Grey Nevada

1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5183-1047-8
Verlag: Krill Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 358 Seiten

Zane Grey (1872 - 1939) was an American author best known for writing Western novels, with his most famous being Riders of the Purple Sage. That work is widely considered the greatest Western ever written, and Grey remains one of the most famous authors of the genre. Grey also wrote many other novels on fishing and baseball.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Grey, Zane

Leseproben

CHAPTER ONE
.................. AS HIS GOADED HORSE PLUNGED into the road, Nevada looked back over his shoulder. The lane he had plowed through the crowd let him see back into the circle where the three men lay prostrate. The blue smoke from his gun was rising slowly, floating away. Ben Ide’s face shone white and convulsed in the sunlight. “So long, Pard!” yelled Nevada, hoarsely, and stood in his stirrups to wave his sombrero high. That, he thought, was farewell forever to this friend who had saved and succored and uplifted him, whom he loved better than a brother. Then Nevada faced the yellow road down which his horse was racing, and the grim and terrible mood returned to smother the heart-swelling emotion which had momentarily broken it. There was something familiar and mocking about this precipitate flight on a swift horse, headed for the sage and the dark mountains. How often had he felt the wind sting his face on a run for his life! But it was not fear now, nor love of life, that made him a fugitive. The last gate of the ranch was open, and Nevada flashed through it to turn off the road into the sage and go flying down the trail along the shore of the lake. The green water blurred on one side of him and the gray sage on the other. Even the winding trail was indistinct to eyes that still saw red. There was no need now for this breakneck ride. To be sure, the officers of the law would eventually get on his track, as they had been for years; but thought of them scarcely lingered a moment in his consciousness. The action of a swift and powerful horse seemed to be necessary to the whirling of his mind. Thoughts, feelings, sensations regurgitated around that familiar cold and horrible sickness of soul which had always followed the spilling of human blood and which this time came back worse than ever. The fierce running of the horse along the levels, around the bends of the trail, leaping washes, plunging up and down the gullies, brought into tense play all Nevada’s muscular force. It seemed like a mad race away from himself. Burning and wet all over, he gradually surrendered to physical exertion. Five miles brought horse and rider far around to the other side of the lake. Here the trail wound down upon the soft sand, where the horse slowed from run to trot, and along the edge of the lake, where the midday sun had thawed the ice. Nevada had a break in his strained mood. He saw the deep hoof tracks of horses along the shore, and the long cuts and scars on the ice, where he and Ben and the freed outlaws had run that grand wild stallion, California Red, to his last plunge and fall. Nevada could not help but think, as he passed that place, and thrill as he remembered the strange lucky catch of the wild horse Ben Ide loved so well. What a trick for fortune to play! How mad Ben had been—to bargain with the rustlers they had captured—to trade their freedom for the aid they gave in running down the red stallion! Yet mad as that act had been, Nevada could only love Ben the more. Ben was the true wild-horse hunter. Nevada reached the bluff where Forlorn River lost itself in the lake, and climbed the sloping trail to the clump of trees and the cabin where he and Ben had lived in lonely happiness. Ben, the outcast son of a rich rancher of Tule Lake—and he, the wandering, fugitive, crippled gunman, whom Ben had taken in with only one question. “Where you from?” Ben had asked. “Nevada,” had been the reply. And that had been the only name by which Ben had ever known him. It was all over now. Nevada dismounted from his wet and heaving horse. “Wal, Baldy,” he said, throwing the bridle, “heah we are. Reckon the runnin’s aboot over.” And he sank heavily upon the porch step, pushed his sombrero back to run a hand through his wet hair, smoothing it away from his heated brow. He gazed across the lake toward the dots on the far gray slope—the dots that were the cabins and barns of the Blaine ranch. With the wrench which shook him then, the last of that icy nausea—that cold grip from bowels to heart—released its cramping hold and yielded to the softening human element in Nevada. It would have been better for him if that sinister fixity of mind had not passed away, because with its passing came a slow-growing agony. “Reckon I cain’t set heah mopin’ like an owl,” soliloquized Nevada, getting up. “Shore, the thing’s done. An’ I wouldn’t have it otherwise. . . . Dear old Ben!” But he could not just yet enter the cabin where he had learned the glory of friendship. “He was the only pard I ever had, except a hoss or two. . . . Wal, Ben’s name is cleared now—thank God. Old Amos Ide knows the truth now an’ he’ll have to beg forgiveness of Ben. Gosh! how good that’ll be! But Ben, he’ll never rub it in on the old gent. He’ll be soft an’ easy. . . . Hart Blaine will know, too, an’ he’ll have to come round to the boy. They’ll all have to crawl for callin’ Ben a rustler. . . . Ben will marry Ina now—an’ he’ll be rich. He’s got California Red, too, an’ he’ll be happy.” From the lake Nevada gazed away across Forlorn River, over the gray sage hills, so expressive of solitude, over the black ranges toward the back country, the wilderness whence he had come and to which he must return. To the hard life, the scant fare, the sordid intimacy of crooked men and women, to the border of Nevada, where he had a bad name, where he could never sleep in safety, or wear a glove on his gun-hand! But at that moment Nevada had not one regret. He was sustained and exalted by the splendid consciousness that he had paid his debt to his friend. He had saved Ben from prison, cleared his name of infamy, given him back to Ina Blaine, and killed his enemies. Whatever had been the evil of Nevada’s life before he met Ben, whatever might be the loneliness and bitterness of the future, neither could change or mitigate the sweetness and glory of the service he had rendered. Nevada went into the cabin. He had expected to find it as always, clean and neat and comfortable. The room, however, was in rude disorder. It had been ransacked by violent hands. The pseudo-sheriffs, who had come at the beck of Less Setter to arrest Ben, had not hesitated to stoop to thievery. They had evidently searched the cabin for money, or anything of value. Nevada gazed ponderingly around on this disorder. “Wal,” he muttered, grimly, “I reckon Less Setter won’t be rammin’ around heah any more—or any other place short of hell!” With that remark Nevada strode out and down the path to the corrals. There were horses in at the watering trough. He caught one, and securing packsaddle and packs, he returned to the cabin. Here he hurriedly gathered his belongings and food, blankets, ammunition. Then mounting his horse he drove the pack animal ahead of him, and rode down to the shallow ford across Forlorn River. “Shore, Ben will always keep this ranch as we had it,” he mused. “An’ he’ll come heah often.” Hot tears fell from Nevada’s eyes, the first he had shed since his orphaned boyhood, so dim and far away. It was no use to turn his eyes again to the little gray cabin half hidden among the trees, for he could not see. But as he rode up the river his tears dried, and he saw the pasture where the horses he had owned with Ben raised their heads to look and to neigh. From a ridge top a mile or more up the lonely river, Nevada gazed back at the cabin for the last time. Something surer than his intelligence told him that he would never see it again. The moment was poignant. It opened a door into his mind, which let in the fact he had so stubbornly resisted—that when he bade good-by to the little cabin it was not only good-by to it and to his friend, but to the most precious of all that had ever entered his life—Hettie Ide. Nevada made that farewell, and then rode on, locked in thought which took no notice of the miles and the hours. Sunset brought him to an awareness of the proximity of night and the need of suitable camp for himself and his animals. While crossing the river, now a shallow rod-wide stream, he let the horses drink. On the other side he dismounted to fill his waterbag and canteen. Then he rode away from the river and trail in search of a secluded spot. He knew the country, and before long reached a valley up which he traveled some distance. There was no water and therefore an absence of trails. Riding through a thicket of slender oaks, which crossed the narrowing valley, he halted in a grassy dell to make his camp. His well-trained horses would not stray beyond the grass plot, and there was little chance of the eyes of riders seeing his camp fire. How strange to be alone again! Yet such loneliness had been a greater part of his life before he chanced upon Ben Ide. From time to time Nevada’s hands fell idle and he stood or knelt motionless while thought of the past held him. In spite of this restlessness of spirit he was hungry and ate heartily. By the time his few camp chores were done, night had fallen, pitch black, without any stars. Then came the hour he dreaded—that hour at the camp fire when the silence and solitude fell oppressively upon him. Always in his lonely travels this had been so, but now they were vastly greater and...