The Man of the Forest by Zane Grey (novels for beginners txt) 📖

to her throat at a rustle of leaves near the window, and to be in torture of imagination as to poor Bo's plight. A thousand times Helen said to herself that Beasley could have had the ranch and welcome, if only Bo had been spared. Helen absolutely connected her enemy with her sister's disappearance. Riggs might have been a means to it.

Daylight was not attended by so many fears; there were things to do that demanded attention. And thus it was that the next morning, shortly before noon, she was recalled to her perplexities by a shouting out at the corrals and a galloping of horses somewhere near. From the window she saw a big smoke.

“Fire! That must be one of the barns—the old one, farthest out,” she said, gazing out of the window. “Some careless Mexican with his everlasting cigarette!”

Helen resisted an impulse to go out and see what had happened. She had decided to stay in the house. But when footsteps sounded on the porch and a rap on the door, she unhesitatingly opened it. Four Mexicans stood close. One of them, quick as thought, flashed a hand in to grasp her, and in a single motion pulled her across the threshold.

“No hurt, Senora,” he said, and pointed—making motions she must go.

Helen did not need to be told what this visit meant. Many as her conjectures had been, however, she had not thought of Beasley subjecting her to this outrage. And her blood boiled.

“How dare you!” she said, trembling in her effort to control her temper. But class, authority, voice availed nothing with these swarthy Mexicans. They grinned. Another laid hold of Helen with dirty, brown hand. She shrank from the contact.

“Let go!” she burst out, furiously. And instinctively she began to struggle to free herself. Then they all took hold of her. Helen's dignity might never have been! A burning, choking rush of blood was her first acquaintance with the terrible passion of anger that was her inheritance from the Auchinclosses. She who had resolved never to lay herself open to indignity now fought like a tigress. The Mexicans, jabbering in their excitement, had all they could do, until they lifted her bodily from the porch. They handled her as if she had been a half-empty sack of corn. One holding each hand and foot they packed her, with dress disarranged and half torn off, down the path to the lane and down the lane to the road. There they stood upright and pushed her off her property.

Through half-blind eyes Helen saw them guarding the gateway, ready to prevent her entrance. She staggered down the road to the village. It seemed she made her way through a red dimness—that there was a congestion in her brain—that the distance to Mrs. Cass's cottage was insurmountable. But she got there, to stagger up the path, to hear the old woman's cry. Dizzy, faint, sick, with a blackness enveloping all she looked at, Helen felt herself led into the sitting-room and placed in the big chair.

Presently sight and clearness of mind returned to her. She saw Roy, white as a sheet, questioning her with terrible eyes. The old woman hung murmuring over her, trying to comfort her as well as fasten the disordered dress.

“Four greasers—packed me down—the hill—threw me off my ranch—into the road!” panted Helen.

She seemed to tell this also to her own consciousness and to realize the mighty wave of danger that shook her whole body.

“If I'd known—I would have killed them!”

She exclaimed that, full-voiced and hard, with dry, hot eyes on her friends. Roy reached out to take her hand, speaking huskily. Helen did not distinguish what he said. The frightened old woman knelt, with unsteady fingers fumbling over the rents in Helen's dress. The moment came when Helen's quivering began to subside, when her blood quieted to let her reason sway, when she began to do battle with her rage, and slowly to take fearful stock of this consuming peril that had been a sleeping tigress in her veins.

“Oh, Miss Helen, you looked so turrible, I made sure you was hurted,” the old woman was saying.

Helen gazed strangely at her bruised wrists, at the one stocking that hung down over her shoe-top, at the rent which had bared her shoulder to the profane gaze of those grinning, beady-eyed Mexicans.

“My body's—not hurt,” she whispered.

Roy had lost some of his whiteness, and where his eyes had been fierce they were now kind.

“Wal, Miss Nell, it's lucky no harm's done.... Now if you'll only see this whole deal clear!... Not let it spoil your sweet way of lookin' an' hopin'! If you can only see what's raw in this West—an' love it jest the same!”

Helen only half divined his meaning, but that was enough for a future reflection. The West was beautiful, but hard. In the faces of these friends she began to see the meaning of the keen, sloping lines, and shadows of pain, of a lean, naked truth, cut as from marble.

“For the land's sakes, tell us all about it,” importuned Mrs. Cass.

Whereupon Helen shut her eyes and told the brief narrative of her expulsion from her home.

“Shore we-all expected thet,” said Roy. “An' it's jest as well you're here with a whole skin. Beasley's in possession now an' I reckon we'd all sooner hev you away from thet ranch.”

“But, Roy, I won't let Beasley stay there,” cried Helen.

“Miss Nell, shore by the time this here Pine has growed big enough fer law you'll hev gray in thet pretty hair. You can't put Beasley off with your honest an' rightful claim. Al Auchincloss was a hard driver. He made enemies an' he made some he didn't kill. The evil men do lives after them. An' you've got to suffer fer Al's sins, though Al was as good as any man who ever prospered in these parts.”

“Oh, what can I do? I won't give up. I've been robbed. Can't the people help me? Must I meekly sit with my hands crossed while that half-breed thief—Oh, it's unbelievable!”

“I reckon you'll jest hev to be patient fer a few days,” said Roy, calmly. “It'll all come right in the end.”

“Roy! You've had this deal, as you call it, all worked out in mind for a long time!” exclaimed Helen.

“Shore, an' I 'ain't missed a reckonin' yet.”

“Then what will happen—in a few days?”

“Nell Rayner, are you goin' to hev some spunk an' not lose your nerve again or go wild out of your head?”

“I'll try to be brave, but—but I must be prepared,” she replied, tremulously.

“Wal, there's Dale an' Las Vegas an' me fer Beasley to reckon with. An', Miss Nell, his chances fer long life are as pore as his chances fer heaven!”

“But, Roy, I don't believe in deliberate taking of life,” replied Helen, shuddering. “That's against my religion. I won't allow it.... And—then—think, Dale, all of