THE CLOUDS BREAK
“CAN’T you do something for this kid?” the man asked gruffly.
Ruth took the baby. “He’s hungry,” she said.
“Then we’d better be hitting the trail.”
Falkner walked to the door and flung it open. He looked out upon a world
of white-blanketed hills. The sun was throwing from them a million
sparkles of light.
“Gimme that kid,” the outlaw said roughly. “We gotta get him down to
breakfast. Here! You take my gun.”
Ruth wrapped up the baby warmly and handed him to Falkner. The man broke
trail to the point where the draw struck the road. He looked to the
right, then to the left. Safety lay for him in the mountains; for her
and Rowan, junior, at the Circle Diamond, which was three miles nearer
than Yerby’s ranch. The way up the cañon would be harder to travel than
the way down. There was a chance that they could not make it through the
snow, even a probability.
“Which way?” asked Ruth.
He turned to the left toward the Circle Diamond. The heart of the girl
leaped. The convict had put the good of the child before his own.
The day had turned warm, so that before they had travelled half an hour
the snow was beginning to get soft and slushy. The going was heavy. Ruth
was not wearing her heavy, high-laced boots, but the shoes she was
accustomed to use indoors. Soon her stockings were wringing wet and the
bottoms of her skirts were soaked. It was mostly a downhill grade, but
within the hour she was fagged. It cost an effort to drag her foot up
for each step. She did not want to be a quitter, but at last she had to
speak:
“I can’t go any farther. Leave me here and send the boys to get me. Mrs.
Stovall will look after the baby.”
The outlaw stopped. There was grudging admiration in the glance he gave
her.
“You can make it. We’re through the worst part. Soon we’ll be in the
foothills, and there the snow is real light.” After a moment he added:
“We ain’t runnin’ for a train. Take your time.”
He brushed the snow from a rock and told her with a wave of his hand to
sit down. After a few minutes’ rest she rose and told him she was ready
to try again.
Falkner’s prediction of a lighter snowfall down in the foothills proved
correct. They rounded a rocky point, which brought them within sight of
the Circle Diamond. The smoke from the house rose straight up in the
brilliant sunshine. It looked very near and close, but the deceptive air
of the Rockies could no longer fool Ruth. They still had two miles to
go. The descent to the valley was very rapid from here, and she could
see that a scant two inches would measure the depth of the snow into
which they were moving.
The young woman sloshed along behind. She was very tired, and her
shoulders sagged from exhaustion. But she set her teeth in a game
resolve to buck up and get through somehow. One after another she tried
the old devices for marking progress. She would pick a mark fifty yards
ahead and vow to reach it, and then would select another goal, and after
it was passed choose a third. One—two—three—four—five, she counted
her steps to a hundred, began again and checked off a second century,
and so kept on until she had added lap after lap.
They came to the Circle Diamond line fence, crawled between the strands,
and tramped across the back pasture toward the house.
Ruth must by this time have been half asleep. Her feet moved almost of
their own volition, as if by clockwork. She went forward like an
automaton wound up by a set will that had become comatose.
A startled shout brought her back to life abruptly. A man with a raised
rifle was standing near the bunk house. He was covering Falkner.
Swift as a panther, Falkner rid himself gently of the baby and turned to
Ruth. He ripped out a sudden furious oath. She was empty-handed.
Somewhere between the spot where she stood and the line fence the rifle
had slipped unnoticed from her cramped fingers.
The outlaw was trapped.
“Throw up your hands!” came the curt order.
Instantly the convict swerved and began running to the right. Ruth stood
directly in the line of fire. The man with the gun took a dozen quick
steps to one side.
“Stop or I’ll fire!” he shouted.
Falkner paid no attention. He was making for a cottonwood arroyo back of
the house.
The rifleman took a long aim and fired. The hunted man stumbled, fell,
scrambled to his feet again, ran almost to the edge of the gulch, and
sank down once more.
The man who had fired ran past Ruth toward the fallen man. She noticed
that he was Sheriff Matson. It is doubtful if he saw her at all. Men
emerged from the bunk house, the stable, the corral, and the house. Some
were armed, the rest apparently were not. One had been shaving. He had
finished one cheek, and the lather was still moist on the other.
The half-shaved man was her foreman, Jennings. At sight of the mistress
of the ranch he stopped. She had knelt to pick up the crying baby.
“What’s the row?” he asked.
“Sheriff Matson has just shot Mr. Falkner.” She could hardly speak the
words from her dry throat.
“Falkner! How did he come here?”
“Baby and I were snowbound in the old Potier cabin. He broke trail down
for us and carried Baby.”
“Gad! And ran right into Matson.”
“What is the sheriff doing here?”
“Came in late last night with a posse. Word had been ’phoned him that
Falkner had been seen in the hills heading for the Montana line. He
aimed to close the passes, I reckon.”
Mrs. Stovall bore down upon them from the back door of the house. Ruth
cut her off without allowing the housekeeper a word.
“No time to talk now, Mrs. Stovall. Feed Baby. He’s about starved. I’ll
look after this business.”
With Jennings striding beside her, Ruth went across to the group
surrounding the wounded man.
“Is he badly hurt?” she demanded.
One of her own punchers looked up and answered gravely: “Looks like,
ma’am. In the leg. He’s bleeding a lot.”
The sight of the blood trickling down to the white snow for an instant
sickened Ruth. But she repressed at once any weakness. Matson she ousted
from command.
“Stop the bleeding with a tourniquet, Jennings; then have him carried to
the house—to Rowan’s room. Sheriff, ’phone Doctor Irwin to come at
once. Better send one of your men to meet him.”
Ruth herself flew to the house. She forgot that she was exhausted,
forgot that she had had neither supper nor breakfast. The call for
action carried her out of her own needs. Before the men had arrived with
the wounded outlaw she was ready with sponges, cold water, and bandages.
After Falkner had been made as comfortable as possible, Ruth left him in
charge of Norma Tait and retired to the pantry in search of food. When
she had eaten she left word with Mrs. Stovall that she was going to
sleep, but wanted to be called when Doctor Irwin arrived at the ranch.
At the housekeeper’s knock she awoke three hours later, refreshed and
fit for anything. Ruth had not lived the past two years in outdoor
Wyoming for nothing. She had grown tough of muscle and strong of body,
so that she had gained the power of recuperation with very little rest.
Having examined the patient, Doctor Irwin retired with Ruth and Sheriff
Matson to the front porch.
“What do you think?” asked the young woman anxiously.
“H’mp! Think—just missed a funeral,” he snorted. “Bullet struck half
inch from artery.”
“But he’ll get well?”
“I reckon. Know better later.”
“When can I move him?” asked Matson.
“Don’t know. Not for a week or two, anyhow. You in a hurry to get him
back to that hell where he came from, Sheriff?” bristled the old doctor.
“I’m not responsible for the pen, Doc,” answered Matson evenly. “And by
all accounts I reckon Hal Falkner makes his own hell there. But I’m
responsible for turning him over to the warden. If I could get him down
to Wagon Wheel——”
“Well, you can’t!” snapped Irwin. “He’ll stay right here till I think it
safe to move him. It’s my say-so, Aleck.”
“Sure. And while he’s at the Circle Diamond I’ll leave a couple of men
to help nurse him. He might hurt himself trying to move before he’s
really fit to travel,” the sheriff announced with a grim little smile.
Ruth was head nurse herself. For years she had held a bitter resentment
against Falkner, but it could not stand against the thing that had
happened. Put to the acid test, the man had sacrificed his chances of
escape to save her and the baby. Alone, he could have reached the Yerby
ranch and gone through one of the passes before Matson had closed it.
With her and the baby as encumbrances he had not dared try the deeper
snow of the upper hills. Because of his choice he lay in Rowan’s room,
wounded, condemned to a return to Rawlins.
Never in his rough and turbulent life had the man been treated with such
gentle consideration. The clean linen and dainty food were external
effects of an atmosphere wholly alien to his experience. Here were
kindness and friendly smiles and an unimaginable tenderness. All three
of the women were good to him in their own way, but it was for Ruth that
his hungry eyes watched the door. She brought the baby with her one day,
after the fever had left him, and set the youngster on the bed, where
the invalid could watch him play.
Falkner did not talk much. He lay quiet for hours, scarce moving, unless
little Rowan was in the room. Ruth, coming in silently one afternoon,
caught the brooding despair in his eyes.
He turned to her gently. “What makes you so good to me? You know you
hate me.”
Her frank, friendly smile denied the charge. “No, I don’t hate you at
all. I did, but I don’t now.”
“I’m keeping Rowan away from you. It was my fault he went there in the
first place.”
“Yes, but you saved Baby’s life—and mine, too. If you had looked out
only for yourself, you wouldn’t be lying here wounded, and perhaps you
would have got away.” She flashed deep, tender eyes on him. “I’ll tell
you a secret, Mr. Falkner. You’re not half so bad as you think you are.
Can’t I see how you love Baby and how fond he is of you? You’re just
like the rest of us, but you haven’t had a fair chance. So we’re going
to be good to you while we can, and after you come back from prison
we’re going to be friends.”
The ice that had gathered at his heart for years was melting fast. He
turned his face to the wall and lay still there till dusk. Perhaps it
was then that he fought out the final battle of his fight with himself.
When Mrs. Stovall came in with his supper he told her hoarsely that he
wanted to see Matson at once on important business.
The sheriff drove his car in the moonlight out from Wagon Wheel. Ruth
took him in to see Falkner.
“Send for Jennings and Mrs. Stovall. She’s a notary, ain’t she?” said
the convalescent.
Ruth’s heart beat fast. “Yes. She was one when she was postmistress. Her
term hasn’t run out yet.”
“All right. Get her. I want to make a sworn statement before witnesses.”
Matson took down the statement as Falkner dictated:
I want to tell some facts about the Bald Knob sheep raid that
did not come out at the trial of Rowan McCoy. When the party was
made up to ride on that raid I wasn’t included. They left me out
because I had a grudge at Tait. But I horned in. I followed the
boys for miles, and insisted on going along. McCoy objected. He
said the party was going to drive off the sheep and not to do
any killing. I promised to take orders from him. He laid out a
plan by which we could surprise the camp without bloodshed, and
made it plain there was to be no shooting. Afterward he went
over it all very carefully again, and we agreed not to shoot.
I lost my head when we was crawling up on the camp and shot at
the wagon. That was the first shot fired. Tait came out and
began shooting at us. Two or three of us were shooting. I don’t
know who killed him. Gilroy ran out of the wagon to escape.
McCoy hollered to stop shooting, and ran forward. I must have
been crazy. I shot and killed Gilroy.
Then McCoy ran to protect the herders. He wrestled with me for
the gun to keep me from shooting. None of the other boys had
anything to do with the killing of Gilroy except me.
It was so dark that nobody knew whether McCoy or I shot Gilroy.
McCoy protected me, and said we were all to blame, since we had
come together. He never did tell who did the shooting. I looked
at his gun a little later, and saw that he had not fired a shot
from first to last.
I am making this statement of my own free will, and under no
compulsion whatever. I am of sound mind and body, except for a
bullet wound in my leg that is getting better. My only reason
for making it is that I want to see justice done. The others
have suffered too much already for what I did.
Falkner signed the statement. It was witnessed by Jennings and the two
deputies. Mrs. Stovall added the notarial seal of her office to it.
Ruth put her head down on the little table where the medicines were and
cried like a child. At last—at last Rowan would be free to come home to
her. Her long, long waiting was at an end. She could begin to count the
days now till her lover would be with her again.