Code of the West. Zane Grey
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get away. I’ll have to send someone to meet her. . . . Dear little golden-haired Georgie!”
Miss Stockwell seemed divided between distress at this sudden vexatious responsibility, and a reviving tender memory of her sister. What would she do with her? How would the Thurmans take this visit? Georgiana had looked very much like an angel, but she most assuredly had belied her appearance. Taking up the letter again, the perplexed schoolmistress hurried to that part which had so shocked her and scattered her wits:
. . . Dr. Smith says Georgie’s right lung is affected, but Dr. Jones, whom father swears by, says Georgie had just danced and gadded herself into a run-down condition. But I think Dr. Smith is right. I never could bear that man Jones. You remember Mrs. Jones—what airs she put on. Anyway, Georgie is in a bad way, besides being possessed of a variety of devils.
Daughter, you’ve been away from home going on six years, and part of the time you’ve been living in the backwoods. You’ve been better off, thank Heavens, but you’re buried alive as far as knowing what’s come over the world. Since you left we’ve had the Great War, and then after-the-war, which was worse. I’m sure I don’t know how to explain what has happened. At least I can give you some idea of Georgiana. She is now seventeen, and pretty. She knows more than you, who are twice her age. She knows more than I do. Whatever the modern girl has developed, Georgie has it. It seems to me that no one can help loving her. This is not a mother’s foolish vanity. It’s based on what I see and hear. All our friends love Georgie. And as for the boys—the young men—they are wild about her, and she does her best to keep them that way. I hate to admit it, but Georgie is an outrageous flirt.
But to come to the point—Georgiana absolutely will have her own way. All these modern girls are alike in this respect. They say we parents are “out of date,” “we do not understand.”—Perhaps they are right. Father thinks Georgie has not been held back by any restraint or anything we have tried to teach her. But worried and sick and frightened as I am about Georgie, I can’t believe she is really bad. I realize, though, that this may be merely a mother’s faith or blindness or vanity.
Georgiana has graduated from high school. We want her to work. But she will never work in Erie, and perhaps any hard application now—if Georgie could perform such a miracle—might be worse for her health.
Friends of ours, the Wayburns, are motoring to California, and offered to take Georgie West with them. You may be sure we grasped desperately and hopefully at the idea of sending her. That thrilled her. We are not so well off as formerly. But we made sacrifices and got Georgie all she wanted, and we will arrange to pay her board indefinitely out there. Maybe the West you tell so wonderfully about will cure her and be her salvation. Most assuredly her coming will be a trial for you. But, daughter, we beg of you—accept it, and do your best—for Georgie’s sake.
The second perusal of that amazing letter left Miss Stockwell saddened and thoughtful, but free of her former perplexity and worry. Her mother had done her best. If Georgiana could stand the rugged, virile, wild Tonto Basin, she would not only regain her health, but she would grow away from the falseness and over-sophistication that followed the war. Buried in the wilderness as Miss Stockwell had been, nevertheless she had kept up an active interest in the outside world. And all that periodicals could supply of information concerning news and progress of the times she had assimilated. Not improbably, she understood better that precocious new American type—the modern girl—than did her mother. She welcomed the coming of her sister. It might be difficult for her, but that did not matter. It could not help but be good for Georgiana.
Then suddenly she was confronted with another aspect of the case—the effect Georgiana would have on this environment, on the Thurmans, and all these good simple primitive people who must come in contact with her sister. She had grown fond of the Tonto and its rugged simplicity. She had long been conscious of how she was helping the children, and through them their parents. Was there not a deeper and more personal reason why she had become content with life there? A warmth tingled in her cheeks as she shirked the query. But in regard to Georgiana—there was bound to be an upheaval at Green Valley. Georgiana might pursue the audacious tenor of her frivolous life back there in Erie, but she could not do it in Arizona. Miss Stockwell vaguely realized how impossible it would be, though she could not then tell just why.
But the thought brought home to her a true appreciation of the boys and young men with whom she had become acquainted. The sons of the three Thurman families she knew especially well, for she had lived a year in their homes. Young men all, mostly in their early twenties, they were; though Enoch Thurman was over thirty, and Serge, his cousin, was a few years younger. All of them were hard riders of the high bare ranges of the Tonto. Only one of them had a wife. And sweethearts were so scarce that the boys were always fighting over one. They drove cattle in all seasons, helping one another, hewed timber, tilled and harvested fields of corn and sorghum, hunted the bears and lions that preyed on their stock. And the money they earned, which was not much, they gave to their mother. Seldom did any of them ride farther from their homesteads than Ryson. The lure of city life had not penetrated here. Several of the Thurmans had been in the training-camps during the war, and one of them, Boyd Thurman, the best rider, roper, axman, and hunter of the lot, had seen service in France. He had returned uninjured, and seemingly unchanged by all he had gone through. That fact, more than any Miss Stockwell could name, marked the individuality of the Thurmans and the character of the Tonto. Old Henry Thurman was wont to brag: “Nary a black mark ag’in’ Boyd—in camp or war!”
During her years of teaching in the Tonto, Miss Stockwell had never seen a Thurman, or any of their relatives, under the influence of liquor. They did not lie. If they made a promise it would be kept. Clean, fine, virile, manly young giants they all seemed to her. They smoked cigarettes, of their own making, and they would fight at the drop of a sombrero. They were cool, easy, tranquil, contented young backwoodsmen, strong and resourceful in the open, full of a latent fire and reserve force seldom called upon. They loved jokes, tricks, and dances. Among these hardy and daring young mountaineers a girl of Georgiana’s kind would be like a firebrand in the grass of the prairie.
The sharp clip-clop of trotting horses outside on the road interrupted Miss Stockwell’s meditations. The riders were returning from the range. She thought it would be well for her to go out at once and make arrangements with one of the boys to go to Ryson next day to meet the stage.
“I wonder what Georgie will think of this ranch,” mused Miss Stockwell, as she went out.
The old ranch house, part logs and part frame, moss-covered and weather-beaten, with its rambling additions shaded by trees, had grown to be a picturesque and satisfying sight to her. But at first it had struck her, as had almost everything, as crude and primitive, and suggestive of raw pioneer life.
She walked back of the house, through the yard, where chickens and calves and dogs had free access, to the corrals. They were huge round pens, made of bare poles, growing old and dilapidated now. The gates were made of roughly sawed yellow-pine boards from Henry’s sawmill. Enoch’s white mule, old Wise, came toward her. He was a famous mule in Arizona, past his prime now, but still vigorous. His color was a speckled white, and he was far from beautiful. But he had a keen well-formed head and most intelligent eyes. Old Wise was renowned for many things, but especially for his kick. But he would not kick anyone he liked, and he certainly adored Miss Stockwell. This day, however, she had no sugar or candy for him, and passed the old beast by with a pat and a pull of his long ears.
The adjoining corral was large, and always, in spite of its space, had been a bewildering place to Miss Stockwell. One corner was heaped full of old wagons, buggies, farm implements, and worn-out autos, so that it was merely a junkheap. A long rambling barn ran the whole length of the corral, and in fact constituted the barrier on that side. Like the house, additions had been built to it from time to time, so that it seemed a jumble of peaks, roofs, lofts, and wide-open doors showing broken stalls. The corral was crowded with dusty rolling horses. These features, perhaps, were what usually bewildered Miss Stockwell, though she liked to see the sweaty horses roll. They manifestly enjoyed it so hugely. They would bend their legs, lie down on one side, and groan and heave and strain until they rolled clear over. Then they would lunge, snorting, to their feet, and with a violent wrestling