.
“See hyar, Mescal Ames,” declared Cappy, shaking a horny finger at one of the glowing faces, “if you——”
“But I’m Manzi, Uncle Cappy,” interrupted the girl, archly.
“Aw—so you are,” went on Cappy, discomfited.
“You’ve forgotten the way to tell us,” interposed Mescal, gayly.
“Wal, I reckon so.... But no matter, I’ll remember soon.... An’ see hyar, Manzi, an’ Mescal—don’t you dare open this pack.”
“But, uncle, you’ll be so long!” wailed the twins together.
“No I won’t, either. Not an hour. Promise you’ll wait. Why, girls, I wouldn’t miss seein’ your faces when I undo thet pack—not for a whole winter’s trappin’.”
“We’ll promise—if you’ll hurry back.”
Mrs. Ames vowed she would have to fight temptation herself and besought him to make haste.
“I’ll not be long,” called Tanner, and slapping the tired burros out of the shade he headed them into the trail.
At the end of the clearing, the level narrowed to a strip of land, high above the creek, and the trail led under huge pines and cone-shaped spruces and birches to a shady leaf-strewn opening in the rocky bluff, from which a tiny stream flowed in cascades and deep brown pools. This was a gateway to a high-walled canyon, into which the sun shone only part of the day. It opened out above the break in the bluff into a miniature valley, isolated and lonely, rich in evergreens, and shadowed by stained cliffs and mossy ledges.
Cappy arrived at his little log cabin with a sense of profound gratitude.
“By gum! I’m glad to be home,” he said, as if the picturesque little abode had ears. He had built this house three years before, aided now and then by Rich Ames. Before that time he had lived up at the head of Doubtful Canyon, where that “rough Jasper,” as Rich called it, yawned black and doubtful under the great wall of the mesa.
Throwing packs, he strapped bells on the burros, and giving them a slap he called cheerily: “Get out an’ rustle, you tin-can-label-eatin’ flop-ears! You’ve got a long rest, an’ if you’ve sense you’ll stay in the canyon.”
The door of the cabin was half ajar. Cappy pushed it all the way open. An odor of bear assailed his nostrils. Had he left a bearskin there, or had Rich Ames, in his absence? No, the cabin walls and floor were uncovered. But his trained eyes quickly detected a round depression in the thick mat of pine needles that covered his bough couch. A good-sized bear must have used it for a bed. In the dust of the floor bear tracks showed distinctly, and the left hind foot was minus a toe. Cappy recognized that track. The bear that had made it had once blundered into one of Cappy’s fox traps, had broken the trap and left part of his foot in it.
“Wal, the son-of-a-gun!” ejaculated the old trapper. “Addin’ insult to injury. I’ll jest bet he knowed this was my cabin.... Wonder why Rich didn’t shoot him.”
Cappy swept out, carried his packs inside, and opening one of them he took out his lantern and fuel, cooking utensils, and camp tools, which he put in their places. Then he unrolled his bed of blankets and spread it on the couch. “Reckon I won’t light no fire tonight, but I’ll fix one ready, anyhow,” he decided, and repairing to his woodpile he discovered very little left of the dry hardwood that he had cut the winter before. Rich Ames, the lonely fire-gazer, had been burning it! Presently Cappy was ready to go back to the Ames’ cabin. But he bethought himself of his unkempt appearance. That was because he remembered Nesta Ames. So he tarried to remedy the defect. He shaved, washed, and put on a new flannel shirt of gorgeous hue, which he had purchased solely to dazzle the color-loving Nesta. Then he sallied forth.
A thick amber light hung under the trees, heavy as if it had substance. A strong exhilaration possessed Tanner. He was growing old, but the effect of the Tonto seemed to renew his youth. The solitude of the slopes and valleys, the signs of wild game in the dust of the trail, the babble of the brook, the penetrating fragrance of pine and spruce, the brush, the dead leaves, the fallen cones, the mat of needles, the lichened rocks—these were physical proofs that he had come home to the environment he loved best.
“Reckon I’ll not go away no more,” he muttered as he trudged through the gap in the cliff, up and down over the gray stones. “Onless, of course, the Ameses go,” he added as an afterthought. “Shore was a good idee thet I planned to send my winter’s catch out by stage.”
The valley of the Tonto was full of golden light. The sun had just set behind the bold brow of Mescal Ridge, and a wonderful flare of gold, thrown up against a dark bank of purple cloud, seemed to be reflected down into the valley. Cappy sat down on a log above the creek, where many a time he had rested before, and watched the magic glow on field and slope and water. Already the air had begun to cool. The gold swept by as if it had been the transparent shadow of a cloud, swift and evanescent, like a dream, or a fleeting happiness. Wild ducks went whirring down the creek, the white bars on their wings twinkling. A big buck, his coat the gray-blue of fall, crossed an opening in the brush. Up high somewhere an old gobbler was calling his flock to roost.
Tanner’s watch and reverie were interrupted by the cracking of hoofs on the rocks of the trail up the creek. Soon two riders emerged from the green, and the first was Rich Ames. He waved a glad hand, then came on at a trot. Cappy stood up, conscious of how good it was to see this Tonto lad again. Rich Ames on horseback was surely pleasant to gaze upon, but when he slid out of his saddle, in one long lithe step, he sent a thrill to the old trapper’s heart.
“Wal, lad, hyar I am, an’ damn glad to see you,” said Tanner, as he swung on the extended hand and gripped it hard.
“Same heah, old timer,” drawled Rich Ames, his cool, lazy voice in strong contrast to the smile that was like a warm flash.
The second rider trotted up and dismounted. He was as tall as Ames, only heavier, and evidently several years the senior. His features were homely, especially his enormous nose. He had a winning smile and clear gray eyes. He wore the plain jeans of the homesteader, which looked dull and drab beside Rich Ames’ gray fringed buckskin.
“Sam, it’s shore old Cappy Tanner, my trapper pard,” said Rich. “Cap, meet my friend, Sam Playford.”
“How do!” greeted Playford, with an honest grin. “What I haven’t heard about you ain’t worth hearin’.”
“Wal, any friend of Rich’s is mine,” replied Cappy, cordially. “You’re new hyarabouts?”
“Yes. I come in last April.”
“Homesteadin’?”
“I been tryin’ to. But between these two Ames twins I have a plumb job of it.”
“Twins?—Which ones?”
The boys laughed uproariously, and Rich jabbed a thumb into Sam’s side.
“Cappy, it shore’s not Manzi an’ Mescal,” he drawled.
“Ahuh! Must be Nesta an’ you, then? I’m always forgettin’ you’re twins, too. Though, Lord knows, you look like two peas in a pod.”
“Yep, Cap, only I take a back seat to Nesta.”
“Where is thet lass? My pore eyes are achin’ for a sight of her,” returned Tanner.
“You’ll have them cured pronto, then,” said Rich. “For she’s comin’ along the trail somewheres behind. Mad as a wet hen!”
“Mad! What’s the matter?”
“Nothin’. She’s been stayin’ at Snells’, over at Turkey Flat. She an’ Lil Snell have got thick since last winter. I like Lil an’ I reckon she’s all right. But all the same I don’t want Nesta stayin’ long over there. So I went after her.”
Sam turned down the trail. “She’s comin’ now, an’ I reckon it’ll be safer for me to run along till you cheer her up,” he said.
“Take my horse with you, Sam, an’ turn him loose in the pasture,” rejoined Rich.
Cappy strained his eyes up the leafy trail.
“Wal, I see something,” he said at last. “But if it’s Nesta she’s comin’ awful slow.”
“Cap, she’s got an eye like a hawk. She sees me, an’ she’ll hang back till I go.... Old timer, I’d begun to fear you’d died or somethin’. Dog-gone, but I’m glad you’ve come!”
In these words and the wistfulness of his glance Rich Ames betrayed not only what he said but the fact that a half year had made him older and graver.
“You’ve had some trouble, Rich?”
“Shore have.”
“Somethin’ beside—Tommy’s death?”
“Reckon so.”
“Wal, what is it?”
“It’s aboot Nesta. An’ it’s got me plumb up a tree .... But, Cap, I want more time to tell you. So I’ll run along home while you meet Nesta.”
A bay pony emerged from the wall of green down the trail. Its rider was a bareheaded girl whose bonnet hung over her shoulders. She sat her saddle sideways. But when she neared the pine log where the trapper leaned watching, she partly turned. Then she sat up, startled. The petulant droop of her vanished and her red lips curled in a smile of surprise and delight. She slid off the saddle to confront him.
“Cappy Tanner! ... So it was you Rich was talkin’ to?” she cried.
“Wal, Nesta, if it’s really you, I’m sayin’ howdy,” rejoined the trapper.
“It’s me, Cappy.... Have I changed so—so much?”
The beautiful blue-flashing eyes, so characteristic of the Ameses, met his only for a moment. It was the change in her and not the constraint that inhibited Tanner. Hardly more than six months ago she had been a slender, pale-faced girl, pretty with all the fairness of the family. And now she seemed a woman, strange to him, grown tall, full-bosomed, beautiful as one of the golden flowers of the valley. Cappy passed a reluctant gaze from her head to her feet, and back again. He had never seen her dressed becomingly like this. Her thick rich hair, so fair that it was almost silver, was parted in the middle above a low forehead just now marred by a little frown. Under level fine brows her eyes, sky-blue, yet full of fire, roved everywhere, refusing to concentrate upon her old friend. Any stranger who had ever seen Rich Ames would have recognized her as his twin sister, yet the softness of her face, its sweetness, its femininity were features singularly her own.
“Changed? Wal, lass, you are,” replied the old trapper, slowly, as he took her hands. “Growed into a woman! ... Nesta, you’re the purtiest thing in all the Tonto.”
“Ah, Cappy, you haven’t changed,” she replied, suddenly gay and glad. And she kissed him, not with the old innocent freedom, but shyly, in a restraint that did not lack warmth. “Oh, I’m so happy you’re here! I’ve thought of you every day for a month. Did you come today? You must have, for Rich didn’t know.”
“Jest got in, lass, an’ I never knowed what home seemed like before.”
She slipped an arm under his, and then, with her horse following, she led him toward the cabin.
“Cappy, I’m more in need of a true friend than ever before in all my life,” she said, soberly.
“Why, lass, you talk as if you hadn’t any!” returned Tanner, reprovingly.
“I haven’t. Not one single friend—unless it’s you.”
“Wal, Nesta, I don’t savvy thet, but you can depend on me.”
“Cappy, I don’t mean no one cares for me.... Rich, and Sam Playford—and—and others—care for me, far beyond my deserts. But they boss and want and force me.... They don’t help. They can’t see my side.... Cappy, I’m in the most terrible fix any girl was ever in. I’m caught in a trap. Do you remember the day you took me on a round of your traps? And we came upon a poor little beaver caught by the foot? ... Well, I’m like that.”
“Nesta, I’m awful interested, but I reckon not much scared,” replied Cappy, with a laugh that did not quite ring true.
They reached the three huge spruces overspreading the cabin, and Nesta turned to unsaddle her pony. Sam Playford, who evidently had been waiting, approached from the porch.
“I’ll tend to him, Nesta,” he said.
“Thank you, Mr. Playford,” she returned, with sarcasm. “I can manage as well here as I had to at Snells’.”
Mescal and Manzanita ran out to overwhelm Tanner, shouting gleefully, “Here comes Santa Claus!”
“Wal, mebbe, when Christmas comes, but not now,” retorted the trapper, resolutely. He had once before encountered a predicament similar to this.
“Uncle, when will you open the pack?” begged Manzi.
“Wal, some time after supper.”
“I can’t eat till you do open it,” declared Mescal, tragically.
“If I do open it before supper, then you won’t eat nothin’ but candy,” declared Tanner.
“Candy!” screamed Manzanita. “Who wants to eat deer meat and beans if there’s candy?”
“Ooooummm!” cried her sister, ecstatically.
“Wal, let’s have a vote on it,” said the trapper, as if inspired. “Mescal an’ Manzi have declared for openin’ the pack before supper.... What do you say, Mrs. Ames?”
“Supper ain’t ready yet,” she rejoined, significantly.
“How about you, Nesta?”
“Me! How about what?” she returned, as she deposited her saddle on the porch, apparently unaware of Sam Playford’s disapproval.
“Why, about openin’ my pack. I fetched you-all a lot of presents.”
“Cappy!—Open it now!” she flashed, suddenly radiant.
“An’ what do you say, Mr. Playford?”
“Cappy, if you don’t mind,” replied that worthy, “if you’re includin’ me, I’ll say if you got anythin’ to give anybody, do it quick.”
“Hey, Rich, you’re in on this,” went on the trapper.
“Cap, suppose you leave it to me?” responded Rich, with tantalizing coolness.
“Wal, I’m willin’. You ’pear to be the only level-headed one hyar.”
“Open the pack after Nesta an’ the twins have gone to bed.”
The feminine triangle thus arraigned burst out with a vociferous, incoherent, yet unanimous decision that they never would go to bed.
“Wal, reckon I’ll compromise,” decided Tanner. “Right after supper, then, I’ll open the show.”
