A RESCUE
Helen Messiter was left alone until darkness fell, when the Cheyenne
squaw brought in a kerosene lamp and shortly afterward her supper. The
woman either could not or would not speak English, and her only answer
to her captive’s advances was by sullen grunts. At the expiration of
half an hour she returned for the dishes, locking the door after her
when she left.
The room itself was comfortable enough. It was evidently Bannister’s
own, judging from its contents. Two or three rifles hung in racks. On
top of the bookcase was a half-filled tobacco pouch and several pipes,
all of them lying carelessly on a pile of music which ran from Verdi to
ragtime. In his books she found the same shallow catholicity. Side by
side with Montaigne’s “Essays,” a well-worn Villon in thé original,
Stevenson’s “Letters” and “Anna Karenina,” dozens of paper-covered
novels, mostly the veriest trash, held their disreputable own. Some of
them were French, others detective stories, still others melodramatic
tales of love. The piano was an expensive one, but not in the best of
tune. Everything in the room contributed to the effect of capacity
untempered by discipline and discrimination. Plainly he was a man of
taste who had outraged and deadened his power of differentiation by
abuse.
For Helen the silent night was alive with alarms. The moaning of the
wind, the slightest rustle outside, the creaking of a board, were
enough to set her heart wildly beating. She did not undress, but by the
light of her dim, ragged wick sought for composure from the pages of
Montaigne and Stevenson. When the first gray day streaks came she was
still reading, but with their coming she blew out her light and lay
down. She fell asleep at once, and it was five hours later that the
knock of her attendant awakened her from heavy slumber.
With the bright sunlit day she was again mistress of her nerves,
prepared to meet resolutely whatever danger might confront her. But the
morning passed quietly enough, and after lunch the Indian woman led her
into the little valley promenade in front of the buildings and sat down
on a rock while her captive enjoyed the sunshine.
The course of Helen’s saunterings took her toward the rock slide that
made the gateway of the valley. She was wondering if it could have been
left unguarded, when a rough voice warned her back. Looking round, she
caught sight of a man seated cross-legged on a great boulder. It took
only a second glance to certify that the man was her former foreman,
Judd Morgan.
She had never seen anything more malevolent than his triumph.
“Better stay in the valley, Miss Messiter. Y’u might right easily get
lost outside,” he jeered.
Without reply she turned her back on him and began to retrace her way
to the house. Stung by her contempt, he sprang up and strode after her.
“So y’u won’t speak to me, eh? Think yourself too good to speak to a
common everyday God damned white man, do y’u?”
Apparently she did not know he was on the map. In a fury he caught at
her shoulder and whirled her round.
“Now, by God, do y’u see me? I’m Judd Morgan, the man y’u kicked off
the Lazy D. I told y’u then y’u were going to be sorry long as y’u
lived.”
“Don’t you dare touch me, you hound!” Her blazing eyes menaced him so
fiercely that he hesitated.
There was the sound of a quick, light step running toward them. Morgan
half turned, was caught in a grip of steel and hurled headlong among a
pile of broken rocks.
“Y’u would dare, would y’u?” panted his assailant, passionately, ready
to obliterate the offender if he showed fight.
Morgan got up slowly, his head bleeding from contact with the sharp
rocks. There was murder in his bloodshot eye, but he knew his master,
and after trying vainly to face him down he swung away with an oath.
“I’ll have to apologize for that coyote, Miss Messiter. These fellows
need a hint occasionally as to how to behave,” said Bannister.
“Your hints are rather forceful, are they not?”
“I ain’t running a Sunday school,” he admitted.
“So I have gathered. I wonder where he learned to bully women,” she
mused aloud.
“Putting it another way, you think there ought to be some one to
apologize for his master.”
He was smiling at her without the least rancor, and it came on her with
a woman’s swift instinct that safety lay in humoring his volatile moods
and diverting him from those that were dangerous.
“Since I’m a prisoner of war I wouldn’t dare think that—not aloud, at
least. You might starve me,” she told him, saucily.
“Still, down in your heart y’u think—”
“That there is a great deal of difference between master and man. One
is a gentleman in his best moments; the other is always a ruffian.”
She had touched his vanity. As he walked beside her she could almost
see his complacency purr.
“I’m a miscreant, I reckon, but I was a gentleman first.”
Fortunately he did not see the flash of veiled scorn she shot at him
under her long lashes.
With her breakfast next morning the Cheyenne woman brought a note
signed “Shepherd-of-the-Desert.” In it Bannister asked permission to
pay his respects. The girl divined that he was in his better mood, and
penciled on his note the favor she could scarce refuse.
But she was scarcely prepared for the impudent air of jocund spring he
brought into her prison, the gay assumption of _camaraderie_ so
inconsistent with the facts. Yet since safety lay in an avoidance of
the tragic, she set herself to match his mood.
At sight of the open Tennyson on the table he laughed and quoted:
She only said, “The day is dreary.”
“He cometh not,” she said.
“But, you see, he comes,” he added. “What say, Mariana of the Robbers’
Roost, to making a picnic day of it? We’ll climb the Crags and lunch on
the summit.”
“The Crags?”
“That Matterhorn-shaped peak that begins at our back door. Are you for
it?”
While this mood was uppermost in him she felt reasonably safe. It was a
phase of him she certainly did not mean to discourage. Besides, she had
a youthful confidence in her powers that she was loath to give up
without an effort to find the accessible side of his ruthless heart.
“I’ll try it; but you must help me when we come to the bad places,” she
said.
“Sure thing! It’s a deal. You’re a right good mountaineer, I’ll bet.”
“Thank you ; but you had better save your compliments till I make
good,” she told him, with the most piquant air of gayety in the world.
They started on horseback, following a mountain trail that zigzagged
across the foothills toward the Crags. He had unearthed somewhere a
boy’s saddle that suited her very well, and the pony she rode was one
of the easiest she had ever mounted. At the end of an hour’s ride they
left the horses and began the ascent on foot. It was a stiff climb,
growing steeper as they ascended, but Helen Messiter had not tramped
over golf links for nothing. She might grow leg weary,’ but she would
not cry “Enough!” And he, on his part, showed the tactful consideration
for the resources of her strength he had already taught her to expect
from that other day’s experience on the plains. It was a very rare hand
of assistance that he offered her, but often he stopped to admire the
beautiful view that stretched for many miles below them, in order that
she might get a minute’s breathing space.
Once he pointed out, far away on the horizon, a bright gleam that
caught the sunlight like a heliograph.
“That’s the big rock slide back of the Lazy, D,” he explained.
She drew a long breath, and flashed a stealthy look at him.
“It’s a long way from here, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t find it so far last time I took the trip—not the last half of
the journey, anyhow,” he answered.
“You’re very complimentary. I was only wondering whether I could find
it if I should manage to escape.”
He stroked his black mustache and smiled gallantly at her. “I reckon I
won’t let so pretty a prisoner escape.”
“Do you expect me to burden your hospitality forever and a day?
Wouldn’t that be a little too much of Mariana of the Robbers’ Roost?”
she asked, lightly.
“I’m willing to risk it.”
He looked with half-shut smoldering eyes at her slender exquisiteness,
so instinct with the vital charm of sex. There was veiled passion in
his eyes, but there was in them, too, a desire to stand well with her.
He meant to win her, but if possible he would win with her own
reluctant consent. She must bring him with hesitant feet a heart
surrendered in spite of her pride and flinty puritanism. The vanity of
the man craved a victory that should be of the spirit as well as of the
flesh.
Deftly she guided the conversation back to less dangerous channels. In
this the increasing difficulty of the climb assisted her, for after
they reached the last ascent sustained talk became impossible.
“See that trough above us near the summit?. Y’u’ll have to hang on by
your eyelashes, pardner.” He always burlesqued the word of comradeship
a little to soften its familiarity.
“Dear me! Is it that bad?”
“It is so bad that at the top y’u have to jump for a grip and draw
yourself up by your arms.”
“I’ll never be able to do it.”
“I’m here to help.”
“But if one should miss?”
He shrugged. “Ah! That’s a theological question. If the sky pilots
guess right, for y’u heaven and for me hell.”
They negotiated the trough successfully to its uptilted end. She had a
bad moment when he leaped for the rock rim above from the narrow ledge
on which they stood. But he caught it, drew himself up without the
least trouble and turned to assist her. He sat down on the rock edge
facing the abyss beneath them, and told her to lock her hands together
above his left foot. Then slowly, inch by inch, he drew her up till
with one of his hands he could catch her wrist. A moment later she was
standing on his rigid toes, from which position she warily edged to
safety above.
“Well done, little pardner. You’re the first woman ever climbed the
Crags.” He offered a hand to celebrate the achievement.
“If I am it is all due to you, big pardner. I could never have made
that last bit alone.”
They ate lunch merrily in the pleasant sunlight, and both of them
seemed as free from care as a schoolboy on a holiday.
“It’s good to be alive, isn’t it?” he asked her after they had eaten,
as he lay on the warm ground at her feet. “And what a life it is here!
To be riding free, with your knees pressing a saddle, in the wind and
the sun. There’s something in a man to which the wide spaces call. I’d
rather lie here in the sunbeat with you beside me than be a king. You
remember the ‘Last Ride’ that fellow Browning tells about? I reckon
he’s dead right. If a man could only capture his best moments and hold
them forever it would be heaven to the _n_th degree.”
She studied her sublimated villain with that fascination his vagaries
always excited in her. Was ever a more impossible combination put
together than this sentimental scamp with the long record of evil?
“Say it,” he laughed.” Whang it out I ask, anything you like, pardner.”
Pluckily daring, she took him at his word. “I was only wondering at the
different men I find in you. Before I have known you a dozen hours I
discover in you the poet and the man of action, the schoolboy and the
philosopher, the sentimentalist and the cynic, and—may I say it?—the
gentleman and the blackguard. One feels a sense of loss. You should
have specialized. You would have made such a good soldier, for
instance. Pity you didn’t go to West Point.”
“Think so?” He was immensely flattered at her interest in him.
“Yes. You surely missed your calling. You were born for a soldier;
cavalry, I should say. What an ornament to society you would have been
if your energies had found the right vent! But they didn’t find it—and
you craved excitement, I suppose. Perhaps you had to go the way you
did.”
“Therefore I am what I am? Please particularize.”
“I can’t, because I don’t understand you. But I think this much is
true, that you have set yourself against all laws of God and man. Yet
you are not consistent, since you are better than your creed. You tell
yourself there shall be no law for you but your own will, and you find
there is, something in you stronger than desire that makes you shrink
at many things. You can kill in fair fight, but you can’t knife a man
in the back, can you?”
“I never have.”
“You have a dreadfully perverted set of rules, but you play by them.
That’s why I know I’m safe with you, even when you are at your worst.”
She announced this boldly, just as if she had no doubts.
“Oh, you know you’re safe, do you?”
“Of course I do. You were once a gentleman and you can’t forget it
entirely. That’s the weakness in your philosophy of total depravity.”
“You speak with an assurance you don’t always feel, I reckon. And I
expect I wouldn’t bank too much on those divinations of yours, if I
were you.” He rolled over so that he could face her more directly.
“You’ve been mighty frank, Miss Messiter, and I take off my hat to your
sand. Now I’m going to be frank awhile. You interest me. I never met a
woman that interested me so much. But you do a heap more than interest
me. No, you sit right there and listen. Your cheeky pluck and that
insolent, indifferent beauty of yours made a hit with me the first
minute I saw you that night. I swore I’d tame you, and that’s why I
brought you to the ranch. Your eye flashed a heap too haughty for me to
give you the go-by. Mind you, I meant to be master. I meant to make you
mine as much as that dog that licked my hand before we started. What I
meant then I still mean, but in a different way.
“That’s as far as it went with me then, but before we reached here next
day I knew the thing cut deeper with me. I ain’t saying that I love
you, because I’m a sweep and it’s just likely I don’t know passion from
love. But I’ll tell you this—there hasn’t been a waking moment since
then I haven’t been on fire to be with you. That’s why I stayed away
until I knew I wasn’t so likely to slop over. But here, I’m doing it
right this minute. I care more for you than I do for anything else on
this earth. But that makes it worse for you. I never cared for anybody
without bringing ruin on them. I broke my mother’s heart and spoiled
the life of a girl I was going to marry. That’s the kind of scoundrel I
am. Even if I can make you care for me—and I reckon I can if y’u are
like other women—I’ll likely drag you through hell after me.”
The simulation of despair in his beautiful eyes spoke more impressively
than his self-scorning words. She was touched in spite of herself,
despite, too, his colossal egotism. For there is an appeal about the
engaging sinner that drums in a woman’s head and calls to her heart.
All good women are missionaries in the last analysis, and Miss Messiter
was not an exception to her sex. Even though she knew he was half a
fraud and that his emotion was theatric, she could not let the moment
pass.
She leaned forward, a sweet, shy dignity in her manner. “Is it too late
to change? Why not begin now? There is still a to-morrcw, and it need
not be the slave of yesterday. Life for all of us is full of
milestones.”
“And how shall I begin my new career of saintliness?” he asked, with a
swift return to blithe irony.
“The nearest duty. Take me back to my ranch. Begin a life of rigid
honesty.”
“Give you up now that I have found you? That is just the last thing I
would do,” he cried, with glancing eyes. “No—no. The clock can’t be
turned back. I have sowed and I must reap.”
He leaped to his feet. “Come! We must be going.”
She rose sadly, for she knew the mood of sentimental regret for his
wasted life had passed, and she had failed.
They descended the trough and reached the boulder field that had marked
the terminal of the glacier. At the farther edge of it the outlaw
turned to point out to the girl a great bank of snow on a mountainside
fifteen miles away.
He changed his weight as he turned, when a rock slipped under his foot
and he came down hard. He was up again in an instant, but Helen
Messiter caught the sharp intake of his breath when he set foot to the
ground.
“You’ve sprained your ankle!” she cried.
“Afraid so. It’s my own rotten carelessness.” He broke into a storm of
curses and limped forward a dozen steps, but he had to set his teeth to
stand the pain.
“Lean on me,” she said, gently. “I reckon I’ll have to,” he grimly
answered.
They covered a quarter of a mile, with many stops to rest the swollen
ankle. Only by the irregularity of his breathing and the damp moisture
on his forehead could she tell the agony he was enduring.
“It must be dreadful,” she told him once.
“I’ve got to stand for it, I reckon.”
Again she said, when they had reached a wooded grove where pines grew
splendid on a carpet of grass: “Only two hundred yards more. I think I
can bring your pony as far as the big cottonwood.”
She noticed that he leaned heavier and heavier on her. However, when
they reached the cottonwood he leaned no more, but pitched forward in a
faint. The water bottle was empty, but she ran down to where the ponies
had been left, and presently came back with his canteen. She had been
away perhaps twenty minutes, and when she came back he waved a hand
airily at her.
“First time in my life that ever happened,” he apologized, gayly. “But
why didn’t y’u get on Jim and cut loose for the Lazy D while you had
the chance?”
“I didn’t think of it. Perhaps I shall next time.”
“I shouldn’t. Y’u see, I’d follow you and bring you back. And if I
didn’t find you there would be a lamb lost again in these hills.”
“The sporting thing would be to take a chance.”
“And leave me here alone? Well, I’m going to give you a show to take
it.” He handed her his revolver. “Y’u may need this if you’re going
traveling.”
“Are you telling me to go?” she asked, amazed.
“I’m telling you to do as you think best. Y’u may take a hike or y’u
may bring back Two-step to me. Suit yourself.”
“I tell you plainly, I sha’n’t come back.”
“And I’m sure y’u will.”
“But I won’t. The thing’s absurd. Would you?”
“No, I shouldn’t. But y’u will.”
“I won’t. Good-bye.” She held out her hand.
He shook his head, looking steadily at her. “What’s the use? You’ll be
back in half an hour.”
“Not I. Did you say I must keep the Antelope Peaks in a line to reach
the Lazy D.
“Yes, a little to the left. Don’t be long, little pardner.”
“I hate to leave you here. Perhaps I’ll send a sheriff to take care of
you.”
“Better bring Two-step up to the south of that bunch of cottonwoods.
It’s not so steep that way.”
“I’ll mention it to the sheriff. I’m not coming myself.”
She left him apparently obstinate in the conviction that she would
return. In reality he was taking a gambler’s chance, but it was of a
part with the reckless spirit of the man that the risk appealed to him.
It was plain he could not drag himself farther. Since he must let her
go for the horse alone, he chose that she should go with her eyes open
to his knowledge of the opportunity of escape.
But Helen Messiter had not the slightest intention of returning. She
had found her chance, and she meant to make the most of it. As rapidly
ias her unaccustomed fingers would permit she saddled and cinched her
pony. She had not ridden a hundred yards before Two-step came crashing
through the young cottonwood grove after her. Objecting to being left
alone, he had broken the rein that tied him. The girl tried to
recapture the horse in order that the outlaw might not be left entirely
without means of reaching camp, but her efforts were unsuccessful. She
had to give it up and resume her journey.
Of course the men at his ranch would miss their chief and search for
him. There could be no doubt but that they would find him. She
bolstered up her assurance of this as she rode toward the Antelope
Peaks, but her hope lacked buoyancy, because she doubted if they had
any idea of where he had been going to spend the day.
She rode slower and slower, and finally came to a long halt for
consideration. Vividly there rose before her a picture of the miscreant
waiting grimly for death or rescue. Well, she was not to blame. If she
deserted him it was to save herself. But to leave him helpless——
No, she could not leave a crippled man to die alone, even though he
were her enemy. That was the goal to which her circling thoughts came
always home, and with a sob she turned her horse’s head. It was a piece
of soft-headed folly, she confessed, but she could not help it.
So back she went and found him lying just where she had left him. His
derisive smile offered
her no thanks. She doubted, indeed, whether he felt any sense of
gratitude.
“Y’u didn’t break your neck hurrying,” he said.
She made her confession with a palpable chagrin. “I meant to ride away.
I rode a mile or two. But I had to come back. I couldn’t leave you here
alone.”
His eyes sparkled triumphantly. She saw that he had misunderstood the
reason of her return, that he was pluming himself on a conquest of his
fascinated victim.
“One couldn’t leave even a broken-legged dog without help,” she added,
quietly.
“So how could we expect a woman to leave the man she’s getting ready to
love?”
She let her contemptuous eyes rest on him in silence.
“That’s right. Look at me as if I were dirt under your feet. Hate me,
if it makes y’u feel better. But y’u’ll have to come to loving me just
the same.”
“Can you get on without help?” she asked, ranging the pony alongside
him.
“Yes.” He dragged himself to the saddle and smiled down at her. “So y’u
better make up your mind to that soon as convenient.”
Disdaining answer, she walked in front of the pony down the trail. She
was tired, but her elastic tread would not admit it to him. For she was
dramatizing unconsciously, with firmly clenched fingers that bit into
her palms, the march of the unconquerable.
Evening had fallen before they reached the ranch. It was beautifully
still, except for the call of the quails. The hazy violet outline of
the mountains came to silhouette against the skyline with a fine edge.
As they passed the pony corral he spoke again. “I’ll never forget
to-day. I’ve got it fenced from all the yesterdays and to-morrows. I
have surely enjoyed our little picnic.”
“Nor will I forget it,” she flung back quickly, as she followed him
into the house. “For I never before met a man wholly incapable of
gratitude and entirely lacking in all the elements that go to
distinguish a human being from a wolf.”
He turned to speak to her, and as he did so a quiet voice cautioned
him:
“Don’t move, seh, except to throw up your hands.”
At the sound of that pleasant drawl Helen’s heart jumped to her throat.
Jim McWilliams, half seated on the edge of the table, was looking
intently at Bannister, and there was a revolver in his hand. On the
other side of the room sat Morgan and the Cheyenne woman, apparently in
charge of the young giant Denver.
Bannister’s hands went up, even as he whirled with a snarl toward the
man Morgan.
“I told y’u to watch out, y’u muttonhead!”
“But y’u clean forgot to remember to watch out your own self,” spoke up
McWilliams, unbuckling the belt from the waist of his new captive.
“Oh, Mac, you blessed boy!” cried Helen, with an hysterical laugh that
was half a sob.
“How did you ever find me?”
“Followed the track of the gas wagon to where it ran out of juice. We
lost your trail after that, but Denver and me had the good luck to pick
it up again where y’u’d camped that night. We mislaid it again up in
the hills, and Denver he knew about this place. We dropped in just
casual for information, but when we set our peepers on Judd we allowed
we would stay awhile, him being so anxious to have us.”
“You dear boys! I’m so glad! You don’t know,” she sobbed, dropping
weakly into thes nearest chair.
“We can guess, ma’am,” her foreman answered grimly, his eyes on
Bannister.” And if either of these scoundrels have treated y’u so they
need their light put out all y’u have got to do is to say so.”
“No, no, Mac. Let us go away from here and leave them. Can’t we go
now—this very minute?”
The foreman’s eyes found those of Denver and the latter nodded. Neither
of them had had a bite to eat since the previous evening, and they were
naturally ravenous.
“All right. We’ll go right now, ma’am. Denver, I’ll take care of these
beauties while y’u step into the pantry with Mrs. Lo-the-poor-Indian
and put up a lunch. Y’u don’t want to forget we’re hungry enough to eat
the wool off a pair of chaps.”
“I ain’t likely to forget it, am I?” grinned Denver, as he rose.
“You poor boys! I know you are starved. I’ll see about the lunch if one
of you will get the I horses round,” Helen broke in. “Only let us hurry
and get away from here.”
Ten minutes later they were in the saddle. For the sake of precaution
Mac walked two of his captives with them for about a mile before
releasing them. Bannister, unable to travel, they left behind.
“We’ll get down out of the hills and then cut acrost to the Meeker
ranch,” said McWilliams, after they had ridden forward a few miles.
“I’ll telephone from there to Slauson’s and have the old man send a boy
over to the Lazy D with the good word. We’ll get an early start from
Meeker’s and make it home in the afternoon.”
“How did you leave Mr. Bannister?” asked Helen, in a carefully careless
voice.
She had held back this question for nearly an hour till Denver, who was
guiding the party, had passed out of earshot.
“Left him with two of the boys holding him down. He was plumb anxious
to commit suicide by joining the hunt for y’u, but I had other
thoughts,” grinned Mac.
She felt herself flushing in the darkness. “We’ve made a great mistake
about him, Mac, It’s his cousin of the same name that is the
desperado—the man we just left.”
“Yes, that’s what Judd let out before y’u and the King arrived. It made
me plumb glad to my gizzard to hear it.”
“I was pleased, too.”
“Somehow I suspicioned that,” he made answer, with banter in his dry
tones.
“Of course I would be glad to know that he is not a villain,” she
defended.
“Sure!”
“Well, one doesn’t like to think that a friend——”
“He’s your friend, is he?” chuckled Mac.
“Why shouldn’t he be?”
“I’m offering no objections, ma’am.”
“You act as if——”
“Sho! Don’t pay any attention to me. Sometimes I get these spells of
laughing in to myself. They just come. Doctors never could find a
reason.”
“Oh, well!”
“He was your enemy and now he’s your friend. Course since I’m your
foreman I got to keep posted on how we stand with our neighbors. If
your feelings change to him again y’u’ll let me know, I expect.”
“Why should they change?” she asked in a cold voice that her rising
color belied.
“Search _me!_ I just thought mebbe——”
“You think too much,” she cut in, shortly.
“Yes, ma’am,” admitted the youth, meekly, but from time to time as they
rode she could hear, faint sounds of mirth from his direction.
McWilliams telephoned from the Meeker ranch to Slauson’s, and inside of
two hours the Lazy D knew that its owner had been found. As one puncher
after another reported there on jaded ponies to get the latest word
they heard that all was well. Each one at once unsaddled, ate and
turned in for the first night’s sleep he had had since his mistress had
been missing. Next morning they rode in a body to meet her.
She saw them galloping toward her in a cloud of dust, and presently she
was the centre of a circle of her happy family. They were like
boys—exuberant in their joy at her deliverance and eager to set out at
once to avenge her wrongs.
Ned Bannister, from his window, saw them coming. When the group
separated at the corral and she rode from among them with McWilliams
toward the house the sheepman could sit still no longer. He limped to
the front door and waved the American flag which he had unearthed for
the occasion.