Jim and his men rode throughout the night in vain. Nowhere could they
come on any trace of the fugitives. There was as yet no telephone
installed in this newly settled region. But their search was thorough.
There were inquiries at the railway stations in the various towns round
about. At none of these had ought been seen of Dan McGrew and woman and
child. Jim found himself baffled in his quest. He could not guess that
the wife who had thus deserted him was lying in a stupor, from which she
aroused only to rave over a lost husband and a dead child. He could not
know that she had broken under the stress of sorrow, and was being
ministered unto by a kindly woman to whom Dan McGrew had told many lies,
in order to enlist her sympathetic aid. Even had his inquiries reached
the very house in which Lou was sheltered, he would still have been
deceived. For he sought a mother and her child: and here was no child.
So, the hunt availed nothing. The three who fled had vanished utterly.
There came not even a rumor as to their whereabouts. They were gone as
completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed them up.
Nevertheless, Jim was not slow in learning something of the truth. He
was told of Dan's visit at the ranch that fatal day, and of his wife's
accompanying this visitor to the town. Those there were who had seen the
two as they dismounted at Murphy's saloon, and looked in through the
window. Jim, remembering his own experiences of that day in the back
room of the saloon, was aroused to suspicion of the fact. He got from
the bar-keeper details as to what had occurred. The fellow's reference,
jestingly made, to the manner in which Jim and the woman, Jess, had
embraced, gave him a sudden illumination concerning the plot of Dan
McGrew by which his wife had been beguiled.
Straightway, Jim hunted out Fingie Whalen's woman. She would have
denied, but, in the face of the injured husband's rage, she was fairly
terrified into confession. In the end, the woman wrote at Jim's
dictation, even as she had written at the dictation of Dan McGrew. But,
now, she wrote without any smirk of vicious satisfaction--with a face
pallid and with fingers that trembled from fear of the fierce-visaged
man who stood over her in stern and menacing domination. Fingie Whalen,
all his bluster gone, looked on in timid consternation, cringing from
the baleful threat in the eyes of the man mortally wronged.
[Illustration: SHE WOULD HAVE DENIED, BUT WAS FAIRLY TERRIFIED INTO
CONFESSION.]
The painted woman was so moved by the anger of the man whom she had
helped betray, that, for the first time in more years than she would
have cared to tell, she revealed the name with which, back in a quiet
New England village, she had been christened by simple, God-fearing
parents.
This was the note of confession, which the woman wrote at Jim's
command, duly dated, and witnessed by Fingie Whalen and the landlady of
the house, who was summoned for the purpose. Jim realized that these
formalities were extravagant, but, somehow, they seemed necessary to him
just then, to put this evidence of the crime against his home and
happiness beyond cavil of doubt.
I, Anne Weston, confess to tricking Jim Maxwell and deceiving
his wife at the instigation of Dan McGrew. McGrew hired Fingie
Whalen and me to help him fool Mrs. Maxwell. I wrote the note
signed "Jess." At the time when Mr. Maxwell was due to arrive
in town, I was all ready, and as he came by fell from my horse
as if I had fainted. He carried me into the saloon, and then
Fingie gave him knock-out drops, and we fixed it up so that
when McGrew came with Mrs. Maxwell and looked in at the window,
it was as if we were loving together. But it was all a lie,
worked out by Dan McGrew to make Mrs. Maxwell believe her
husband was false to her.
ANNE WESTON.
Jim carried that paper in his pocket. It was the document with which he
would prove to Lou how she had been deluded. But the days passed, and
there came no opportunity to show her the sheet of paper on which Anne
Weston had scrawled her confession. He used every means at his command,
but he was powerless to gain any trace of the woman whom he had loved
and lost through despicable treachery.
It was on the fourth day after Lou had fled her home, that Jim Maxwell
seated himself at the piano in the living-room. Hitherto, he had been so
occupied in the vain effort to find his wife that he had been, in some
measure, unappreciative of the misery that was upon him. Now, when he
had exhausted every resource of activity, he suddenly felt the
desolation of his home--the ruin of his life. With his instinct toward
the musical expression of moods, he took his place before the
instrument.
Then, again, that glorious love-lyric came softly sonorous from the
keys. The lilt of the melody rose and fell with a subtle vigor, instinct
with the joy of life. The delicate tenderness of the music throbbed the
story of a love complete and enduring. There was passion in the rhythm.
It was a passion ennobled and purified by the intricate harmonies woven
around and within it. It was a song of the spirit. It was overlaid with
a splendor of sensuous sound. There was nothing gross--only the fullness
of life.... Jim was playing with exquisite art that song of happiness
which he had improvised on the day he received the news of Dan McGrew's
coming.
Now, after he had followed the melody to its end, the truth, which
during the moments of his playing he had forgotten, crashed upon him in
a discord so horrible that he could not touch the keys to voice
it--could only sit, moveless, listening to the din within his own soul
in an ecstasy of despair.
Often, again, in the years to come, Jim Maxwell played that same melody.
Always, he was searching for the wife whom he had loved and lost. Men
whose eyes were sharp noted him here and there around the world,
because he seemed so uninterested in everything, and because so often
his left hand touched his breast.... In the pocket there, he carried,
ready for Lou's reading, the confession signed by Anne Weston--the woman
Jess.
And, in the years as they passed, Jim Maxwell gained something of
reputation for another thing. He traveled the world over; he had money
enough. His foreman was competent. Even without his personal attendance,
the revenues from the ranch increased year by year. He lived for only
two things: to find Lou and prove to her his innocence--and to kill the
man who had betrayed them. In his search, Jim Maxwell went everywhere.
He was known in the capitals of Europe; he was known in the wild places
of the earth. Men spoke of him, though they had little acquaintance with
him. The reason they spoke of him was because on occasion--it might be
in the parlor of some sailor's lodging-house in Vladivostok, or it might
be in a drawing-room of the Savoy, this man would seat himself at the
piano, and he would play. And, always, he played the self-same melody, a
lilting air of love and tenderness, filled full of the joy of life.
Always, too, the melody was embroidered over with an intricate web of
harmonies, magnificent, yet somber. And, in the end, always, the player
beat suddenly upon the keys a frenzy of discord.