Dorn Of The Mountains by Zane Grey Read Free Book Online Page A

Bo.
    “My uncle once said in a letter that he never had enough men to run his ranch,” replied Helen, smiling.
    “Shore, I’ll go. I reckon I’d jest naturally drift thet way…now.”
    He seemed so laconic, so easy, so nice that he could not be taken seriously, yet Helen’s quick perceptions registered a daring, a something that was both sudden and inevitable in him. His last word was as clear as the soft look he fixed upon Bo.
    Helen had a mischievous trait, which, subdue it as she would, occasionally cropped out, and Bo, who once in her willful life had been rendered speechless, offered such a temptation.
    “Maybe my little sister will put in a good word for you…to Uncle Al,” said Helen.
    Just then the train jerked and started slowly. The cowboy took two long strides beside the car, his heated boyish face almost on a level with the window, his eyes, now shy and a little wistful, yet bold, fixed upon Bo.
    “Good bye… sweetheart! ” he called. He halted—was lost to view.
    “Well!” ejaculated Helen contritely, half sorry and half amused. “What a sudden young gentleman!”
    Bo had blushed beautifully. “Nell, wasn’t he glorious?” she burst out, with eyes shining.
    “I’d hardly call him that, but he was…nice,” replied Helen, much relieved that Bo had apparently not taken offense at her.
    It appeared plain that Bo resisted a frantic desire to look out of the window and to wave her hand. But she only peeped out, manifestly to her disappointment.
    “Do you think he…he’ll come to Uncle Al’s?” asked Bo.
    “Child, he was only in fun.”
    “Nell, I’ll bet you he comes…. Oh, it’d be great! I’m going to love cowboys. They don’t look like that Harve Riggs who ran after you so.”
    Helen sighed, partly because of the reminder of her odious suitor, and partly because Bo’s future already called mysteriously to the child. Helen had to be at once a mother and a protector to a girl of intense and willful spirit.
    One of the train men directed the girls’ attention to a green sloping mountain rising to bold blunt bluff of bare rock, and, calling it Starvation Peak, he told a story of how Indians had once driven Spaniards up there and starved them. Bo was intensely interested, and thereafter she watched more keenly than ever, and always had a question for a passing train man. The adobe houses of the Mexicans pleased her, and when the train got into Indian country, where pueblos appeared near the track and Indians with their bright colors and shaggy wild mustangs—then she was enraptured.
    “But these Indians are peaceful!” she exclaimed once, regretfully.
    “Gracious, child! You don’t want to see hostile Indians, do you?” queried Helen.
    “I do, you bet,” was the frank rejoinder.
    “Well, I’ll bet that I’ll be sorry I didn’t leave you with Mother.”
    “Nell…you never will!”
    They reached Albuquerque about noon, and this important station, where they had to change trains, had been the first dreaded anticipation of the journey. It certainly was a busy place—full of jabbering Mexicans, stalking red-faced wicked-looking cowboys, lolling Indians. In the confusion Helen would have been hard put to it to preserve calmness, with Bo to watch, and all that baggage to carry, and the other train to find, but the kindly train man who had been attentive to them now helped them off the train into the other—a ser vice for which Helen was very grateful.
    “Albuquerque’s a hard place,” confided the train man. “Better stay in the car…and don’t hang out the windows…. Good luck to you!”
    Only a few passengers were in the car and they were Mexicans at the forward end. This branch train consisted of the one passenger coach, with a baggage car, attached to a string of freight cars. Helen told herself, somewhat grimly, that soon she would know surely whether or not her suspicions of Harve Riggs had warrant. If he was going on to Magdalena on that day, he must go in this