her companion and said, “I GUESS NOT.”
As the “tea” party had not yet returned, it fell to the consul to
accompany Miss Desborough and her maid to the station. But here he was
startled to find a collection of villagers upon the platform, gathered
round two young women in mourning, and an ominous-looking box.
He mingled for a moment with the crowd, and then returned to Miss
Desborough's side.
“Really,” he said, with a concern that was scarcely assumed, “I ought
not to let you go. The omens are most disastrous! You came here to a
death; you are going away with a funeral!”
“Then it's high time I took myself off!” said the lady lightly.
“Unless, like the ghostly monk, you came here on a mission, and have
fulfilled it.”
“Perhaps I have. Good-by!”
*****
In spite of the bright and characteristic letter which Miss Desborough
left for her host,--a letter which mingled her peculiar shrewd sense
with her humorous extravagance of expression,--the consul spent a
somewhat uneasy evening under the fire of questions that assailed him
in reference to the fair deserter. But he kept loyal faith with her,
adhering even to the letter of her instructions, and only once was
goaded into more active mendacity. The conversation had turned upon
“Debs,” and the consul had remarked on the singularity of the name. A
guest from the north observed, however, that the name was undoubtedly a
contraction. “Possibly it might have been 'Debborough,' or even the same
name as our fair friend.”
“But didn't Miss Desborough tell you last night that she had been
hunting up her people, with a family tree, or something like that?” said
Lord Algernon eagerly. “I just caught a word here and there, for you
were both laughing.”
The consul smiled blandly. “You may well say so, for it was all the most
delightful piece of pure invention and utter extravagance. It would have
amused her still more if she had thought you were listening and took it
seriously!”
“Of course; I see!” said the young fellow, with a laugh and a slight
rise of color. “I knew she was taking some kind of a rise out of YOU,
and that remark reminded me of it.”
Nevertheless, within a year, Lord Algernon was happily married to the
daughter of a South African millionaire, whose bridal offerings alone
touched the sum of half a million. It was also said that the mother
was “impossible” and the father “unspeakable,” the relations
“inextinguishable;” but the wedding was an “occasion,” and in the
succeeding year of festivity it is presumed that the names of “Debs” and
“Desborough” were alike forgotten.
But they existed still in a little hamlet near the edge of a bleak
northern moor, where they were singularly exalted on a soaring shaft of
pure marble above the submerged and moss-grown tombstones of a simple
country churchyard. So great was the contrast between the modern and
pretentious monument and the graves of the humbler forefathers of the
village, that even the Americans who chanced to visit it were shocked at
what they believed was the ostentatious and vulgar pride of one of their
own countrywomen. For on its pedestal was inscribed:--
Sacred to the Memory
of
JOHN DEBS DESBOROUGH,
Formerly of this parish,
Who departed this life October 20th, 1892,
At Scrooby Priory,
At the age of eighty-two years.
This monument was erected as a loving testimony
by his granddaughter,
Sadie Desborough, of New York, U. S. A.
“And evening brings us home.”
SALOMY JANE'S KISS
Only one shot had been fired. It had gone wide of its mark,--the
ringleader of the Vigilantes,--and had left Red Pete, who had fired
it, covered by their rifles and at their mercy. For his hand had been
cramped by hard riding, and his eye distracted by their sudden onset,
and so the inevitable end had come. He submitted sullenly to his
captors; his companion fugitive and horse-thief gave up the protracted
struggle with a feeling not unlike relief. Even the hot and revengeful
victors were content. They had taken their men alive. At any time during
the long chase they could have brought them down by a rifle shot, but it
would have been unsportsmanlike, and have ended in a free fight, instead
of an example. And, for the matter of that, their doom was already
sealed. Their end, by a rope and a tree, although not sanctified by law,
would have at least the deliberation of justice. It was the tribute paid
by the Vigilantes to that order which they had themselves disregarded in
the pursuit and capture. Yet this strange logic of the frontier sufficed
them, and gave a certain dignity to the climax.
“Ef you've got anything to say to your folks, say it NOW, and say it
quick,” said the ringleader.
Red Pete glanced around him. He had been run to earth at his own cabin
in the clearing, whence a few relations and friends, mostly women and
children, non-combatants, had outflowed, gazing vacantly at the twenty
Vigilantes who surrounded them. All were accustomed to scenes of
violence, blood-feud, chase, and hardship; it was only the suddenness of
the onset and its quick result that had surprised them. They looked on
with dazed curiosity and some disappointment; there had been no fight
to speak of--no spectacle! A boy, nephew of Red Pete, got upon the
rain-barrel to view the proceedings more comfortably; a tall, handsome,
lazy Kentucky girl, a visiting neighbor, leaned against the doorpost,
chewing gum. Only a yellow hound was actively perplexed. He could
not make out if a hunt were just over or beginning, and ran eagerly
backwards and forwards, leaping alternately upon the captives and the
captors.
The ringleader repeated his challenge. Red Pete gave a reckless laugh
and looked at his wife.
At which Mrs. Red Pete came forward. It seemed that she had much to say,
incoherently, furiously, vindictively, to the ringleader. His soul would
roast in hell for that day's work! He called himself a man, skunkin'
in the open and afraid to show himself except with a crowd of other
“Kiyi's” around a house of women and children. Heaping insult upon
insult, inveighing against his low blood, his ancestors, his dubious
origin, she at last flung out a wild taunt of his invalid wife, the
insult of a woman to a woman, until his white face grew rigid, and only
that Western-American fetich of the sanctity of sex kept his twitching
fingers from the lock of his rifle. Even her husband noticed it, and
with a half-authoritative “Let up on that, old gal,” and a pat of his
freed left hand on her back, took his last parting. The ringleader,
still white under the lash of the woman's tongue, turned abruptly to the
second captive. “And if YOU'VE got anybody to say 'good-by' to, now's
your chance.”
The man looked up. Nobody stirred or spoke. He was a stranger there,
being a chance confederate picked up by Red Pete, and known to no one.
Still young, but an outlaw from his abandoned boyhood, of which father
and mother were only a forgotten dream, he loved horses and stole them,
fully accepting the frontier penalty of life for the interference with
that animal on which a man's life so often depended. But he understood
the good points of a horse, as was shown by the ones he bestrode--until
a few days before the property of Judge Boompointer. This was his sole
distinction.
The unexpected question stirred him for a moment out of the attitude
of reckless indifference, for attitude it was, and a part of his
profession. But it may have touched him that at that moment he was less
than his companion and his virago wife. However, he only shook his head.
As he did so his eye casually fell on the handsome girl by the doorpost,
who was looking at him. The ringleader, too, may have been touched by
his complete loneliness, for HE hesitated. At the same moment he saw
that the girl was looking at his friendless captive.
A grotesque idea struck him.
“Salomy Jane, ye might do worse than come yere and say 'good-by' to a
dying man, and him a stranger,” he said.
There seemed to be a subtle stroke of poetry and irony in this that
equally struck the apathetic crowd. It was well known that Salomy Jane
Clay thought no small potatoes of herself, and always held off the local
swain with a lazy nymph-like scorn. Nevertheless, she slowly disengaged
herself from the doorpost, and, to everybody's astonishment, lounged
with languid grace and outstretched hand towards the prisoner. The color
came into the gray reckless mask which the doomed man wore as her right
hand grasped his left, just loosed by his captors. Then she paused; her
shy, fawn-like eyes grew bold, and fixed themselves upon him. She took
the chewing-gum from her mouth, wiped her red lips with the back of
her hand, by a sudden lithe spring placed her foot on his stirrup, and,
bounding to the saddle, threw her arms about his neck and pressed a kiss
upon his lips.
They remained thus for a hushed moment--the man on the threshold of
death, the young woman in the fullness of youth and beauty--linked
together. Then the crowd laughed; in the audacious effrontery of the
girl's act the ultimate fate of the two men was forgotten. She slipped
languidly to the ground; SHE was the focus of all eyes,--she only! The
ringleader saw it and his opportunity. He shouted: “Time's up--Forward!”
urged his horse beside his captives, and the next moment the whole
cavalcade was sweeping over the clearing into the darkening woods.
Their destination was Sawyer's Crossing, the headquarters of the
committee, where the council was still sitting, and where both culprits
were to expiate the offense of which that council had already found
them guilty. They rode in great and breathless haste,--a haste in which,
strangely enough, even the captives seemed to join. That haste possibly
prevented them from noticing the singular change which had taken place
in the second captive since the episode of the kiss. His high color
remained, as if it had burned through his mask of indifference; his eyes
were quick, alert, and keen, his mouth half open as if the girl's kiss
still lingered there. And that haste had made them careless, for the
horse of the man who led him slipped in a gopher-hole, rolled over,
unseated his rider, and even dragged the bound and helpless second
captive from Judge Boompointer's favorite mare. In an instant they were
all on their feet again, but in that supreme moment the second captive
felt the cords which bound his arms had slipped to his wrists. By
keeping his elbows to his sides, and obliging the others to help him
mount, it escaped their notice. By riding close to his captors, and
keeping in the crush of the throng, he further concealed the accident,
slowly working his hands downwards out of his bonds.
Their way lay through a sylvan wilderness, mid-leg deep in ferns, whose
tall fronds brushed their horses' sides in their furious gallop and
concealed the flapping of the captive's loosened cords. The peaceful
vista, more suggestive of the offerings of nymph and shepherd than of
human sacrifice, was in a strange contrast to this whirlwind rush of
stern, armed men. The westering sun pierced the subdued light and the
tremor of leaves with yellow lances; birds started into song on blue and
dove-like wings, and on either side of the trail of this vengeful
storm could be heard the murmur of hidden and tranquil waters. In a
few moments they would be on the open ridge, whence sloped the common
turnpike to “Sawyer's,” a mile away. It was the custom of returning
cavalcades to take this hill at headlong speed, with shouts and cries
that heralded their coming. They withheld the latter that day, as
inconsistent with their dignity; but, emerging from the wood, swept
silently like an avalanche down the slope. They were well under way,
looking only to their horses, when the second captive slipped his right
arm from the bonds and succeeded in grasping the reins that lay trailing
on the horse's neck. A sudden vaquero jerk, which the well-trained
animal understood, threw him on his haunches with his forelegs firmly
planted on the slope. The rest of the cavalcade swept on; the man who
was leading the captive's horse by the riata, thinking only of another
accident, dropped the line to save himself from being dragged backwards
from his horse. The captive wheeled, and the next moment was galloping
furiously up the slope.
It was the work of a moment; a trained horse and an experienced hand.
The cavalcade had covered nearly fifty yards before they could pull up;
the freed captive had covered half that distance uphill. The road was
so narrow that only two shots could be fired, and these broke dust two
yards ahead of the fugitive. They had not dared to fire low; the horse
was the more valuable animal. The fugitive knew this in his extremity
also, and would have gladly taken a shot in his own leg to spare that of
his horse. Five men were detached to recapture or kill him. The latter
seemed inevitable. But he had calculated his chances; before they could
reload he had reached the woods again; winding in and out between
the pillared tree trunks, he offered no mark. They knew his horse was
superior to their own; at the end of two hours they returned, for he
had disappeared without track or trail. The end was briefly told in the
“Sierra Record:”--
“Red Pete, the notorious horse-thief, who had so long eluded justice,
was captured and hung by the Sawyer's Crossing Vigilantes last week;
his confederate, unfortunately, escaped on a valuable horse belonging
to Judge Boompointer. The judge had refused one thousand dollars for
the horse only a week before. As the thief, who is still at large, would
find it difficult to dispose of so valuable an animal without detection,
the chances are against either of them turning up again.”
*****
Salomy Jane watched the cavalcade until it had disappeared. Then she
became aware that her brief popularity had passed. Mrs. Red Pete, in
stormy hysterics, had included her in a sweeping denunciation of the
whole universe, possibly for simulating an emotion in which she herself
was deficient. The other women hated her for her momentary exaltation
above them; only the children still admired her as one who had
undoubtedly “canoodled” with a man “a-going to be hung”--a daring flight
beyond their wildest ambition. Salomy Jane accepted the change with
charming unconcern. She put on her yellow nankeen sunbonnet,--a hideous
affair that would have ruined any other woman, but which only enhanced
the piquancy of her fresh brunette skin,--tied the strings, letting the
blue-black braids escape below its frilled curtain behind, jumped on
her mustang with a casual display of agile ankles in shapely white
stockings, whistled to the hound, and waving her hand with a “So long,
sonny!” to the lately bereft but admiring nephew, flapped and fluttered
away in her short brown holland gown.
Her father's house was four miles distant. Contrasted with the cabin she
had just quitted, it was a superior dwelling, with a long “lean-to” at
the rear, which brought the eaves almost to the ground and made it look
like a low triangle. It had a long barn and cattle sheds, for Madison
Clay was a “great” stock-raiser and the owner of a “quarter section.” It
had a sitting-room and a parlor organ, whose transportation thither had
been a marvel of “packing.” These things were supposed to give Salomy
Jane an undue importance, but the girl's reserve and inaccessibility to
local advances were rather the result of a cool, lazy temperament and
the preoccupation of a large, protecting admiration for her father, for
some years a widower. For Mr. Madison Clay's life had been threatened in
one or two feuds,--it was said, not without cause,--and it is possible
that the pathetic spectacle of her father doing his visiting with a
shotgun may have touched her closely and somewhat prejudiced her against
the neighboring masculinity. The thought that cattle, horses, and
“quarter section” would one day be hers did not disturb her calm. As for
Mr. Clay, he accepted her as housewifely, though somewhat “interfering,”
and, being one of “his own womankind,” therefore not without some degree
of merit.
“Wot's this yer I'm hearin' of your doin's over at Red Pete's?
Honeyfoglin' with a horse-thief, eh?” said Mr. Clay two days later at
breakfast.
“I reckon you heard about the straight thing, then,” said Salomy Jane
unconcernedly, without looking round.
“What do you kalkilate Rube will say to it? What are you goin' to tell
HIM?” said Mr. Clay sarcastically.
“Rube,” or Reuben Waters, was a swain supposed to be favored
particularly by Mr. Clay. Salomy Jane looked up.
“I'll tell him that when HE'S on his way to be hung, I'll kiss him,--not
till then,” said the young lady brightly.
This delightful witticism suited the paternal humor, and Mr. Clay
smiled; but, nevertheless, he frowned a moment afterwards.
“But this yer hoss-thief got away arter all, and that's a hoss of a
different color,” he said grimly.
Salomy Jane put down her knife and fork. This was certainly a new and
different phase of the situation. She had never thought of it before,
and, strangely enough, for the first time she became interested in the
man. “Got away?” she repeated. “Did they let him off?”
“Not much,” said her father briefly. “Slipped his cords, and going down
the grade pulled up short, just like a vaquero agin a lassoed bull,
almost draggin' the man leadin' him off his hoss, and then skyuted up
the grade. For that matter, on that hoss o' Judge Boompointer's he mout
have dragged the whole posse of 'em down on their knees ef he liked!
Sarved 'em right, too. Instead of stringin' him up afore the door, or
shootin' him on sight, they must allow to take him down afore the hull
committee 'for an example.' 'Example' be blowed! Ther' 's example enough
when some stranger comes unbeknownst slap onter a man hanged to a tree
and plugged full of holes. THAT'S an example, and HE knows what it
means. Wot more do ye want? But then those Vigilantes is allus clingin'
and hangin' onter some mere scrap o' the law they're pretendin' to
despise. It makes me sick! Why, when Jake Myers shot your ole Aunt
Viney's second husband, and I laid in wait for Jake afterwards in the
Butternut Hollow, did I tie him to his hoss and fetch him down to your
Aunt Viney's cabin 'for an example' before I plugged him? No!” in deep
disgust. “No! Why, I just meandered through the wood, careless-like,
till he comes out, and I just rode up to him, and I said”--
But Salomy Jane had heard her father's story before. Even one's dearest
relatives are apt to become tiresome in narration. “I know, dad,” she
interrupted; “but this yer man,--this hoss-thief,--did HE get clean away
without gettin' hurt at all?”
“He did, and unless he's fool enough to sell the hoss he kin keep away,
too. So ye see, ye can't ladle out purp stuff about a 'dyin' stranger'
to Rube. He won't swaller it.”
“All the same, dad,” returned the girl cheerfully, “I reckon to say it,
and say MORE; I'll tell him that ef HE manages to get away too, I'll
marry him--there! But ye don't ketch Rube takin' any such risks in
gettin' ketched, or in gettin' away arter!”
Madison Clay smiled grimly, pushed back his chair, rose, dropped a
perfunctory kiss on his daughter's hair, and, taking his shotgun from
the corner, departed on a peaceful Samaritan mission to a cow who had
dropped a calf in the far pasture. Inclined as he was to Reuben's wooing
from his eligibility as to property, he was conscious that he was sadly
deficient in certain qualities inherent in the Clay family. It certainly
would be a kind of mesalliance.
Left to herself, Salomy Jane stared a long while at the coffee-pot, and
then called the two squaws who assisted her in her household duties, to
clear away the things while she went up to her own room to make her bed.
Here she was confronted with a possible prospect of that proverbial bed
she might be making in her willfulness, and on which she must lie,
in the photograph of a somewhat serious young man of refined
features--Reuben Waters--stuck in her window-frame. Salomy Jane smiled
over her last witticism regarding him and enjoyed, it, like your true
humorist, and then, catching sight of her own handsome face in the
little mirror, smiled again. But wasn't it funny about that horse-thief
getting off after all? Good Lordy! Fancy Reuben hearing he was alive and
going round with that kiss of hers set on his lips! She laughed again, a
little more abstractedly. And he had returned it like a man, holding her
tight and almost breathless, and he going to be hung the next minute!
Salomy Jane had been kissed at other times, by force, chance, or
stratagem. In a certain ingenuous forfeit game of the locality known as
“I'm a-pinin',” many had “pined” for a “sweet kiss” from Salomy Jane,
which she had yielded in a sense of honor and fair play. She had never
been kissed like this before--she would never again; and yet the man was
alive! And behold, she could see in the mirror that she was blushing!
She should hardly know him again. A young man with very bright eyes,
a flushed and sunburnt cheek, a kind of fixed look in the face, and no
beard; no, none that she could feel. Yet he was not at all like Reuben,
not a bit. She took Reuben's picture from the window, and laid it on her
workbox. And to think she did not even know this young man's name! That
was queer. To be kissed by a man whom she might never know! Of course
he knew hers. She wondered if he remembered it and her. But of course he
was so glad to get off with his life that he never thought of anything
else. Yet she did not give more than four or five minutes to these
speculations, and, like a sensible girl, thought of something else. Once
again, however, in opening the closet, she found the brown holland
gown she had worn on the day before; thought it very unbecoming, and
regretted that she had not worn her best gown on her visit to Red Pete's
cottage. On such an occasion she really might have been more impressive.
When her father came home that night she asked him the news. No, they
had NOT captured the second horse-thief, who was still at large. Judge
Boompointer talked of invoking the aid of the despised law. It remained,
then, to see whether the horse-thief was fool enough to try to get rid
of the animal. Red Pete's body had been delivered to his widow. Perhaps
it would only be neighborly for Salomy Jane to ride over to the funeral.
But Salomy Jane did not take to the suggestion kindly, nor yet did she
explain to her father that, as the other man was still living, she
did not care to undergo a second disciplining at the widow's hands.
Nevertheless, she contrasted her situation with that of the widow with
a new and singular satisfaction. It might have been Red Pete who had
escaped. But he had not the grit of the nameless one. She had already
settled his heroic quality.
“Ye ain't harkenin' to me, Salomy.”
Salomy Jane started.
“Here I'm askin' ye if ye've see that hound Phil Larrabee sneaking by
yer today?”
Salomy Jane had not. But she became interested and self-reproachful,
for she knew that Phil Larrabee was one of her father's enemies. “He
wouldn't dare to go by here unless he knew you were out,” she said
quickly.
“That's what gets me,” he said, scratching his grizzled head. “I've been
kind o' thinkin' o' him all day, and one of them Chinamen said he saw
him at Sawyer's Crossing. He was a kind of friend o' Pete's wife. That's
why I thought yer might find out ef he'd been there.” Salomy Jane
grew more self-reproachful at her father's self-interest in her
“neighborliness.” “But that ain't all,” continued Mr. Clay. “Thar was
tracks over the far pasture that warn't mine. I followed them, and they
went round and round the house two or three times, ez ef they mout hev
bin prowlin', and then I lost 'em in the woods again. It's just like
that sneakin' hound Larrabee to hev bin lyin' in wait for me and afraid
to meet a man fair and square in the open.”
“You just lie low, dad, for a day or two more, and let me do a little
prowlin',” said the girl, with sympathetic indignation in her dark eyes.
“Ef it's that skunk, I'll spot him soon enough and let you know whar
he's hiding.”