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Title: Tappan's Burro
Date of first publication: 1923
Author: Zane Grey (1872-1939)
Date first posted: October 3 2012
Date last updated: October 3 2012
Faded Page eBook #20121004

This ebook was produced by: David T. Jones, Jen Haines
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net




_Copyright, 1923, by Zane Grey.
Copyright renewed, 1951, by Lina Elise Grey._

_By arrangement with The Hawley Publications, Inc._




Tappan's Burro

By ZANE GREY


[Illustration: His fellow men may betray him, but his humble beast of
burden knows only how to serve and obey her master.]




CHAPTER ONE

_Death Valley Ordeal_


Tappan gazed down upon the newly born little burro with something of
pity and consternation. It was not a vigorous offspring of the
redoubtable Jennie, champion of all the numberless burros he had
driven in his desert-prospecting years. He could not leave it there to
die. Surely it was not strong enough to follow its mother. And to kill
it was beyond him.

"Poor little devil!" soliloquized Tappan. "I'll have to hole up in
this camp a few days. You can never tell what a burro will do. It
might fool us an' grow strong all of a sudden."

Whereupon Tappan left Jennie and her tiny, gray lop-eared baby to
themselves, and leisurely set about making permanent camp. The water
at this oasis was not much to his liking, but it was drinkable, and he
felt he must put up with it. For the rest, the oasis was desirable
enough as a camping-site.

Desert wanderers like Tappan favored the lonely water holes. This one
was up under the bold brow of the Chocolate Mountains, where rocky
wall met the desert sand, and a green patch of _palo verdes_ and
mesquites proved the presence of water. It had a magnificent view down
a many-leagued slope of desert growths, across the dark belt of green
and the shining strip of red that marked the Rio Colorado, and on to
the upflung Arizona land, range lifting to range until the saw-toothed
peaks notched the blue sky.

Locked in the iron fastnesses of these desert mountains was gold.
Tappan, if he had any calling, was a prospector. But the lure of gold
did not bind him to this wandering life any more than the freedom of
it. He had never made a rich strike. About the best he could ever do
was to dig enough gold to grubstake himself for another prospecting
trip into some remote corner of the American Desert. Tappan knew the
arid Southwest from San Diego to the Pecos River and from Picacho on
the Colorado to the Tonto Basin. Few prospectors had the strength and
endurance of Tappan. He was a giant in build, and at thirty-five had
never yet reached the limit of his physical force.

With hammer and pick and magnifying glass Tappan scaled the bare
ridges. He was not an expert in testing minerals. He knew he might
easily pass by a rich vein of ore. But he did his best, sure at least
that no prospector could get more than he out of the pursuit of gold.
Tappan was more of a naturalist than a prospector, and more of a
dreamer than either. Many were the idle moments that he sat staring
down the vast reaches of the valleys, or watching some creature of the
wasteland, or marveling at the vivid hues of desert flowers.

Tappan waited two weeks at this oasis for Jennie's baby burro to grow
strong enough to walk. And the very day that Tappan decided to break
camp he found signs of gold at the head of a wash above the oasis.
Quite by chance, as he was looking for his burros, he struck his pick
into a place no different from a thousand others there, and hit into a
pocket of gold. He cleaned out the pocket before sunset, the richer
for several thousand dollars.

"You brought me luck," said Tappan, to the little gray burro
staggering around its mother. "Your name is Jenet. You're Tappan's
burro, an' I reckon he'll stick to you."

       *       *       *       *       *

Jenet belied the promise of her birth. Like a weed in fertile ground
she grew. Winter and summer Tappan patrolled the sand beats from one
trading-post to another, and his burros traveled with him. Jenet had
an especially good training. Her mother had happened to be a
remarkably good burro before Tappan had bought her. And Tappan had
patience; he found leisure to do things, and he had something of pride
in Jenet. Whenever he happened to drop into Ehrenberg or Yuma, or any
freighting-station, some prospector always tried to buy Jenet. She
grew as large as a medium-sized mule, and a three-hundred-pound pack
was no load to discommode her.

Tappan, in common with most lonely wanderers of the desert, talked to
his burro. As the years passed this habit grew, until Tappan would
talk to Jenet just to hear the sound of his voice. Perhaps that was
all which kept him human.

"Jenet, you're worthy of a happier life," Tappan would say, as he
unpacked her after a long day's march over the barren land. "You're a
ship of the desert. Here we are, with grub an' water, a hundred miles
from any camp. An' what but you could have fetched me here? No horse!
No mule! No man! Nothin' but a camel, an' so I call you ship of the
desert. But for you an' your kind, Jenet, there'd be no prospectors,
and few gold mines. Reckon the desert would be still an unknown waste.
You're a great beast of burden, Jenet, an' there's no one to sing your
praise."

And of a golden sunrise, when Jenet was packed and ready to face the
cool, sweet fragrance of the desert, Tappan was wont to say:

"Go along with you, Jenet. The mornin's fine. Look at the mountains
yonder callin' us. It's only a step down there. All purple an' violet!
It's the life for us, my burro, an' Tappan's as rich as if all these
sands were pearls."

But sometimes, at sunset, when the way had been long and hot and
rough, Tappan would bend his shaggy head over Jenet, and talk in
different mood.

"Another day gone, Jenet, another journey ended--an' Tappan is only
older, wearier, sicker. There's no reward for your faithfulness. I'm
only a desert rat, livin' from hole to hole. No home! No face to
see--Some sunset, Jenet, we'll reach the end of the trail. An'
Tappan's bones will bleach in the sands. An' no one will know or
care!"

When Jenet was two years old she would have taken the blue ribbon in
competition with all the burros of the Southwest. She was unusually
large and strong, perfectly proportioned, sound in every particular,
and practically tireless. But these were not the only characteristics
that made prospectors envious of Tappan. Jenet had the common virtues
of all good burros magnified to an unbelievable degree. Moreover, she
had sense and instinct that to Tappan bordered on the super-natural.

During these years Tappan's trail crisscrossed the mineral region of
the Southwest. But, as always, the rich strike held aloof. It was like
the pot of gold buried at the foot of the rainbow. Jenet knew the
trails and the water holes better than Tappan. She could follow a
trail obliterated by drifting sand or cut out by running water. She
could scent at long distance a new spring on the desert or a strange
water hole. She never wandered far from camp so that Tappan had to
walk far in search of her.

Wild burros, the bane of most prospectors, held no charm for Jenet.
And she had never yet shown any especial liking for a tame burro. This
was the strangest feature of Jenet's complex character. Burros were
noted for their habit of pairing off, and forming friendships for one
or more comrades. These relations were permanent. But Jenet still
remained fancy-free.

Tappan scarcely realized how he relied upon this big, gray, serene
beast of burden. Of course, when chance threw him among men of his
calling he would brag about her. But he had never really appreciated
Jenet. In his way Tappan was a brooding, plodding fellow, not
conscious of sentiment. When he bragged about Jenet it was her good
qualities upon which he dilated. But what he really liked best about
her were the little things of every day.

During the earlier years of her training Jenet had been a thief. She
would pretend to be asleep for hours just to get a chance to steal
something out of camp. Tappan had broken this habit in its incipiency.
But he never quite trusted her. Jenet was a burro.

Jenet ate anything offered her. She could fare for herself or go
without. Whatever Tappan had left from his own meals was certain to be
rich dessert for Jenet. Every mealtime she would stand near the
campfire, with one great long ear drooping, and the other standing
erect. Her expression was one of meekness, of unending patience. She
would lick a tin can until it shone resplendent.

On long, hard, barren trails Jenet's deportment did not vary from that
where the water holes and grassy patches were many. She did not need
to have grass or grain. Brittle-bush and sage were good fare for her.
She could eat greasewood, a desert plant that protected itself with a
sap as sticky as varnish and far more dangerous to animals. She could
eat cacti. Tappan had seen her break off leaves of the prickly-pear
cactus, and stamp upon them with her forefeet, mashing off the thorns,
so that she could consume the succulent pulp. She liked mesquite
beans, and leaves of willow, and all the trailing vines of the desert.
And she could subsist in an arid wasteland where a man would have died
in short order.

No ascent or descent was too hard or dangerous for Jenet, provided it
was possible of accomplishment. She would refuse a trail that was
impassable. She seemed to have an uncanny instinct both for what she
could do and what was beyond a burro. Tappan had never known her to
fail on something to which she stuck persistently. Swift streams of
water, always bugbears to burros, did not stop Jenet. She hated
quicksand, but could be trusted to navigate it, if that were possible.
When she stepped gingerly, with little inch steps, out upon thin crust
of ice or salty crust of desert sink hole, Tappan would know that it
was safe, or she would turn back. Thunder and lightning, intense heat
or bitter cold, the sirocco sand storm of the desert, the white dust
of the alkali wastes--these were all the same to Jenet.

       *       *       *       *       *

One August, the hottest and driest of his desert experience, Tappan
found himself working a most promising claim in the lower reaches of
the Panamint Mountains on the northern slope above Death Valley. It
was a hard country at the most favorable season; in August it was
terrible. The Panamints were infested by various small gangs of
desperadoes--outlaw claim jumpers where opportunity afforded--and
out-and-out robbers, even murderers where they could not get the gold
any other way.

Tappan had been warned not to go into this region alone. But he never
heeded any warnings. And the idea that he would ever strike a claim or
dig enough gold to make himself an attractive target for outlaws
seemed preposterous and not worth considering. Tappan had become a
wanderer now from the unbreakable habit of it.

Much to his amaze, he struck a rich ledge of free gold in a canyon of
the Panamints; and he worked from daylight until dark. He forgot about
the claim jumpers, until one day he saw Jenet's long ears go up in the
manner habitual with her when she saw strange men. Tappan watched the
rest of that day, but did not catch a glimpse of any living thing. It
was a desolate place, shut in, red-walled, hazy with heat, and
brooding with an eternal silence.

Not long after that Tappan discovered boot tracks of several men
adjacent to his camp and in an out-of-the-way spot, which persuaded
him that he was being watched. Claim jumpers, who were not going to
jump his claim in this torrid heat, but meant to let him dig the gold
and then kill him.

Tappan was not the kind of man to be afraid. He grew wrathful and
stubborn. He had six small canvas bags of gold and did not mean to
lose them. Still, he was worried.

"Now, what's best to do?" he pondered. "I mustn't give it away that
I'm wise. Reckon I'd better act natural. But I can't stay here longer.
My claim's about worked out. An' these jumpers are smart enough to
know it. I've got to make a break at night. What to do?"

Tappan did not want to cache the gold, for in that case, of course, he
would have to return for it. Still, he reluctantly admitted to himself
that this was the best way to save it. Probably these robbers were
watching him day and night. It would be most unwise to attempt
escaping by traveling up over the Panamints.

"Reckon my only chance is goin' down into Death Valley," soliloquized
Tappan grimly.

The alternative thus presented was not to his liking. Crossing Death
Valley at this season was always perilous, and never attempted in the
heat of day. And at this particular time of intense torridity, when
the day heat was unendurable and the midnight furnace gales were
blowing, it was an enterprise from which even Tappan shrank. Added to
this were the facts that he was too far west of the narrow part of the
valley, and even if he did get across he would find himself in the
most forbidding and desolate region of the Funeral Mountains.

Thus thinking and planning, Tappan went about his mining and camp
tasks, trying his best to act natural. But he did not succeed. It was
impossible, while expecting a shot at any moment, to act as if there
was nothing on his mind.

His camp lay at the bottom of a rocky slope. A tiny spring of water
made verdure of grass and mesquite, welcome green in all that stark
iron nakedness. His camp site was out in the open, on the bench near
the spring. The gold claim that Tappan was working was not visible
from any vantage point either below or above. It lay back at the head
of a break in the rocky wall. It had two virtues--one that the sun
never got to it, and the other that it was well hidden. Once there,
Tappan knew he could not be seen. This, however, did not diminish his
growing uneasiness. The solemn stillness was a menace. The heat of the
day appeared to be augmenting to a degree beyond his experience.

Every few moments Tappan would slip back through a narrow defile in
the rocks and peep from his covert down at the camp. On the last of
these occasions he saw Jenet out in the open. She stood motionless.
Her long ears were erect. In an instant Tappan became strung with
thrilling excitement. His keen eyes searched every approach to his
camp. And at last in the gully below to the right he discovered two
men crawling along from rock to rock. Jenet had seen them enter that
gully and was now watching for them to appear. Tappan's excitement
gave place to a grimmer emotion. These stealthy visitors were going to
hide in ambush, and kill him as he returned to camp.

"Jenet, reckon what I owe you is a whole lot," muttered Tappan.
"They'd have got me sure. But now--"

Tappan left his tools, and crawled out of his covert into the jumble
of huge rocks toward the left of the slope. He had a six-shooter. His
rifle he had left in camp. Tappan had seen only two men, but he knew
there were more than that, if not actually near at hand at the moment,
then surely not far away. And his chance was to worm his way like an
Indian down to camp. With the rifle in his possession he would make
short work of the present difficulty.

"Lucky Jenet's right in camp!" said Tappan, to himself. "It beats hell
how she does things!"

Tappan was already deciding to pack and hurry away. On the moment
Death Valley did not daunt him. This matter of crawling and gliding
along was work unsuited to his great stature. He was too big to hide
behind a little shrub or a rock. And he was not used to stepping
lightly. His hobnailed boots could not be placed noiselessly upon the
stones. Moreover, he could not progress without displacing little bits
of weathered rock. He was sure that keen ears not too far distant
could have heard him. But he kept on, making good progress around that
slope to the far side of the canyon. Fortunately, he headed the gully
up which his ambushers were stealing. On the other hand, this far side
of the canyon afforded but little cover.

The sun had gone down back of the huge red mass of the mountain. It
had left the rocks so hot Tappan could not touch them with his bare
hands.

He was about to stride out from his last covert and make a run for it
down the rest of the slope, when, surveying the whole amphitheater
below him, he espied the two men coming up out of the gully, headed
toward his camp. They looked in his direction. Surely they had heard
or seen him. But Tappan perceived at a glance that he was the closer
to the camp. Without another moment of hesitation, he plunged from his
hiding-place, down the weathered slope. His giant strides set the
loose rocks sliding and rattling.

The men saw him. The foremost yelled to the one behind him. Then they
both broke into a run. Tappan reached the level of the bench, and saw
he could beat either of them into the camp. Unless he were disabled!
He felt the wind of a heavy bullet before he heard it strike the rocks
beyond. Then followed the boom of a Colt. One of his enemies had
halted to shoot. This spurred Tappan to tremendous exertion.

He flew over the rough ground, scarcely hearing the rapid shots. He
could no longer see the man who was firing. But the first one was in
plain sight, running hard, not yet seeing he was out of the race.

When he became aware of that he halted, and dropping on one knee,
leveled his gun at the running Tappan. The distance was scarcely sixty
yards. His first shot did not allow for Tappan's speed. His second
kicked up the gravel in Tappan's face. Then followed three more shots
in rapid succession. The man divined that Tappan had a rifle in camp.
Then he steadied himself, waiting for the moment when Tappan had to
slow down and halt.

As Tappan reached his camp and dove for his rifle, the robber took
time for his last aim, evidently hoping to get a stationary target.
But Tappan did not get up from behind his camp duffel. It had been a
habit of his to pile his boxes of supplies and roll of bedding
together, and cover them with a canvas. He poked his rifle over the
top of this and shot the robber. Then, leaping up, he ran forward to
get sight of the second one. This man began to run along the edge of
the gully. Tappan fired rapidly at him. The third shot knocked the
fellow down. But he got up, and yelling, as if for succor, he ran off.
Tappan got another shot before he disappeared.

"Ahuh!" grunted Tappan grimly. His keen gaze came back to survey the
fallen robber, and then went out over the bench, across the wide mouth
of the canyon. Tappan thought he had better utilize time to pack
instead of pursuing the fleeing man.

Reloading the rifle quickly, he hurried out to find Jenet. She was
coming in to camp.

"Shore you're a treasure, old girl!" ejaculated Tappan.

Never in his life had he packed Jenet, or any other burro, so quickly.
His last act was to drink all he could hold, fill his two canteens,
and make Jenet drink. Then, rifle in hand, he drove the burro out of
camp, round the corner of the red wall, to the wide gateway that
opened down into Death Valley.

Tappan looked back more than he looked ahead. And he had traveled down
a mile or more before he began to breathe more easily. He had escaped
the claim jumpers. Even if they did show up in pursuit now, they could
never catch him. Tappan believed he could travel faster and farther
than any men of that ilk. But they did not appear. Perhaps the
crippled one had not been able to reach his comrades in time. More
likely, however, the gang had no taste for a chase in that torrid
heat.

Tappan slowed his stride. He was almost as wet with sweat as if he had
fallen into the spring. The great beads rolled down his face. And
there seemed to be little streams of fire trickling down his breast.
But despite this, and his labored panting for breath, not until he
halted in the shade of a rocky wall did he realize the heat.

It was terrific. Instantly then he knew he was safe from pursuit. But
he knew also that he faced a greater peril than that of robbers. He
could fight evil men, but he could not fight this heat. So he rested
there, regaining his breath. Already thirst was acute. Jenet stood
near by, watching him. Tappan, with his habit of humanizing the burro,
imagined that Jenet looked serious.

A moment's thought was enough for Tappan to appreciate the gravity of
his situation. He was about to go down into the upper end of Death
Valley--a part of that country unfamiliar to him. He must cross it,
and also the Funeral Mountains, at a season when a prospector who knew
the trails and water holes would have to be forced to undertake it.
Tappan had no choice.

His rifle was too hot to hold, so he stuck it in Jenet's pack; and,
burdened only by a canteen of water, he set out, driving the burro
ahead. Once he looked back up the wide-mouthed canyon. It appeared to
smoke with red heat veils. The silence was oppressive.

Presently he turned the last corner that obstructed sight of Death
Valley. Tappan had never been appalled by any aspect of the desert,
but it was certain that here he halted. Back in his mountain-walled
camp the sun had passed behind the high domes, but here it still held
most of the valley in its blazing grip.

Death Valley looked a ghastly, glaring level of white, over which a
strange dull leaden haze drooped like a blanket. Ghosts of mountain
peaks appeared to show dim and vague. There was no movement of
anything. No wind! The valley was dead. Desolation reigned supreme.
Tappan could not see far toward either end of the valley. A few miles
of white glare merged at last into leaden pall. A strong odor, not
unlike sulphur, seemed to add weight to the air.

Tappan strode on, mindful that Jenet had decided opinions of her own.
She did not want to go straight ahead or to right or left, but back.
That was the one direction impossible for Tappan. And he had to resort
to a rare measure--that of beating her. But at last Jenet accepted the
inevitable and headed down into the stark and naked plain.

Soon Tappan reached the margin of the zone of shade cast by the
mountain and was now exposed to the sun. The difference seemed
tremendous. He had been hot, oppressed, weighted. It was now as if he
was burned through his clothes, and walked on red-hot sands.

When Tappan ceased to sweat and his skin became dry, he drank half a
canteen of water, and slowed his stride. Inured to desert hardship as
he was, he could not long stand this. Jenet did not exhibit any
lessening of vigor. In truth what she showed now was an increasing
nervousness. It was almost as if she scented an enemy. Tappan never
before had such faith in her. Jenet was equal to this task.

With that blazing sun on his back, Tappan felt he was being pursued by
a furnace. He was compelled to drink the remaining half of his first
canteen of water. Sunset would save him. Two more hours of such
insupportable heat would lay him prostrate.

The ghastly glare of the valley took on a reddish tinge. The heat was
blinding Tappan. The time came when he walked beside Jenet with a hand
on her pack, for his eyes could no longer endure the furnace glare.
Even with them closed he knew when the sun sank behind the Panamints.
That fire no longer followed him. And the red left his eyelids.

[Illustration: Line drawing of sunset in the desert]

With the sinking of the sun the world of Death Valley changed. It
smoked with heat veils. But the intolerable constant burn was gone.
The change was so immense that it seemed to have brought coolness.

In the twilight--strange, ghostly, somber, silent as death--Tappan
followed Jenet off the sand, down upon the silt and borax level, to
the crusty salt. Before dark Jenet halted at a sluggish belt of
fluid--acid, it appeared to Tappan. It was not deep. And the bottom
felt stable. But Jenet refused to cross. Tappan trusted her judgment
more than his own. Jenet headed to the left and followed the course of
the strange stream.

Night intervened. A night without stars or sky or sound, hot,
breathless, charged with some intangible current! Tappan dreaded the
midnight furnace winds of Death Valley. He had never encountered them.
He had heard prospectors say that any man caught in Death Valley when
these gales blew would never get out to tell the tale. And Jenet
seemed to have something on her mind. She was no longer a leisurely,
complacent burro. Tappan imagined Jenet seemed stern. Most assuredly
she knew now which way she wanted to travel. It was not easy for
Tappan to keep up with her, and ten paces beyond him she was out of
sight.

At last Jenet headed the acid wash, and turned across the valley into
a field of broken salt crust, like the roughened ice of a river that
had broken and jammed, then frozen again. Impossible was it to make
even a reasonable headway. It was a zone, however, that eventually
gave way to Jenet's instinct for direction.

Tappan had long ceased to try to keep his bearings. North, south,
east, and west were all the same to him. The night was a blank--the
darkness a wall--the silence a terrible menace flung at any living
creature. Death Valley had endured them millions of years before
living creatures had existed. It was no place for a man.

Tappan was now three hundred and more feet below sea level, in the
aftermath of a day that had registered one hundred and forty-five
degrees of heat. He knew, when he began to lose thought and
balance--when only the primitive instincts directed his bodily
machine. And he struggled with all his will power to keep hold of his
sense of sight and feeling. He hoped to cross the lower level before
the midnight gales began to blow.

Tappan's hope was vain. According to record, once in a long season of
intense heat, there came a night when the furnace winds broke their
schedule, and began early. The misfortune of Tappan was that he had
struck this night.

Suddenly it seemed that the air, sodden with heat, began to move. It
had weight. It moved soundlessly and ponderously. But it gathered
momentum. Tappan realized what was happening. The blanket of heat
generated by the day was yielding to outside pressure. Something had
created a movement of the hotter air that must find its way upward, to
give place for the cooler air that must find its way down.

Tappan heard the first, low, distant moan of wind and it struck terror
to his heart. It did not have an earthly sound. Was that a knell for
him? Nothing was surer than the fact that the desert must sooner or
later claim him as a victim. Grim and strong, he rebelled against the
conviction. That moan was a forerunner of others, growing louder and
longer until the weird sound became continuous.

Then the movement of wind was accelerated and began to carry a fine
dust. Dark as the night was, it did not hide the pale sheets of dust
that moved along the level plain. Tappan's feet felt the slow rise in
the floor of the valley. His nose recognized the zone of borax and
alkali and niter and sulphur. He had reached the pit of the valley at
the time of the furnace winds.

The moan augmented to a roar, coming like a mighty storm through a
forest. It was hellish--like the woeful tide of Acheron. It enveloped
Tappan. And the gale bore down in tremendous volume, like a furnace
blast. Tappan seemed to feel his body penetrated by a million needles
of fire. He seemed to dry up. The blackness of night had a spectral,
whitish cast; the gloom was a whirling medium; the valley floor was
lost in a sheeted, fiercely seeping stream of silt.

Deadly fumes swept by, not lingering long enough to suffocate Tappan.
He would gasp and choke--then the poison gas was gone on the gale. But
hardest to endure was the heavy body of moving heat. Tappan grew
blind, so that he had to hold to Jenet, and stumble along. Every
gasping breath was a tortured effort. He could not bear a scarf over
his face. His lungs heaved like great leather bellows. His heart
pumped like an engine short of fuel. This was the supreme test for his
never proven endurance. And he was all but vanquished.

Tappan's senses of sight and smell and hearing failed him. There was
left only the sense of touch--a feeling of rope and burro and
ground--and an awful insulating pressure upon all his body. His feet
marked a change from salty plain to sandy ascent and then to rocky
slope. The pressure of wind gradually lessened; the difference in air
made life possible; the feeling of being dragged endlessly by Jenet
had ceased. Tappan went his limit and fell into oblivion.

When he came to, he was suffering bodily tortures. Sight was dim. But
he saw walls of rocks, green growths of mesquite, tamarack, and grass.
Jenet was lying down, with her pack flopped to one side. Tappan's dead
ears recovered to a strange murmuring, babbling sound. Then he
realized his deliverance. Jenet had led him across Death Valley, up
into the mountain range, straight to a spring of running water.

Tappan crawled to the edge of the water and drank guardedly, a little
at a time. He had to quell terrific craving to drink his fill. Then he
crawled to Jenet, and loosening the ropes of her pack, freed her from
its burden. Jenet got up, apparently none the worse for her ordeal.
She gazed mildly at Tappan, as if to say, "Well, I got you out of that
hole."

Tappan returned her gaze. Were they only man and beast, alone in the
desert? She seemed magnified to Tappan, no longer a plodding, stupid
burro.

"Jenet, you--saved--my life," Tappan tried to enunciate. "I'll
never--forget."

Tappan was struck then to a realization of Jenet's service. He was
unutterably grateful. Yet the time came when he did forget.




CHAPTER TWO

_Tonto Interlude_


Tappan had a weakness common to all prospectors: Any tale of a lost
gold mine would excite his interest; and well-known legends of lost
mines always obsessed him.

Pegleg Smith's lost gold mine had lured Tappan to no less than half a
dozen trips into the terrible shifting-sand country of southern
California. There was no water near the region said to hide this mine
of fabulous wealth. Many prospectors had left their bones to bleach
white in the sun, finally to be buried by the ever blowing sands. Upon
the occasion of Tappan's last escape from this desolate and forbidding
desert, he had promised Jenet never to undertake it again. It seemed
Tappan promised the faithful burro a good many things. It had been a
habit.

When Tappan had a particularly hard experience or perilous adventure,
he always took a dislike to the immediate country where it had
befallen him. Jenet had dragged him across Death Valley, through
incredible heat and the midnight furnace winds of that strange place;
and he had promised her he would never forget how she had saved his
life. Nor would he ever go back to Death Valley!

He made his way over the Funeral Mountains, worked down through
Nevada, and crossed the Rio Colorado above Needles, and entered
Arizona. He traveled leisurely, but he kept going, and headed
southeast toward Globe. There he cashed one of his six bags of gold,
and indulged in the luxury of a complete new outfit. Even Jenet
appreciated this fact, for the old outfit would scarcely hold
together.

Tappan had the other five bags of gold in his pack; and after hours of
hesitation he decided he would not cash them and entrust 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 dim, lofty, purple range called alluringly to Tappan. The
Superstition Mountains! Somewhere in that purple mass hid the famous
treasure called the Lost Dutchman gold mine. Tappan had heard the
story often. A Dutch prospector struck gold in the Superstitions. He
kept the location secret. When he ran short of money, he would
disappear for a few weeks, and then return with bags of gold. Wherever
his strike, it assuredly was 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 to him that some day 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
the 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 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 remember names
and places. But the mine was up in the Superstition Mountains. He
never remembered. He never found the lost mine, though he spent his
life and died trying. Thus the story passed into the legend of the
Lost Dutchman.

Tappan now had his try at finding it. But 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. Everywhere stood up the huge
_sahuaro_, 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, above which zigzagged for many miles a yellow, winding
rampart of rock. This he took to be the rim of the Mogollon Mesa, one
of Arizona's freaks of nature.

Something called 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 slopes
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 camp
site 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 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, curiously.

"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 had a tall, lithe figure,
garbed in rider's overalls and boots. She unsaddled her horse with the
dexterity of long practice. The saddlebags she carried over to the
spot the man Jake had selected to throw the pack.

Tappan heard them talking in low tones. It struck him as strange that
he did not have his usual reaction 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 the other sex. A few that
he might have been drawn to went out of his wandering life as quickly
as they had entered it. This Madge Beam took possession of his
thoughts. An 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 burned the first pan," she said. "But it's a good turn
for your burro. That shore is a burro. Biggest I ever saw."

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 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 surmise that she wanted to be friendly.

"Jake an' I drove a bunch of cattle to Maricopa," she volunteered. "We
sold 'em, 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!" ejaculated Tappan in confusion.

"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 the
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 her
sleeves up 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--a 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 the brother Jake strolled over, and he had a rather amused
and derisive eye for his sister.

"Wal, Tappan, she's not overfond of work, but I reckon she can cook,"
he said.

Tappan felt greatly relieved at the approach of this 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 being the most discursive. 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'?" finally inquired Beam.

"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 Apache. 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 the woman spoke up. "It's a pretty country. Wild an' different.
We live up under the rim rock. There's mineral in the canyons." Was it
that about mineral which 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 to reach the canyons of the Rim, where lofty pines and spruces
lorded it over the under forest of maples and oaks. Though the yellow
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 canyoned 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 landscape. 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 round 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 gunplay."

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 Rim Rock country bade fair 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 canyons, 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. 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 that he did
not perceive that the Beams preferred to keep him from outsiders. This
perhaps was owing to their desire to sell Tappan the ranch and cattle.
Jake offered to let it go 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 the associate of rustlers, but that did not
necessarily make her a bad woman. Tappan sensed that her attitude was
changing, and she seemed to require his respect. At first, all she
wanted was his admiration. Tappan's long unused deference for women
returned to him, and when he saw that it was having some strange
softening effect upon Madge Beam, 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,
occurred while visitors came to 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 turkey 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 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 me 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?" he asked.

"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 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. But 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 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 canyons, and so on down and down into the
abyss of forested ravine and ridge, tolling league on league away to
the encompassing barrier of purple mountain ranges.

The thickets in the canyons called Tappan's eye back to linger there.
How different from the scenes that 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 frostbitten sumach.

Here was autumn and with it the colors of Tappan's favorite season.
From below breathed up the low 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
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 darkened, roused to the suspense of
that hour.

Suddenly she flung herself into Tappan's arms. The act amazed him. It
seemed to have both the passion of a woman and the shame of a girl.
Before she hid her face on Tappan's breast he saw how the rich brown
had paled, and then flamed.

"Tappan! Take me away--take me away from here--from that life down
there," she cried in smothered voice.

"Madge, you mean take you away--and marry you?" he replied.

"Oh, yes--yes--marry me, if you love me. I don't see how you can--but
you do, don't you? Say you do."

"I reckon that's what ails me, Madge," he replied simply.

"_Say_ so, then," she burst out.

"All right, I do," said Tappan, with heavy breath. "Madge, words don't
come easy for me. But I think you're wonderful, an' I want you. I
haven't dared hope for that, till now. I'm only a wanderer. But it'd
be heaven to have you--my wife--an' make a home for you."

"Oh--oh!" she returned wildly, and lifted herself to cling round his
neck, and to kiss him. "You give me joy. Oh, Tappan, I love you. I
never loved any man before. I know now. An' I'm not wonderful--or even
good. But I love you."

The fire of her lips and the clasp of her arms worked havoc in Tappan.
No woman had ever loved him, let alone embraced him. To awake suddenly
to such rapture as this made him strong and rough in his response.
Then all at once she seemed to collapse in his arms and to begin to
weep. He feared he had offended or hurt her, and was clumsy in his
contrition. Presently she replied:

"Pretty soon--I'll make you--beat me. It's your love--your
honesty--that's shamed me. Tappan, I was party to a trick to--sell you
a worthless ranch. I agreed to--try to make you love me--to fool
you--cheat you. But I've fallen in love with you. An' my God, I care
more for your love--your respect--than for my life. I can't go on with
it. I've double-crossed Jake, an' all of them. Now, am I worth lovin'?
Am I worth havin'?"

"More than ever, dear," he said.

"You will take me away?"

"Anywhere--anytime, the sooner the better."

She kissed him passionately, and then, disengaging herself from his
arms, she knelt and gazed earnestly at him. "I've not told all. I will
someday. But I swear now on my soul--I'll be what you think me."

"Madge, you needn't say all that. If you love me--it's enough. More
than I ever dreamed of."

"You're a man. Oh, why didn't I meet you when I was eighteen instead
of now--twenty-eight, an' all that between. But enough. A new life
begins here for me. We must plan."

"You make the plans an' I'll act on them."

For a moment she was tense and silent, head bowed, hands shut tight.
Then she spoke.

"Tonight we'll slip away. You make a light pack, that'll go on your
saddle. I'll do the same. We'll hide the horses out near where the
trail crosses the brook. An' we'll run off--ride out of the country."

Tappan in turn tried to think, but the whirl of his mind made any
reason difficult. This dark-eyed, full-bosomed woman loved him, had
surrendered herself, asked only his protection. The thing seemed
marvelous. Yet she knelt there, those dark eyes on him, infinitely
more appealing than ever, haunting with some mystery of sadness and
fear he could not divine.

Suddenly Tappan remembered Jenet.

"I must take Jenet," he said.

That startled her. "Jenet--Who's she?"

"My burro."

"Your burro? You can't travel fast with that pack beast. We'll be
trailed, an' we'll have to go fast. You can't take the burro."

Then Tappan was startled. "What! Can't take Jenet?--Why, I--I couldn't
get along without her."

"Nonsense. What's a burro? We must ride fast--do you hear?"

"Madge, I'm afraid I--I must take Jenet with me," he said soberly.

"It's impossible. I can't go if you take her. I tell you I've got to
get away. If you want _me_ you'll have to leave your precious Jenet
behind."

Tappan bowed his head to the inevitable. After all, Jenet was only a
beast of burden. She would run wild on the ridges and soon forget him
and have no need of him. Something strained in Tappan's breast. He did
not see clearly here. This woman was worth more than all else to him.

"I'm stupid, dear," he said. "You see, I never before ran off with a
beautiful woman. Of course my burro must be left behind."

[Illustration: Line drawing of burros]

       *       *       *       *       *

Elopement, if such it could be called, was easy for them. Tappan did
not understand why Madge wanted to be so secret about it. Was she not
free? But then, he reflected, he did not know the circumstances she
feared. Besides, he did not care. Possession of the woman was enough.

Tappan made his small pack, the weight of which was considerable owing
to his bags of gold. This he tied on his saddle. It bothered him to
leave most of his new outfit scattered around his camp. What would
Jenet think of that? He looked for her, but for once she did not come
in at mealtime. Tappan thought this was singular. He could not
remember when Jenet had been far from his camp at sunset. Somehow
Tappan was glad.

After he had his supper, he left his utensils and supplies as they
happened to be, and strode away under the trees to the trysting-place
where he was to meet Madge. To his surprise she came before dark, and,
unused as he was to the complexity and emotional nature of a woman, he
saw that she was strangely agitated. Her face was pale. Almost a fury
burned in her black eyes. When she came up to Tappan, and embraced
him, almost fiercely, he felt that he was about to learn more of the
nature of womankind. She thrilled him to his depths.

"Lead out the horses an' don't make any noise," she whispered.

Tappan complied, and soon he was mounted, riding behind her on the
trail. It surprised him that she headed down country, and traveled
fast. Moreover, she kept to a trail that continually grew rougher.
They came to a road, which she crossed, and kept on through darkness
and brush so thick that Tappan could not see the least sign of a
trail. And at length anyone could have seen that Madge had lost her
bearings. She appeared to know the direction she wanted, but traveling
upon it was impossible, owing to the increasingly cut-up and brushy
ground. They had to turn back, and seemed to be hours finding the
road.

Once Tappan fancied he heard the thud of hoofs other than those made
by their own horses. Here Madge acted strangely, and where she had
been obsessed by desire to hurry she now seemed to have grown weary.
She turned her horse south on the road. Tappan was thus enabled to
ride beside her. But they talked very little. He was satisfied with
the fact of being with her on the way out of the country. Some time in
the night they reached an old log shack by the roadside. Here Tappan
suggested they halt, and get some sleep before dawn. The morrow would
mean a long hard day for them.

"Yes, tomorrow will be hard," replied Madge, as she faced Tappan in
the gloom.

He could see her big dark eyes on him. Her tone was not one of a
hopeful woman. Tappan pondered over this. But he could not understand,
because he had no idea how a woman ought to act under such
circumstances. Madge Beam was a creature of moods. Only the day
before, on the ride down from the Rim, she had told him with a laugh
that she was likely to love him madly one moment and scratch his eyes
out the next. How could he know what to make of her? Still, an uneasy
feeling began to stir in Tappan.

They dismounted and unsaddled the horses. Tappan took his pack and put
it aside. Something frightened the horses. They bolted down the road.

"Head them off," cried the woman hoarsely.

Even on the instant her voice sounded strained to Tappan, as if she
were choked. But, realizing the absolute necessity of catching the
horses, he set off down the road on a run. And he soon succeeded in
heading off the animal he had ridden. The other one, however, was
contrary and cunning. When Tappan would endeavor to get ahead, it
would trot briskly on. Yet it did not go so fast but what Tappan felt
sure he would soon catch it.

Thus, walking and running, he put some distance between him and the
cabin before he realized that he could not head off the wary beast.

Much perturbed in mind, Tappan hurried back.

Upon reaching the cabin Tappan called to Madge. No answer! He could
not see her in the gloom nor the horse he had driven back. Only
silence brooded there. Tappan called again. Still no answer! Perhaps
Madge had succumbed to weariness and was asleep. A search of the cabin
and vicinity failed to yield any sign of her. But it disclosed the
fact that Tappan's pack was gone.

Suddenly he sat down, quite overcome. He had been duped. What a fierce
pang tore his heart! But it was for loss of the woman--not the gold.
He was stunned, and then sick with bitter misery. Only then did Tappan
realize the meaning of love and what it had done to him.

The night wore on, and he sat there in the dark and cold and stillness
until the gray dawn told him of the coming of day. The light showed
his saddle where he had left it. Near by lay one of Madge's gloves.
Tappan's keen eye sighted a bit of paper sticking out of the glove. He
picked it up. It was a leaf out of a little book he had seen her
carry, and upon it was written in lead pencil:

_I am Jake's wife, not his sister. I double-crossed him and ran off
with you and would have gone to hell for you. But Jake and his gang
suspected me. They were close on our trail. I couldn't shake them. So
here I chased off the horses and sent you after them. It was the only
way I could save your life._

Tappan tracked the thieves to Globe. There he learned they had gone to
Phoenix--three men and one woman. Tappan had money on his person. He
bought horse and saddle, and, setting out for Phoenix, he let his
passion to kill grow with the miles and hours. At Phoenix he learned
Beam had cashed the gold--twelve thousand dollars. So much of a
fortune! Tappan's fury grew. The gang separated here. Beam and his
wife took a stage for Tucson. Tappan had no trouble in trailing their
movements.

Gambling-dives and inns and freighting-posts and stage drivers told
the story of the Beams and their ill-gotten gold. They went on to
California, down into Tappan's country, to Yuma and El Cajon and San
Diego. Here Tappan lost track of the woman. He could not find that she
had left San Diego, nor any trace of her there. But Jake Beam had
killed a Mexican in a brawl and had fled across the line.

Tappan gave up for the time being the chase of Beam, and bent his
efforts to find the woman. He had no resentment toward Madge. He only
loved her. All that winter he searched San Diego. He made of himself a
peddler as a ruse to visit houses. But he never found a trace of her.
In the spring he wandered back to Yuma, raking over the old clues, and
so on back to Tucson and Phoenix.

This year of dream and love and passion and despair and hate made
Tappan old. His great strength and endurance were not yet impaired,
but something of his spirit had died out of him.

One day he remembered Jenet. "My burro!" he soliloquized. "I had
forgotten her--Jenet!"

Then it seemed a thousand impulses merged in one drove him to face the
long road toward the Rim Rock country. To remember Jenet was to grow
doubtful. Of course she would be gone. Stolen or dead or wandered off!
But then who could tell what Jenet might do? Tappan was both called
and driven. He was a poor wanderer again. His outfit was a pack he
carried on his shoulder. But while he could walk he would keep on
until he found that last camp where he had deserted Jenet.

October was coloring the canyon slopes when he reached the shadow of
the great wall of yellow rock. The cabin where the Beams had lived--or
had claimed they lived--was a fallen ruin, crushed by snow. Tappan saw
other signs of a severe winter and heavy snowfall. No horse or cattle
tracks showed in the trails.

To his amaze his camp was much as he had left it. The stone fireplace,
the iron pots, appeared to be in the same places. The boxes that had
held his supplies were lying here and there. And his canvas tarpaulin,
little the worse for wear of the elements, lay on the ground under the
pine where he had slept.

If any man had visited this camp in a year he had left no sign of it.

Suddenly Tappan espied a hoof track in the dust. A small track--almost
oval in shape--fresh! Tappan thrilled through all his being.

"Jenet's track, so help me God!" he murmured.

He found more of them, made that morning. And, keen now as never
before on her trail, he set out to find her. The tracks led up the
canyon.

Tappan came out into a little grassy clearing, and there stood Jenet,
as he had seen her thousands of times. She had both long ears up high.
She seemed to stare out of that meek, gray face. And then one of the
long ears flopped over and drooped. Such perhaps was the expression of
her recognition.

Tappan strode up to her.

"Jenet--old girl!--you hung round camp--waitin' for me, didn't you?"
he said huskily, and his big hands fondled her long ears.

Yes, she had waited. She, too, had grown old. She was gray. The winter
of that year had been hard. What had she lived on when the snow lay so
deep? There were lion scratches on her back, and scars on her legs.
She had fought for her life.

"Jenet, a man can never always tell about a burro," said Tappan. "I
trained you to hang round camp an' wait till I came back. 'Tappan's
burro,' the desert rats used to say! An' they'd laugh when I bragged
how you'd stick to me where most men would quit. But brag as I did, I
never knew you, Jenet. An' I left you--an' forgot. Jenet, it takes a
human bein'--a man--a woman--to be faithless. An' it takes a dog or a
horse or a burro to be great. Beasts? I wonder, now--Well, old pard,
we're goin' down the trail together, an' from this day on Tappan
begins to pay his debt."




CHAPTER THREE

_Paid in Full_


Tappan never again had the old wanderlust for the stark and naked
desert. Something had transformed him. The green and fragrant forests,
and the brown-aisled, pine-matted woodlands, the craggy promontories
and the great colored canyons, the cold granite water springs of the
Tonto seemed vastly preferable to the heat and dust and glare and the
emptiness of the wastelands. But there was more. The ghost of his
strange and only love kept pace with his wandering steps, a spirit
that hovered with him as his shadow.

Madge Beam, whatever she had been, had showed to him the power of love
to refine and ennoble. Somehow he felt closer to her here in the cliff
country where his passion had been born. Somehow she seemed nearer to
him here than in all those places he had tracked her. So from a
prospector searching for gold Tappan became a hunter, seeking only the
means to keep soul and body together. And all he cared for was his
faithful burro Jenet, and the loneliness and silence of the forest
land.

He was to learn that the Tonto was a hard country in many ways, and
bitterly so in winter. Down in the brakes of the basin it was mild in
winter, the snow did not lie long, and ice seldom formed. But up on
the Rim, where Tappan always lingered as long as possible, the storm
king of the north held full sway. Fifteen feet of snow and zero
weather were the rule in dead of winter.

An old native once warned Tappan, "See hyar, friend, I reckon you'd
better not get caught up in the Rim Rock country in one of our big
storms. Fer if you do you'll never get out."

It was a way of Tappan's to follow his inclinations, regardless of
advice. He had weathered the terrible midnight storm of hot wind in
Death Valley. What were snow and cold to him? Late autumn on the Rim
was the most perfect and beautiful of seasons. He had seen the forest
land brown and darkly green one day, and the next burdened with white
snow. What a transfiguration! Then when the sun loosened the white
mantling on the pines, and they had shed their burdens in drifting
dust of white, and rainbowed mists of melting snow, and avalanches
sliding off the branches, there would be left only the wonderful white
floor of the woodland. The great rugged brown tree trunks appeared
mightier and statelier in the contrast; and the green of foliage, the
russet of oak leaves, the gold of the aspens, turned the forest into a
world enchanting to the desert-seared eyes of this wanderer.

With Tappan the years sped by. His mind grew old faster than his body.
Every season saw him lonelier. He had a feeling, a vague illusive
foreshadowing that his bones, instead of bleaching on the desert
sands, would mingle with the pine mats and the soft fragrant moss of
the forest. The idea was pleasant to Tappan.

       *       *       *       *       *

One afternoon he was camped in Pine Canyon, a timber-sloped gorge far
back from the Rim. November was well on. The fall had been singularly
open and fair, with not a single storm. A few natives happening across
Tappan had remarked casually that such autumns sometimes were not to
be trusted.

This late afternoon was one of Indian-summer beauty and warmth. The
blue haze in the canyon was not all the blue smoke from Tappan's
campfire. In a narrow park of grass not far from camp Jenet grazed
peacefully with elk and deer. Wild turkeys lingered there, loath to
seek their winter quarters down in the basin. Gray squirrels and red
squirrels barked and frisked and dropped the pine and spruce cones,
with thud and thump, on all the slopes.

Before dark a stranger strode into Tappan's camp, a big man of middle
age, whose magnificent physique impressed even Tappan. He was a
rugged, bearded giant, wide-eyed and of pleasant face. He had no
outfit, no horse, not even a gun.

"Lucky for me I smelled your smoke," he said. "Two days for me without
grub."

"Howdy, stranger," was Tappan's greeting. "Are you lost?"

"Yes an' no. I could find my way out from over the Rim, but it's not
healthy down there for me. So I'm hittin' north."

"Where's your horse an' pack?"

"I reckon they're with the gang thet took more of a fancy to them than
me."

"Ahuh! You're welcome here, stranger," replied Tappan. "I'm Tappan."

"Ha! Heard of you. I'm Jess Blade, of anywhere. An' I'll say, Tappan,
I was an honest man till I hit the Tonto." His laugh was frank, for
all its note of grimness. Tappan liked the man, and sensed one who
would be a good friend and bad foe.

"Come an' eat. My supplies are peterin' out, but there's plenty of
meat."

Blade ate, indeed, as a man starved, and did not seem to care if
Tappan's supplies were low. He did not talk. After the meal he craved
a pipe and tobacco. Then he smoked in silence, in a slow realizing
content. The morrow had no fears for him. The flickering ruddy light
from the campfire shone on his strong face.

Tappan saw in him the drifter, the drinker, the brawler, a man with
good in him, but over whom evil passion or temper dominated. Presently
he smoked the pipe out, and with reluctant hand knocked out the ashes
and returned it to Tappan.

"I reckon I've got some news thet'd interest you," he said.

"You have?" queried Tappan.

"Yes, if you're the Tappan who tried to run off with Jake Beam's
wife."

"Well, I'm that Tappan. But I'd like to say I didn't know she was
married."

"Shore, I know thet. So does everybody in the Tonto. You were just
meat for the Beam gang. They had played the trick before. But
accordin' to what I hear thet trick was the last fer Madge Beam. She
never came back to this country. An' Jake Beam, when he was drunk,
owned up thet she'd left him in California. Some hint at worse. Fer
Jake Beam came back a harder man. Even his gang said thet."

"Is he in the Tonto now?" queried Tappan, with a thrill of fire along
his veins.

"Yep, thar fer keeps," replied Blade grimly. "Somebody shot him."

"Ahuh!" exclaimed Tappan with a deep breath of relief. There came a
sudden cooling of the heat of his blood.

After that there was a long silence. Tappan dreamed of the woman who
had loved him. Blade brooded over the campfire. The wind moaned
fitfully in the lofty pines on the slope. A wolf mourned as if in
hunger. The stars appeared to obscure their radiance in haze.

"Reckon thet wind sounds like storm," observed Blade presently.

"I've heard it for weeks now," replied Tappan.

"Are you a woodsman?"

"No, I'm a desert man."

"Wal, you take my hunch an' hit the trail fer low country."

This was well meant, and probably sound advice, but it alienated
Tappan. He had really liked this hearty-voiced stranger. Tappan
thought moodily of his slowly ingrowing mind, of the narrowness of his
soul. He was past interest in his fellow men. He lived with a dream.
The only living creature he loved was a lop-eared, lazy burro, growing
old in contentment. Nevertheless, that night Tappan shared one of his
two blankets.

In the morning the gray dawn broke, and the sun rose without its
brightness of gold. There was a haze over the blue sky. Thin,
swift-moving clouds scudded up out of the southwest. The wind was
chill, the forest shaggy and dark, the birds and squirrels were
silent.

"Wal, you'll break camp today," asserted Blade.

"Nope. I'll stick it out yet awhile," returned Tappan.

"But, man, you might get snowed in, an' up hyar thet's serious."

"Ahuh! Well, it won't bother me. An' there's nothin' holdin' you."

"Tappan, it's four days' walk down out of this woods. If a big snow
set in, how'd I make it?"

"Then you'd better go out over the Rim," suggested Tappan.

"No. I'll take my chance the other way. But are you meanin' you'd
rather not have me with you? Fer you can't stay hyar."

Tappan was in a quandary. Some instinct bade him tell the man to go.
Not empty-handed, but to go. But this was selfish, and entirely unlike
Tappan as he remembered himself of old. Finally he spoke:

"You're welcome to half my outfit--go or stay."

"Thet's mighty square of you, Tappan," responded the other feelingly.
"Have you a burro you'll give me?"

"No, I've only one."

"Ha! Then I'll have to stick with you till you leave."

No more was said. They had breakfast in a strange silence. The wind
brooded its secret in the tree tops.

Tappan's burro strolled into camp unhurriedly, and caught the
stranger's eye.

"Wal, thet's shore a fine burro," he observed. "Never saw the like."

Tappan performed his camp tasks. And then there was nothing to do but
sit around the fire. Blade evidently waited for the increasing menace
of storm to rouse Tappan to decision. But the graying over of sky and
the increase of wind did not affect Tappan. What did he wait for? The
truth of his thoughts was that he did not like the way Jenet remained
in camp. She was waiting to be packed. She knew they ought to go.
Tappan yielded to a perverse devil of stubbornness.

The wind brought a cold mist, then a flurry of wet snow. Tappan
gathered firewood, a large quantity. Blade saw this and gave voice to
earnest fears. But Tappan paid no heed. By nightfall sleet and snow
began to fall steadily. The men fashioned a rude shack of spruce
boughs, ate their supper, and went to bed early.

It worried Tappan that Jenet stayed right in camp. He lay awake a long
time. The wind rose and moaned through the forest. The sleet failed,
and a soft, steady downfall of snow gradually set in. Tappan fell
asleep.

When he awoke it was to see a forest of white. The trees were mantled
with blankets of wet snow, the ground covered two feet on a level. But
the clouds appeared to be gone, the sky was blue, the storm over. The
sun came up warm and bright.

"It'll all go in a day," said Tappan.

"If this was early October I'd agree with you," replied Blade. "But
it's only makin' fer another storm. Can't you hear thet wind?"

Tappan only heard the whispers of his dreams. By now the snow was
melting off the pines, and rainbows shone everywhere. Little patches
of snow began to drop off the south branches of the pines and spruces,
and then larger patches, until by midafternoon white streams and
avalanches were falling everywhere. All of the snow, except in shaded
places on the north sides of trees, went that day, and half of that on
the ground. Next day it thinned out more, until Jenet was finding the
grass and moss again. That afternoon the telltale thin clouds raced up
out of the southwest and the wind moaned its menace.

"Tappan, let's pack an' hit it out of hyar," appealed Blade anxiously.
"I know this country. Mebbe I'm wrong, of course, but it feels like
storm. Winter's comin' shore."

"Let her come," replied Tappan imperturbably.

"Say, do you want to get snowed in?" demanded Blade, out of patience.

"I might like a little spell of it, seein' it'd be new to me," replied
Tappan.

"But man, if you ever get snowed in hyar you can't get out."

"That burro of mine could get me out."

"You're crazy. Thet burro couldn't go a hundred feet. What's more,
you'd have to kill her an' eat her."

Tappan bent a strange gaze upon his companion, but made no reply.
Blade began to pace up and down the small bare patch of ground before
the campfire. Manifestly, he was in a serious predicament. That day he
seemed subtly to change, as did Tappan. Both answered to their
peculiar instincts, Blade to that of self-preservation, and Tappan, to
something like indifference. Tappan held fate in defiance. What more
could happen to him?

Blade broke out again, in eloquent persuasion, giving proof of their
peril, and from that he passed to amaze and then to strident anger. He
cursed Tappan for a nature-loving idiot.

"An' I'll tell you what," he ended. "When mornin' comes I'll take some
of your grub an' hit it out of hyar, storm or no storm."

But long before dawn broke that resolution of Blade's had become
impracticable. Both men were awakened by a roar of storm through the
forest, no longer a moan, but a marching roar, with now a crash and
then a shriek of gale! By the light of the smoldering campfire Tappan
saw a whirling pall of snow, great flakes as large as feathers.
Morning disclosed the setting in of a fierce mountain storm, with two
feet of snow already on the ground, and the forest lost in a blur of
white.

"I was wrong," called Tappan to his companion. "What's best to do
now?"

"You damned fool!" yelled Blade. "We've got to keep from freezin' an'
starvin' till the storm ends an' a crust comes on the snow."

For three days and three nights the blizzard continued, unabated in
its fury. It took the men hours to keep a space cleared for their camp
site, which Jenet shared with them. On the fourth day the storm
ceased, the clouds broke away, the sun came out. And the temperature
dropped to zero. Snow on the level just topped Tappan's lofty stature,
and in drifts it was ten and fifteen feet deep. Winter had set in
without compromise. The forest became a solemn, still, white world.

Now Tappan had no time to dream. Dry firewood was hard to find under
the snow. It was possible to cut down one of the dead trees on the
slope, but impossible to pack sufficient wood to the camp. They had to
burn green wood. Then the fashioning of snowshoes took much time.
Tappan had no knowledge of such footgear. He could only help Blade.

The men were encouraged by the piercing cold forming a crust on the
snow. But just as they were about to pack and venture forth, the
weather moderated, the crust refused to hold their weight, and another
foot of snow fell.

"Why in hell didn't you kill an elk?" demanded Blade sullenly. He had
become darkly sinister. He knew the peril and he loved life. "Now
we'll have to kill an' eat your precious Jenet. An' mebbe she won't
furnish meat enough to last till this snow weather stops an' a good
freeze'll make travelin' possible."

"Blade, you shut up about killin' an' eatin' my burro Jenet," returned
Tappan in a firm voice that silenced the other.

Thus instinctively these men became enemies. Blade thought only of
himself. Tappan had forced upon him a menace to the life of his burro.
For himself Tappan had not one thought.

Tappan's supplies ran low. All the bacon and coffee were gone. There
was only a small haunch of venison, a bag of beans, a sack of flour,
and a small quantity of salt left.

"If a crust freezes on the snow an' we can pack that flour, we'll get
out alive," said Blade. "But we can't take the burro."

Another day of bright sunshine softened the snow on the southern
exposures, and a night of piercing cold froze a crust that would bear
a quick step of man.

"It's our only chance--an' damn slim at thet," declared Blade.

Tappan allowed Blade to choose the time and method, and supplies for
the start to get out of the forest. They cooked all the beans and
divided them in two sacks. Then they baked about five pounds of
biscuits for each of them. Blade showed his cunning when he chose the
small bag of salt for himself and let Tappan take the tobacco. This
quantity of food and a blanket for each Blade declared to be all they
could pack.

They argued over the guns, and in the end Blade compromised on the
rifle, agreeing to let Tappan carry that on a possible chance of
killing a deer or elk. When this matter had been decided, Blade
significantly began putting on his rude snowshoes, that had been
constructed from pieces of Tappan's boxes and straps and burlap sacks.

"Reckon they won't last long," muttered Blade.

Meanwhile Tappan fed Jenet some biscuits and then began to strap a
tarpaulin on her back.

"What you doin'?" queried Blade suddenly.

"Gettin' Jenet ready," replied Tappan.

"Ready! For what?"

"Why, to go with us."

"Hell!" shouted Blade, and he threw up his hands in helpless rage.

Tappan felt a depth stirred within him. He lost his late taciturnity
and silent aloofness fell away from him. Blade seemed on the moment no
longer an enemy. He loomed as an aid to the saving of Jenet. Tappan
burst into speech.

"I can't go without her. It'd never enter my head. Jenet's mother was
a good faithful burro. I saw Jenet born way down there on the Rio
Colorado. She wasn't strong. An' I had to wait for her to be able to
walk. An' she grew up. Her mother died, an' Jenet an' me packed it
alone. She wasn't no ordinary burro. She learned all I taught her. She
was different. But I treated her same as any burro. An' she grew with
the years. Desert men said there never was such a burro as Jenet.
Called her Tappan's burro, an' tried to borrow an' buy an' steal her."

"How many times in ten years Jenet has done me a good turn I can't
remember. But she saved my life. She dragged me out of Death Valley.
An' then I forgot my debt. I ran off with a woman an' left Jenet to
wait as she had been trained to wait. Well, I got back in time. An'
now I'll not leave her here. It may be strange to you, Blade, me
carin' this way. Jenet's only a burro. But I won't leave her."

"Man, you talk like that lazy lop-eared burro was a woman," declared
Blade in disgusted astonishment.

"I don't know women, but I reckon Jenet's more faithful than most of
them."

"Wal, of all the stark, starin' fools I ever run into you're the
worst."

"Fool or not, I know what I'll do," retorted Tappan. The softer mood
left him swiftly.

"Haven't you sense enough to see thet we can't travel with your
burro?" queried Blade, patiently controlling his temper. "She has
little hoofs, sharp as knives. She'll cut through the crust. She'll
break through in places. An' we'll have to stop to haul her out--mebbe
break through ourselves. Thet would make us longer gettin' out."

"Long or short we'll take her."

Then Blade confronted Tappan as if suddenly unmasking his true
meaning. His patient explanation meant nothing. Under no circumstances
would he ever have consented to an attempt to take Jenet out of that
snowbound wilderness. His eyes gleamed.

"We've a hard pull to get out alive. An' hard-workin' men in winter
must have meat to eat."

Tappan slowly straightened up to look at the speaker.

"What do you mean?"

For answer Blade jerked his hand backward and downward, and when it
swung into sight again it held Tappan's worn and shining rifle. Then
Blade, with deliberate force, that showed the nature of the man,
worked the lever and threw a shell into the magazine. All the while
his eyes were fastened on Tappan. His face seemed that of another man,
evil, relentless, inevitable in his spirit to preserve his own life at
any cost.

"I mean to kill your burro," he said in a voice that suited his look
and manner.

"No!" cried Tappan, shocked into an instant of appeal.

"Yes, I am, an' I'll bet, by God, before we get out of hyar you'll be
glad to eat some of her meat!"

That roused the slow-gathering might of Tappan's wrath.

"I'd starve to death before I'd--I'd kill that burro, let alone eat
her."

"Starve an' be damned!" shouted Blade, yielding to rage.

Jenet stood right behind Tappan, in her posture of contented repose,
with one long ear hanging down over her gray meek face.

"You'll have to kill me first," answered Tappan sharply.

"I'm good fer anythin'--if you push me," returned Blade stridently.

As he stepped aside, evidently so he could have unobstructed aim at
Jenet, Tappan leaped forward and knocked up the rifle as it was
discharged. The bullet sped harmlessly over Jenet. Tappan heard it
thud into a tree. Blade uttered a curse. And as he lowered the rifle
in sudden deadly intent, Tappan grasped the barrel with his left hand.
Then, clenching his right, he struck Blade a sodden blow in the face.
Only Blade's hold on the rifle prevented him from falling. Blood
streamed from his nose and mouth. He bellowed in hoarse fury:

"I'll kill you--fer thet!"

Tappan opened his clenched teeth. "No, Blade--you're not man enough."

Then began a terrific struggle for possession of the rifle. Tappan
beat at Blade's face with his sledge-hammer fist. But the strength of
the other made it imperative that he use both hands to keep his hold
on the rifle. Wrestling and pulling and jerking, the men tore round
the snowy camp, scattering the campfire, knocking down the brush
shelter.

Blade had surrendered to a wild frenzy. He hissed his maledictions.
His was the brute lust to kill an enemy that thwarted him. But Tappan
was grim and terrible in his restraint. His battle was to save Jenet.
Nevertheless, there mounted in him the hot physical sensations of the
savage. The contact of flesh, the smell and sight of Blade's blood,
the violent action, the beastly mien of his foe changed the fight to
one for its own sake. To conquer this foe, to rend him and beat him
down, blow on blow!

Tappan felt instinctively that he was the stronger. Suddenly he
exerted all his muscular force into one tremendous wrench. The rifle
broke, leaving the steel barrel in his hands, the wooden stock in
Blade's. And it was the quicker-witted Blade who used his weapon first
to advantage. One swift blow knocked Tappan down. As he was about to
follow it up with another, Tappan kicked his opponent's feet from
under him. Blade sprawled in the snow, but was up again as quickly as
Tappan.

They made at each other, Tappan waiting to strike, and Blade raining
blows on Tappan. These were heavy blows aimed at his head, but which
he contrived to receive on his arms and the rifle barrel he
brandished. For a few moments Tappan stood up under a beating that
would have felled a lesser man. His own blood blinded him. Then he
swung his heavy weapon. The blow broke Blade's left arm. Like a wild
beast, he screamed in pain; and then, without guard, rushed in, too
furious for further caution.

Tappan met the terrible onslaught as before, and watching his chance,
again swung the rifle barrel. This time, so supreme was the force, it
battered down Blade's arm and crushed his skull. He died on his
feet--ghastly and horrible change!--and swaying backward, he fell into
the upbanked wall of snow, and went out of sight, except for his
boots, one of which still held the crude snowshoe.

Tappan stared, slowly realizing.

"Ahuh, stranger Blade!" he ejaculated, gazing at the hole in the snow
bank where his foe had disappeared. "You were goin' to--kill an'
eat--Tappan's burro!"

Then he sighted the bloody rifle barrel, and cast it from him. He
became conscious of injuries which needed attention. But he could do
little more than wash off the blood and bind up his head. Both arms
and hands were badly bruised and beginning to swell. But fortunately
no bones had been broken.

Tappan finished strapping the tarpaulin upon the burro; and, taking up
both his and Blade's supply of food, he called out, "Come on, Jenet."

Which way to go! Indeed, there was no more choice for him than there
had been for Blade. Toward the Rim the snowdrift would be deeper and
impassable. Tappan realized that the only possible chance for him was
downhill. So he led Jenet out of camp without looking back once. What
was it that had happened? He did not seem to be the same Tappan that
had dreamily tramped into this woodland.

A deep furrow in the snow had been made by the men packing firewood
into camp. At the end of this furrow the wall of snow stood higher
than Tappan's head. To get out on top without breaking the crust
presented a problem. He lifted Jenet up, and was relieved to see that
the snow held her. But he found a different task in his own case.
Returning to camp, he gathered up several of the long branches of
spruce that had been part of the shelter, and carrying them out he
laid them against the slant of snow he had to surmount, and by their
aid he got on top. The crust held him.

Elated and with revived hope, he took up Jenet's halter and started
off. Walking with his rude snowshoes was awkward. He had to go slowly,
and slide them along the crust. But he progressed. Jenet's little
steps kept her even with him. Now and then one of her sharp hoofs cut
through, but not to hinder her particularly.

Right at the start Tappan observed a singular something about Jenet.
Never until now had she been dependent upon him. She knew it. Her
intelligence apparently told her that if she got out of this snowbound
wilderness it would be owing to the strength and reason of her master.

Tappan kept to the north side of the canyon, where the snow crust was
strongest. What he must do was to work up to the top of the canyon
slope, and then keeping to the ridge travel north along it, and so
down out of the forest.

Travel was slow. He soon found he had to pick his way. Jenet appeared
to be absolutely unable to sense either danger or safety. Her
experience had been of the rock confines and the drifting sands of the
desert. She walked where Tappan led her. And it seemed to Tappan that
her trust in him, her reliance upon him, were pathetic.

"Well, old girl," said Tappan to her, "it's a horse of another color
now--hey?"

At length he came to a wide part of the canyon, where a bench of land
led to a long gradual slope, thickly studded with small pines. This
appeared to be fortunate, and turned out to be so, for when Jenet
broke through the crust Tappan had trees and branches to hold to while
he hauled her out.

The labor of climbing that slope was such that Tappan began to
appreciate Blade's absolute refusal to attempt getting Jenet out. Dusk
was shadowing the white aisles of the forest when Tappan ascended to a
level. He had not traveled far from camp, and the fact struck a chill
upon his heart.

To go on in the dark was foolhardy. So Tappan selected a thick spruce,
under which there was a considerable depression in the snow, and here
made preparation to spend the night. Unstrapping the tarpaulin, he
spread it on the snow. All the lower branches of this giant of the
forest were dead and dry. Tappan broke off many and soon had a fire.
Jenet nibbled at the moss on the trunk of the spruce tree. Tappan's
meal consisted of beans, biscuits, and a ball of snow, that he held
over the fire to soften. He saw to it that Jenet fared as well as he.

Night soon fell, strange and weirdly white in the forest, and
piercingly cold. Tappan needed the fire. Gradually it melted the snow
and made a hole, down to the ground. Tappan rolled up in the tarpaulin
and soon fell asleep.

[Illustration: Line drawing of a canyon with trees]

       *       *       *       *       *

In three days Tappan traveled about fifteen miles, gradually
descending, until the snow crust began to fail to hold Jenet. Then
whatever had been his difficulties before, they were now magnified a
hundredfold. As soon as the sun was up, somewhat softening the snow,
Jenet began to break through. And often when Tappan began hauling her
out he broke through himself. This exertion was killing even to a man
of Tappan's physical prowess. The endurance to resist heat and flying
dust and dragging sand seemed another kind from that needed to toil on
in this snow.

The endless snowbound forest began to be hideous to Tappan. Cold,
lonely, dreary, white, mournful--the kind of ghastly and ghostly
winter land that had been the terror of Tappan's boyish dreams! He
loved the sun--the open. This forest had deceived him. It was a wall
of ice. As he toiled on, the state of his mind gradually and subtly
changed in all except the fixed and absolute will to save Jenet. In
some places he carried her.

The fourth night found him dangerously near the end of his stock of
food. He had been generous with Jenet. But now, considering that he
had to do more work than she, he diminished her share. On the fifth
day Jenet broke through the snow crust so often that Tappan realized
how utterly impossible it was for her to get out of the woods by her
own efforts. Therefore Tappan hit upon the plan of making her lie on
the tarpaulin, so that he could drag her over the snow. The tarpaulin
doubled once did not make a bad sled.

All the rest of that day Tappan hauled her. And so all the rest of the
next day he toiled on, hands behind him, clutching the canvas, head
and shoulders bent, plodding and methodical, like a man who could not
be defeated. That night he was too weary to build a fire, and too
worried to eat the last of his food.

Next day Tappan was not unalive to the changing character of the
forest. He had worked down out of the zone of the spruce trees; the
pines had thinned out and decreased in size; oak trees began to show
prominently. All these signs meant that he was getting down out of the
mountain heights. But the fact, hopeful as it was, had drawbacks. The
snow was still four feet deep on a level and the crust held Tappan
only about half the time. Moreover, the lay of the land operated
against Tappan's progress. The long, slowly descending ridge had
failed. There were no more canyons, but ravines and swales were
numerous.

Tappan dragged on, stern, indomitable, bent to his toil. When the
crust let him down, he hung his snowshoes over Jenet's back, and
wallowed through, making a lane for her to follow. Two days of such
heartbreaking toil, without food or fire, broke Tappan's magnificent
endurance. But not his spirit! He hauled Jenet over the snow, and
through the snow, down the hills and up the slopes, through the
thickets, knowing that over the next ridge, perhaps was deliverance.

Deer and elk tracks began to be numerous. Cedar and juniper trees now
predominated. An occasional pine showed here and there. He was getting
out of the forest land. Only such mighty and justifiable hope as that
could have kept him on his feet.

He fell often, and it grew harder to rise and go on. The hour came
when the crust failed altogether to hold Tappan and he had to abandon
hauling Jenet. It was necessary to make a road for her. How weary,
cold, horrible, the white reaches!

Yard by yard Tappan made his way. He no longer sweat. He had no
feeling in his feet or legs. Hunger ceased to gnaw at his vitals. His
thirst he quenched with snow--soft snow now, that did not have to be
crunched like ice. The pangs in his breast were terrible--cramps,
constrictions, the piercing pains in his lungs, the dull ache of his
overtaxed heart.

Tappan came to an opening in the cedar forest from which he could see
afar. A long slope fronted him. It led down and down to open country.
His desert eyes, keen as those of an eagle, made out flat country,
sparsely covered with snow, and black dots that were cattle. The last
slope! The last pull! Three feet of snow, except in drifts; down and
down he plunged, making way for Jenet! All that day he toiled and fell
and rolled down this league-long slope, wearing toward sunset to the
end of his task, and likewise to the end of his will.

Now he seemed up and now down. There was no sense of cold or
weariness. Only direction! Tappan still saw! The last of his horror at
the monotony of white faded from his mind. Jenet was there, beginning
to be able to travel for herself. The solemn close of endless day
found Tappan arriving at the edge of the timbered country, where
wind-bared patches of ground showed long, bleached grass. Jenet took
to grazing.

As for Tappan, he fell with the tarpaulin, under a thick cedar, and
with strengthless hands plucked and plucked at the canvas to spread
it, so that he could cover himself. He looked again for Jenet. She was
there, somehow a fading image, strangely blurred. But she was grazing.
Tappan lay down, and stretched out, and slowly drew the tarpaulin over
him.

       *       *       *       *       *

A piercing-cold night wind swept down from the snowy heights. It
wailed in the edge of the cedars and moaned out toward the open
country. Yet the night seemed silent. The stars shone white in a deep
blue sky--passionless, cold, watchful eyes, looking down without pity
or hope or censure. They were the eyes of Nature. Winter had locked
the heights in its snowy grip. All night that winter wind blew down,
colder and colder. Then dawn broke, steely, gray, with a flare in the
east.

Jenet came back where she had left her master. Camp! As she had
returned thousands of dawns in the long years of her service. She had
grazed all night. Her sides that had been flat were now full. Jenet
had weathered another vicissitude of her life. She stood for a while,
in a doze, with one long ear down over her meek face. Jenet was
waiting for Tappan.

But he did not stir from under the long roll of canvas. Jenet waited.
The winter sun rose, in cold yellow flare. The snow glistened as with
a crusting of diamonds. Somewhere in the distance sounded a
long-drawn, discordant bray.

Jenet's ears shot up. She listened. She recognized the call of one of
her kind. Instinct always prompted Jenet. Sometimes she did bray.
Lifting her gray head she sent forth a clarion _Hee-haw
hee-haw-haw--hee-haw how-e-e-e!_

That stentorian call started the echoes. They pealed down the slope
and rolled out over the open country, clear as a bugle blast, yet
hideous in their discordance. But this morning Tappan did not awaken.

THE END


[The end of _Tappan's Burro_ by Zane Grey]