By the Wayside
The horses moved along together in friendly rivalry. Pedro gave way
not an inch to his black friend. He displayed no sign of the fatigue
of the double journey of the day before. There was no leanness about
his flanks. There was no droop of his crested neck. The spirit of the
thoroughbred was abounding. The powerful body was tireless.
Blanche had carried out her purpose. Early morning had found her on the
trail again with her untiring horse. Her anxiety for her brother was
something approaching weakness. There could be no peace of mind for her
until she was assured of his safety, and he had learned all she had to
tell him. So she had set out soon after sunrise, taking the trail of
the Three-Way Creek in the hope of intercepting him on his way home.
She had discovered Jim at the water-hole on the creek that flowed
through the heart of Dan Quinlan’s valley, where Molly had first met
him. Her relief was intense. It was as though a great weight had been
lifted from her shoulders. And as they rode on together down the valley
on their way home she heard the story of Dan’s trouble, and eased her
own anxiety by imparting to Jim the whole of the story which Lightning
had told her.
Jim’s comment at the conclusion of her story was characteristic. The
threat to himself, and to his enterprise in the Valley of Hope, did not
seem to concern him at all. He brushed it aside as unworthy of serious
consideration. But the story of McFardell’s treatment of Molly, and of
her apparent ill-health and grief, stirred him profoundly.
“You know, Sis, folks like us don’t have to worry for the thing the
other feller’s doing,” he said, with a seriousness which hinted at the
depth of feeling she had stirred. “It means nothing against you, and
nothing against Larry. And as for the boys we’ve passed shelter to, we
can get them all clear away before the worst McFardell can do could
begin to hand us a nightmare. What’s left? There’s only the tug between
me and him, and the thought of that makes me glad.”
Jim’s eyes searched ahead, where the forest broke, giving way to the
grass flat which he remembered to have been the grazing-ground of
Molly’s truant cows. And Blanche watched the cold, hard light take
possession of them.
“No,” he went on. “It’s not our show that worries me a thing. It’s that
little girl, with her eyes as innocent as a child’s. It’s the thing
you tell me of her. It’s the thing that cur has done to her. Don’t you
see, Sis? She’s her father’s daughter, the man who helped me when all
help seemed impossible. But that’s not all. I want that little girl for
myself. And I--I feel like making a break for her place right now.”
“What could you do, Jim?” Blanche asked anxiously.
She was troubled at the mood which she recognised lying behind the
man’s manner. Jim shook his head.
“That’s the trouble,” he said almost moodily. “What could I do that
would help her? You see, she loves that skunk. It seems queer, Sis.
There’s just nothing I wouldn’t do to help her, and I’m helpless as a
babe. Half the time it’s that way with things. The real opportunity to
help is the rarest thing in our lives. Out of some sort of generous,
fool impulse we jump in and act, and it’s only once in a century the
thing a feller does that way is real help. Look at this, now. There’s
that poor, lone girl. She’s grieving and sick. Money? It’s no sort of
use to her. It’s unthinkable. She’s not looking for that help. Can I
pass her back her man? Not a thing. And she’s sick in body and mind. Is
there anything I could do, or say, that would heal those? It sets me
crazy to think the way I’m fixed. Her father’s always in my mind. So
are that kid’s pretty eyes, and her figure, that’s so like yours. Say,
she’s a babe--a babe of these hills; and I can’t pass her the hand of
comfort I’m yearning to.”
Blanche was closely observing, and she read the depths of emotion that
were driving him so hard. His grief was all unconcealed. The sorrowful
regret in his tone and words hurt her.
“But do you make it that he really has deserted her?” she asked,
seeking the best she could find in the darkness of it all. “You don’t
think he’s taken to the trail for the while, looking for you? It
occurred to me it might be so. And when he was through he’d get back
to her. For obvious reasons I couldn’t say that to either Molly or
Lightning.”
Jim shook his head again.
“If you think that way, Sis, you don’t know men,” he said quietly. “But
you don’t think that. I guess you think the way I’m thinking. You’re
trying to find hope for that little kid, and there isn’t a cent’s worth
that way. A boy can hate another good. He can yearn to avenge an injury
all the time. But, even so, the girl that boy loves is first turn,
surely. Certainly it would be in this case. Where’s the reason in not
telling her the thing he’s doing? If he’s to spend months chasing me
up, why not tell Molly, and save her grieving? Why quit his farm? Why
sell it up? Why a mystery? He’s quit her. He’s quit her cold, Sis.
He was crazy for her; she was crazy for him. Yet he quits her cold,
without a quarrel, right after that dance. That boy needs gun-play.”
They rode on in silence. They had crossed the blue grass flat. They
had re-entered the woods. And now their way carried them into the mouth
of the gorge of Three-Way Creek.
It was Blanche who finally broke the silence. It was as if her words
were literally wrung from her.
“Oh, Jim, it’s just terrible,” she cried, in a storm of distress she
could no longer hide. “I’ve been thinking, thinking. I can’t help it.
Maybe it’s awful of me. But--but I believe--I know.”
The man glanced round sharply. There was a fierce, hot light in his
usually smiling eyes. For an instant Blanche felt herself compelled as
her horrified gaze met his. She felt he was reading through and through
her, seeking the hideous thought that prompted her distress. Then he
turned away, and his only response was a deliberate inclination of his
head.
* * * * *
They had ridden miles up the gorge of Three-Way Creek. And then--and
then, as they came in sight of the smiling waters of the lagoon-like
pool which formed the headwaters of the creek, the whole of the tragedy
was revealed.
Molly’s pinto mare, Rachel, was grazing peacefully on such rank grass
as grew amidst the confusion of rocks. The little creature was saddled
and bridled. But the saddle was empty, and the mare was free to stray
as her mood inclined her.
It was Blanche who first beheld her and cried out. She flung out a
pointing hand.
“Jim!” she cried. “Look! Molly’s mare! There! Ahead by the water. What
is she----”
But her words were lost as her horse leapt forward. And Jim followed
hard on her heels.
As she came to the edge of the lagoon Blanche flung herself out of
the saddle. She had moved on searching amongst the boulders. There was
no doubt in her mind, none whatever. Molly’s mare saddled and bridled
as she was, had not strayed into the gorge. She had been ridden there.
Molly must be there, too.
Jim was left to round up the mare.
Blanche’s discovery came quickly. There it was, huddled and still,
lying under the lea of an up-standing rock, perilously adjacent to
where the rippling surface of the lagoon lapped against the stone. She
dropped upon her knees. She set her arms about the poor limp body, and
raised it so that she could gaze into the ashen face of the girl she
had come to love so deeply. It was Molly. It was Molly looking like
death, and wholly unconscious.
What had happened? Why was Molly here at these headwaters, so far from
her home? Had her pinto fallen with her? And what had she been doing
here at the water’s edge?
Blanche glanced up at the sound of Jim’s approach over the stones.
“I’m not sure she isn’t--dead,” she said, in hushed tones.
“Not--dead!”
There was that in the man’s voice Blanche had never heard before. In a
moment he was kneeling beside her, studying the death-like face. The
eyes were half closed, and looked fixed and utterly lifeless. The lips
were without colour. The gently swelling bosom was still--so ominously
still.
“There’s a bruise, but no cut,” he said, indicating her forehead, and
shaking his white head. “That wouldn’t have killed her. No.”
He picked up one of the girl’s limp arms. He raised it. Then he laid it
down again with infinite gentleness. Again he shook his head.
“She’s not dead,” he said emphatically.
“No.”
Blanche’s reply came mechanically. She was struggling with the fear
that possessed her. Then her courage seemed to return. She drew a deep
breath, and relinquished the girl to the man’s support while she sat
back on her heels.
“She’s badly crashed, anyway,” she said. “She’s been thrown or fallen
from her pony. But--why here? Why at the edge of the water? What was
she doing here, anyway? My!”
She watched Jim’s movements. He was gently stroking the broad white
forehead, removing the loose hair which had fallen over it. He laid
his finger-tips upon the girl’s temples. Then, very carefully, he
endeavoured to raise an eyelid. After that he laid her gently back on
the ground.
The next moment he was on his feet, and Blanche too, stood up. He
stared about him at the dark scene which the sun was endeavouring to
lighten. And for awhile he remained lost in thought.
He was gazing up at the western hillside, where the mouth of a great
cavern yawned, and out of which a shallow stream cascaded down over a
tatter of rocks to the lagoon below. It was the same on three sides.
Towering hills surrounded a narrow amphitheatre, that was darkly
forbidding by reason of the immensity of height that crowded it, and
the pine woods which edged the lagoon. The waters reflected the gloomy
scene, and the sun, slanting its blaze of light, transformed the clear
depths into a mirror of dancing light.
The place appeared to be a sort of dead end. To any who knew nothing
of the tunnel exit it literally was a dead end. There was no apparent
outlet other than that which the flowing waters had made for themselves
down the gorge. For the rest, a barrier stood up, shutting it off from
the mountain heart beyond.
There were three streams, which, pouring down the hillsides, fed the
lagoon, and subsequently the creek. There was one to the north, one
coming down the southern hillside, and that which tumbled headlong out
of the mouth of the cavern set so far up on the face of the western
hills.
The whole place seemed to be a barrier designed by Nature in her most
secret mood--a barrier which was the whole salvation of those who lived
in the world of hills beyond it. But the passage was there. It was
there through the yawning mouth of the cavern. And it was approached
by a long inclined path set on a narrow ledge, which rose diagonally
from the foot of the southern hill and made its devious way across its
precipitous face.
At last Jim turned from his contemplation of the splashing water
pouring from the cavern mouth. He glanced across at the three horses
tethered at the edge of the surrounding forest. Blanche urged him.
“We need to act quick,” she said, her troubled eyes gazing down at the
object of their pity. Then: “What--what are we to do?”
“Do? Do?”
A great light was shining in the man’s eyes. It was a smile of hope
such as Blanche had never known in him. It was as though the tragedy
they had discovered had furnished him with something he had never
looked for, as though a great overwhelming desire of his had been
suddenly fulfilled.
“She’s going right up the valley. That poor little kid isn’t dead.
She’s just sick to death. Do? Why, she needs all the help we can hand
her. It’s my chance. It’s the thing I’ve dreamed. I’m going to pay her
father through her. And I’m going to pay with both hands.”
* * * * *
Jim Pryse’s purpose was carried out without regard to any
consequences. His impulse was irresistible. Blanche had protested
half-heartedly, but her protests had been swept aside. She had warned
him of the danger to himself and to others in the thing he was about to
do. And he had laughed. She had reminded him of Lightning, and Molly’s
own home. And again he had only laughed. Then he had displayed that
forethought for which Blanche had given him no credit.
His plan was simple, as his plans always were. He had thought out the
whole thing at the express speed which was ever his way. His purpose
alone mattered. All objections that might fairly be raised against
it were only things to be ignored, and, in a few moments, the whole
thing had been agreed between them. In the end Blanche gladly enough
undertook her share in the work.
It was arranged that they should change horses, for two perfectly sound
reasons. In the first place, Beelzebub was the fresher of the two, and
he was high strung and nervous, and would be difficult when asked to
carry that which looked so like a dead human body. So it was decided
that Pedro, the infinitely more steady, should carry Molly and Jim up
to the valley.
The change of saddles effected, Blanche assisted in lifting Molly
across the front of Jim’s saddle. When Jim had mounted, and raised her
into his arms, and, supporting her, had set off up the queer ledge
path to the cavern mouth from which the sparkling waters cascaded,
Blanche watched him, confident but anxious. She watched the graceful,
docile sorrel plod its way up the familiar path. She saw it pause for a
moment at the entrance to the tunnel, while Jim shifted his burden to a
position of greater security. Then the beast stepped into the shallow
flood, and splashing its way up the stream, became swallowed up by the
darkness out of which the waters leapt.
With a sigh of relief she turned to Beelzebub and sprang into the
saddle, to carry out her part in the arrangements. There were some
twenty-odd miles of the gorge before she got back to Dan Quinlan’s
valley, and after that a few more miles to the Marton farm. Her day had
already been long, but she gave no thought to her own comfort. She was
determined to do her utmost for Molly and for her brother.
Molly’s pinto was willing enough to be led back to its home, so she
removed the little creature’s reins, hanging over the horn of her
saddle, and, linking her arm through them, set off downstream in quest
of Lightning and the farm.