Those timbered ridges were but billows of that tremendous slope that now sheered above Jean, ending in a magnificent yellow wall of rock, greened in niches, stained by weather rust, carved and cracked and caverned. As Jean descended farther, the hum of bees made melody, the roar of rapid water and the murmur of a rising breeze filled him with the content of the wild. Sheepmen like Colter and wild girls like Ellen Jorth, and all that seemed promising or menacing in his father’s letter, could never change the Indian in Jean. So he thought. Hard upon that conclusion rushed another, one which troubled with its stinging revelation—surely these influences he had defied were just the ones to bring out in him the Indian he had sensed but had never known. The eventful day had brought new and bitter food for Jean to reflect upon.

  The trail landed him in the boulder-strewn bed of a wide cañon, where the large trees stretched a canopy of foliage that denied the sunlight and where a beautiful brook rushed and foamed. Here, at last, Jean tasted water that rivaled his Oregon springs. “Ah!” he cried, “that sure is good!” Dark and shaded and ferny and mossy was this stream’s way, and everywhere were tracks of game, from the giant spread of a grizzly bear to the tiny bird-like imprint of a squirrel. Jean heard familiar sounds of deer cracking the dead twigs, and the chatter of squirrels was incessant. This fragrant cool retreat under the Tonto Rim brought back to him the dim recesses of Oregon forests. After all, Jean felt, he would not miss anything that he had loved in the Oregon Cascades. But what was the vague sense of all not being well with him—the essence of a faint regret—the insistence of a hovering shadow? And then flashed again, etched more vividly by the repetition in memory, a picture of eyes, of lips—of something he had to forget.

  Wild and broken as this rolling basin floor had appeared from the rim, the reality of traveling over it made that first impression a deceit of distance. Down here all was in a big, rough, broken scale. Jean did not find even a few rods of level ground. Boulders as large as houses obstructed the streambed; spruce trees eight feet thick tried to lord it over the brawny pines; the ravine was a veritable cañon, from which occasional glimpses through the foliage showed the rim as a lofty red-tipped mountain peak. Jean’s pack mule became frightened at scent of a bear or lion, and ran off down the rough trail, imperiling Jean’s outfit. It was not an easy task to head him off, nor, when that was accomplished, to keep him to a trot, but his fright and ascending skittishness at least made for fast traveling. Jean calculated that he covered ten miles under the rim before the character of ground and forest began to change.

  The trail had turned southeast. Instead of gorge after gorge, red-walled and choked with forest, there began to be rolling ridges, some high, others mere knolls, and a thick cedar growth made up for a falling off of pine. The spruce had long disappeared. Juniper thickets gave way more and more to the beautiful manzanita, and soon on the south slopes appeared cactus and a scrubby live oak. But for the well-broken trail, Jean would have fared ill through this tough brush.

  Jean espied several deer, and again a coyote, and what he took to be a small herd of wild horses. No more turkey tracks showed in the dusty patches. He crossed a number of tiny brooklets, and at length came to a place where the trail ended or merged in a rough road that showed evidence of considerable travel. Horses, sheep, and cattle had passed along there that day. This road turned southward, and Jean began to have pleasurable expectations.

  The road, like the trail, led down, but no longer at such steep angles and was bordered by cedar and piñon, jack pine and juniper, mescal and manzanita. Quite sharply, going around a ridge, the road led Jean’s eye down to a small open plot of marshy, or at least grassy, ground. This green oasis in the wilderness of red and timbered ridges marked another change in the character of the Tonto Basin. Beyond that the country began to spread out and roll gracefully, its dark green forest interspersed with grassy parks, until Jean headed into a long, wide, gray-green valley surrounded by black-fringed hills. His pulses quickened here. He saw cattle dotting the expanse, and here and there along the edge log cabins and corrals.

  As a village, Grass Valley could not boast of much apparently in the way of population. Cabins and houses were widely scattered, as if the inhabitants did not care to encroach upon one another, but the one store, built of stone and stamped also with the characteristic isolation, seemed to Jean to be a rather remarkable edifice. It did not strike him exactly like a fort, but, if it had not been designed for defense, it certainly gave that impression, especially from the long low side with its dark eye-like windows about the height of a man’s shoulder. Some rather fine horses were tied to a hitching rail. Otherwise, dust and dirt and age and long use stamped this Grass Valley store and its immediate environment.

  Jean threw his bridle and, getting down, mounted the low porch and stepped into the wide-open door. A face, gray against the background of gloom inside, passed out of sight just as Jean entered. He knew he had been seen. In the front of the long, rather low-ceilinged store were four men, all absorbed in a game of checkers. Two were playing and two were looking on. One of these, a gaunt-faced man past middle age, casually looked up as Jean came in, but the moment of that casual glance afforded Jean time enough to meet eyes he instinctively distrusted. They masked their penetration. They seemed neither curious nor friendly. They saw him as if he had been merely thin air.

  “Good evenin’,” said Jean.

  After what appeared to Jean a lapse of time sufficient to impress him with a possible deafness of those men, the gaunt-faced one said: “Howdy, Isbel.”

  The tone was impersonal, dry, easy, cool, laconic, and yet it could not have been more pregnant with meaning. Jean’s sharp sensibilities absorbed much. None of the slouch-sombreroed, long-mustached Texans—for so Jean at once classed them—had ever seen Jean, but they knew him and knew that he was expected in Grass Valley. All but the one who had spoken happened to have their faces in shadow under the wide-brimmed black hats. Motley-garbed, gun-belted, dusty-booted, they gave Jean the same impression of latent force that he had encountered in Colter.

  “Will somebody please tell me where to find my father, Gaston Isbel?” inquired Jean with as civil a tongue as he could command.

  Nobody paid the slightest attention. It was the same as if Jean had not spoken. Waiting, half amused, half irritated, Jean shot a rapid glance around the store. The place had felt bare, and Jean, peering back through gloomy space, saw that it did not contain much. Dry goods and sacks littered a long rude counter; long rough shelves divided their length into stacks of canned foods and empty sections; a torn shelf back of the counter held a generous burden of cartridge boxes and next to it stood a rack of rifles. On the counter lay open cases of plug tobacco, the odor of which was second in strength only to that of rum.

  Jean’s swift-roving eye reverted to the men, only three of whom were still absorbed in the greasy checkerboard. The fourth man was the one who had spoken and he now deigned to look at Jean. There was not much flesh stretched over his long, powerful physiognomy. He stroked a lean chin with a big mobile hand that suggested more of holding a bridle than familiarity with a bucksaw or a plow handle. It was a lazy hand. The man looked lazy. If he spoke at all, it would be with lazy speech. Yet Jean had not encountered many men to whom he would have accorded more potency to stir in him the instinct of self-preservation.

  “Shore,” drawled this gaunt-faced Texan, “old Gass lives aboot a mile down heah.” With a slow sweep of the big hand, he indicated a general direction to the south, then, appearing to forget his questioner, he turned his attention back to the game.

  Jean muttered his thanks, and, striding out, he mounted again, and drove the pack mule farther down the road. “Reckon I’ve run into the wrong folks today,” he said. “If I remember Dad right, he was a man to make an’ keep friends. Somehow I’ll bet there’s goin’ to be hell.” Beyond the store were some rather pretty and comfortable houses, little ranch houses back in the coves of the hills. The road turned west and Jean saw his first sunset in the Tonto Basin. It was a pageant of purple clouds with silver edges and a background of deeply rich gold. Presently Jean met a lad driving a cow. “Hello,” he said genially and with a double purpose. “My name’s Jean Isbel. By Golly, I’m lost in Grass Valley. Will you tell me where my dad lives?”

  “Yep. Keep right on, an’ you cain’t miss him,” replied the lad, with a bright smile. “He’s lookin’ fer you.”

  “How do you know, boy?” queried Jean, warmed by that smile.

  “Aw, I know. It’s all over the valley that you’d ride in today. Shore I was the one that tol’ yer dad an’ he give me a dollar.”

  “Was he glad to hear it?” asked Jean with a queer sensation in his throat.

  “Wal, he plumb was.”

  “An’ who told you I was goin’ to ride in today?”

  “I heered it at the store,” replied the lad with an air of confidence. “Some sheepmen was talkin’ to Greaves. He’s the storekeeper. I was settin’ outside, but I heered. A Mexican come down off the rim terday an’ he fetched the news.” Here the lad looked furtively around, then whispered: “An’ thet greaser was sent by somebody. I never heered no more, but them sheepmen looked pretty sour. An’ one of them, comin’ out, give me a kick, darn him. It shore is the luckedest day fer us cowmen.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Wal, thar’s shore a big fight comin’ to Grass Valley. My dad says so an’ he rides fer your dad. An’ if it comes now, you’ll be heah.”

  “A-huh!” Jean laughed. “An’ what then, boy?”

  The lad turned bright eyes upward. “Aw, now, y’all cain’t try thet on me. Ain’t you an Injun, Jean Isbel? Ain’t you a hoss tracker thet rustlers cain’t fool? Ain’t you a plumb dead shot? Ain’t you wuss’ern a grizzly bear in a rough-an’-tumble? … now ain’t that fer shore?”

  Jean bade the flattering lad a rather sober good day and rode on his way. Manifestly a reputation somewhat difficult to live up to had preceded his entry into the Grass Valley. The first sight of his future home thrilled him through. It was a big, low, rambling log structure standing well out from a wooded knoll at the edge of the valley. Corrals and barns and sheds lay off at the back. To the fore stretched broad pastures where numberless cattle and horses grazed. At sunset the scene was one of rich color. Prosperity and abundance and peace seemed attendant upon that ranch. Lusty voices of burros braying and cows bawling seemed to be welcoming Jean. A hound bayed. The first cool touch of wind fanned Jean’s cheek and brought a fragrance of wood smoke and frying ham.

  Horses in the pasture romped to the fence and whistled at the newcomers. Jean spied a white-faced black horse that gladdened his sight. “Hello, white face, I’ll sure straddle you!” called Jean. Then up the gentle slope he saw the tall figure of his father—the same as he had seen him thousands of times, bare-headed, in shirt sleeves, striding with a long step. Jean waved and called to him.

  “Hi, you prodigal!” came the answer. Yes, the voice of his father—and Jean’s boyhood memories flashed. He hurried his horse those last few rods. No—Dad was not just the same. His hair shone gray.

  “Here I am, Dad!” called Jean, and then he was dismounting. A deep, quiet emotion settled over him, stilling the hurry, the eagerness, the pang in his breast.

  “Son, I shore am glad to see you,” said his father, and wrung his hand. “Wal, wal! The size of you! Shore you’re grown an’ how you favor your mother.”

  Jean felt in the iron clasp of hand, in the uplifting of the handsome head, in the strong, fine light of piercing eyes that there was no difference in the spirit of his father, but the old smile could not hide lines and shades strange to Jean.

  “Dad, I’m as glad as you,” replied Jean heartily. “It seems long we’ve been parted, and now I see you. Are you well, Dad, an’ all right?”

  “Not complainin’, Son. I can ride all day same as ever,” he said. “Come. Never mind your stock. They’ll be looked after. Come, meet the folks … wal, wal, you got heah at last.”

  On the porch of the house a group awaited Jean’s coming, rather silently he thought. Wide-eyed children were there, very shy and watchful. The dark face of his sister corresponded with the image of her in his memory. She appeared taller, more womanly, as she embraced him. “Oh, Jean, Jean, I’m glad you’ve come,” she cried, and pressed him to her. Jean felt in her a woman’s anxiety for the present as well as affection for the past. He remembered his Aunt Mary, although he had not seen her for years. His half-brothers, Bill and Guy, had changed but a little, except perhaps to grow lean and rangy. Bill resembled his father, although his aspect was jocular rather than serious. Guy was smaller, wiry, and hard as rock, with snapping eyes in a brown still face, and he had the bowlegs of a cattleman. Both had married in Arizona. Bill’s wife, Kate, was a stout, comely little woman, mother of three of the children. The other wife was young, a strapping girl, red-headed and freckled, with wonderful lines of pain and strength in her face. Jean remembered as he looked at her that someone had written lines about the tragedy in her life. When she was only a child, the Apaches had murdered all her family. Then, next to greet Jean, were the little children, all shy, yet all manifestly impressed by the occasion. A warmth and intimacy of forgotten family emotions flooded over Jean. Sweet it was to come among these relatives who loved him and welcomed him with quiet gladness. But there seemed more. Jean was quick to see the shadow in the eyes of the women in that household and to sense a strange reliance which his presence brought.

  “Son, this heah Tonto is a land of milk an’ honey,” said his father, as Jean gazed spellbound at the bounteous supper.

  Jean certainly performed gastronomic feats on this occasion, to the delight of Aunt Mary and the wonder of the children. “Oh, he’s starv-ved to death,” whispered one of the little boys to his sister. They had begun to warm to this stranger uncle. Jean had no chance to talk for the mealtime brought a relaxation of restraint and all tried to tell him things at once. In the bright lamplight his father looked easy and happy as he beamed upon Jean.

  After supper the men went into an adjoining room that appeared most comfortable and attractive. It was long and the width of the house with a huge stone fireplace, low ceiling of hewn timbers and walls of the same, small windows with inside shutters of wood, and homemade table and chairs and rugs.

  “Wal, Jean, do you recollect them shootin’ irons?” inquired his father, pointing above the fireplace. Two guns hung on the spreading deer antlers there. One was a musket Jean’s father had used in the War Between the States and the other was a long, heavy, muzzleloading flintlock Kentucky rifle with which Jean had learned to shoot.

  “Reckon I do, Dad,” replied Jean, and, with reverent hands and a rush of memory, he took down the old rifle.

  “Jean, you shore handle thet old arm some clumsy,” said Guy Isbel dryly. Bill added a remark to the effect that perhaps Jean had been leading a luxurious and tame life back there in Oregon, and then added: “But I reckon he’s packin’ that six-shooter like a Texan.”

  “Say, I fetched a gun or two along with me,” replied Jean jocularly. “Reckon I near broke my poor mule’s back with the load of shells an’ guns. Dad, what was the idea askin’ me to pack an arsenal?”

  “Son, shore all shootin’ arms an’ such are at a premium in the Tonto,” replied his father. “An’ I was givin’ you a hunch to come loaded.”

  His cool, drawling voice seemed to put a damper upon the pleasantries. Right there Jean sensed the charged atmosphere. His brothers were bursting with utterance about to break forth, and his father suddenly wore a look that recalled to Jean critical times of days long past, but the entrance of the children and the womenfolks put an end to confidences. Evidently the youngsters were laboring under subdued excitement. They preceded their mother, the smallest boy in the lead. For him this must have been both a dreadful and a wonderful experience, for he seemed to be pushed forward by his sister and brother and mother, and driven by yearnings of his own. “There now, Lee,” the boy’s mother said. “Ask Uncle Jean … what did you fetch us?” The lad hesitated during a shy frightened look at Jean, and then, gaining something from his scrutiny of his uncle, he toddled forward and bravely delivered the question of tremendous importance.

  “What did I fetch you, hey?” cried Jean in delight, as he took the lad up on his knee. “Wouldn’t you like to know? I didn’t forget, Lee. I remembered you all. Oh, the job I had packin’ your bundle of presents.… Now, Lee, make a guess.”

  “I dess you fetched a dun,” replied Lee.

  “A dun! I’ll bet you mean a gun.” Jean laughed. “Well, you four-year-old Texas gunman! Make another guess.”

  That appeared too momentous and entrancing for the other two youngsters, and, adding their shrill and joyous voices to Lee’s, they besieged Jean.

  “Dad, where’s my pack?” cried Jean. “These Apaches are after my scalp.”

  “Reckon the boys fetched it onto the porch,” replied the rancher.

  Guy Isbel opened the door and went out. “By Golly, heah’s three packs,” he called. “Which one do you want, Jean?”

  “It’s a long, heavy bundle all tied up,” replied Jean.

  Guy came staggering in under a burden that brought a whoop from the youngsters and bright gleams to the eyes of the women. Jean lost none of this. How glad he was that he had tarried in San Francisco because of a mental picture of this very reception in far-off wild Arizona!

  When Guy deposited the bundle on the floor, it jarred the room. It gave forth metallic rattling and crackling sounds.

  “Everybody stand back an’ give me elbow room,” ordered Jean majestically. “My good folk, I want you-all to know this is somethin’ that doesn’t happen often. The bundle you see here weighed about a hundred pounds when I packed it on my shoulder down Market Street in Frisco. It was stolen from me on shipboard. I got it back in San Diego an’ licked the thief. It rode on a horse from San Diego to Yuma, an’, well, I thought the burro was lost for keeps. I came up by the Colorado River from Yuma to Ehrenberg, an’ there went on top of a stage. We got chased by bandits, an’ once, when the horses were gallopin’ hard, it near rolled off. Then it went on the back of a pack horse, an’ helped wear him out. An’ I reckon it would be somewheres else now if I hadn’t fallen in with a freighter goin’ north from Phoenix to the Santa Fé Trail. The last lap, when it sagged the back of a mule, was the riskiest an’ full of the narrowest escapes. Twice my mule bucked off his pack an’ left my outfit scattered. Worst of all, my precious bundle made the mule top heavy comin’ down that place back here where the trail seems to drop off the earth. There I was hard put to keep sight of my pack. Sometimes it was on top an’ other times the mule. But it got here at last … an’ now I’ll open it.”