WHETSTONE COMES HOME
Lambert saw the fire leaping around him, but felt no sting of its touch,
keyed as he was in that swift moment of adjustment. From a man as dead
he was transformed in a breath back to a living, panting, hoping,
struggling being, strong in the tenacious purpose of life. He leaned
over his horse's neck, shouting encouragement, speaking endearments to
it as to a woman in travail.
There was silence on the bank behind him. Amazement over the leap that
had carried Whetstone across the place which they had designed for the
grave of both man and horse, held the four scoundrels breathless for a
spell. Fascinated by the heroic animal's fight to draw himself clear of
the fire which wrapped his hinder quarters, they forgot to shoot.
A heave, a lurching struggle, a groan as if his heart burst in the
terrific strain, and Whetstone lunged up the bank, staggered from his
knees, snorted the smoke out of his nostrils, gathered his feet under
him, and was away like a bullet. The sound of shots broke from the bank
across the fiery crevasse; bullets came so close to Lambert that he lay
flat against his horse's neck.
As the gallant creature ran, sensible of his responsibilities for his
master's life, it seemed, Lambert spoke to him encouragingly, proud of
the tremendous thing that he had done. There was no sound of pursuit,
but the shooting had stopped. Lambert knew they would follow as quickly
as they could ride round the field of fire.
After going to this length, they could not allow him to escape. There
would have been nothing to explain to any living man with him and all
trace of him obliterated in the fire, but with him alive and fleeing,
saved by the winged leap of his splendid horse, they would be called to
answer, man by man.
Whetstone did not appear to be badly hurt. He was stretching away like a
hare, shaping his course toward the ranch as true as a pigeon. If they
overtook him they would have to ride harder than they ever rode in
their profitless lives before.
Lambert estimated the distance between the place where they had trapped
him and the fire as fifteen miles. It must be nine or ten miles across
to the Philbrook ranch, in the straightest line that a horse could
follow, and from that point many miles more to the ranchhouse and
release from his stifling ropes. The fence would be no security against
his pursuing enemies, but it would look like the boundary of hope.
Whether they lost so much time in getting around the fire that they
missed him, or whether they gave it up after a trial of speed against
Whetstone, Lambert never knew. He supposed that their belief was that
neither man nor horse would live to come into the sight of men again.
However it fell, they did not approach within hearing if they followed,
and were not in sight as dawn broke and broadened into day.
Whetstone made the fence without slackening his speed. There Lambert
checked him with a word and looked back for his enemies. Finding that
they were not near, he proceeded along the fence at easier gait, holding
the animal's strength for the final heat, if they should make a sudden
appearance. Somewhere along that miserable ride, after daylight had
broken and the pieced wire that Grace Kerr had cut had been passed,
Lambert fell unconscious across the horn of his saddle from the drain of
blood from his wounds and the unendurable pain of his bonds.
In this manner the horse came bearing him home at sunrise. Taterleg was
away on his beat, not uneasy over Lambert's absence. It was the
exception for him to spend a night in the bunkhouse in that summer
weather. So old Whetstone, jaded, scorched, bloody from his own and his
master's wounds, was obliged to stand at the gate and whinny for help
when he arrived.
It was hours afterward that the fence rider opened his eyes and saw
Vesta Philbrook, and closed them again, believing it was a delirium of
his pain. Then Taterleg spoke on the other side of the bed, and he knew
that he had come through his perils into gentle hands.
"How're you feelin', old sport?" Taterleg inquired with anxious
tenderness.
Lambert turned his head toward the voice and grinned a little, in the
teeth-baring, hard-pulling way of a man who has withstood a great deal
more than the human body and mind ever were designed to undergo. He
thought he spoke to Taterleg; the words shaped on his tongue, his throat
moved. But there was such a roaring in his ears, like the sound of a
train crossing a trestle, that he could not hear his own voice.
"Sure," said Taterleg, hopefully, "you're all right, ain't you, old
sport?"
"Fine," said Lambert, hearing his voice small and dry, strange as the
voice of a man to him unknown.
Vesta put her arm under his head, lifted him a little, gave him a
swallow of water. It helped, or something helped. Perhaps it was the
sympathetic tenderness of her good, honest eyes. He paid her with
another little grin, which hurt her more to see than him to give,
wrenched even though it was from the bottom of his soul.
"How's old Whetstone?" he asked, his voice coming clearer.
"He's all right," she told him.
"His tail's burnt off of him, mostly, and he's cut in the hams in a
couple of places, but he ain't hurt any, as I can see," Taterleg said,
with more truth than diplomacy.
Lambert struggled to his elbow, the consciousness of what seemed his
ingratitude to this dumb savior of his life smiting him with shame.
"I must go and attend to him," he said.
Vesta and Taterleg laid hands on him at once.
"You'll bust them stitches I took in your back if you don't keep still,
young feller," Taterleg warned. "Whetstone ain't as bad off as you, nor
half as bad."
Lambert noticed then that his hands were wrapped in wet towels.
"Burned?" he inquired, lifting his eyes to Vesta's face.
"No, just swollen and inflamed. They'll be all right in a little while."
"I blundered into their hands like a blind kitten," said he,
reproachfully.
"They'll eat lead for it!" said Taterleg.
"It was Kerr and that gang," Lambert explained, not wanting to leave any
doubt behind if he should have to go.
"You can tell us after a while," she said, with compassionate
tenderness.
"Sure," said Taterleg, cheerfully, "you lay back there and take it easy.
I'll keep my eye on things."
That evening, when the pain had eased out of his head, Lambert told
Vesta what he had gone through, sparing nothing of the curiosity that
had led him, like a calf, into their hands. He passed briefly over their
attempt to herd him into the fire, except to give Whetstone the hero's
part, as he so well deserved.
Vesta sat beside him, hearing him to the end of the brief recital that
he made of it in silence, her face white, her figure erect. When he
finished she laid her hand on his forehead, as if in tribute to the
manhood that had borne him through such inhuman torture, and the loyalty
that had been the cause of its visitation. Then she went to the window,
where she stood a long time looking over the sad sweep of broken
country, the fringe of twilight on it in somber shadow.
It was not so dark when she returned to her place at his bedside, but he
could see that she had been weeping in the silent pain that rises like
a poison distillation from the heart.
"It draws the best into it and breaks them," she said in great
bitterness, speaking as to herself. "It isn't worth the price!"
"Never mind it, Vesta," he soothed, putting out his hand. She took it
between her own, and held it, and a great comfort came to him in her
touch.
"I'm going to sell the cattle as fast as I can move them, and give it
up, Duke," she said, calling him by that name with the easy
unconsciousness of a familiar habit, although she never had addressed
him so before.
"You're not going away from here whipped, Vesta," he said with a
firmness that gave new hope and courage to her sad heart. "I'll be out
of this in a day or two, then we'll see about it--about several things.
You're not going to leave this country whipped; neither am I."
She sat in meditation, her face to the window, presenting the soft turn
of her cheek and chin to Lambert's view. She was too fine and good for
that country, he thought, too good for the best that it ever could offer
or give, no matter how generously the future might atone for the
hardships of the past. It would be better for her to leave it, he wanted
her to leave it, but not with her handsome head bowed in defeat.
"I think if you were to sift the earth and screen out its meanest, they
wouldn't be a match for the people around here," she said. "There
wouldn't be a bit of use taking this outrage up with the authorities;
Kerr and his gang would say it was a joke, and get away with it, too."
"I wouldn't go squealing to the county authorities, Vesta, even if I
knew I'd get results. This is something a man has to square for himself.
Maybe they intended it for a joke, too, but it was a little rougher than
I'm used to."
"There's no doubt what their intention was. You can understand my
feelings toward them now, Duke; maybe I'll not seem such a savage."
"I've got a case with you against them all, Vesta."
He made no mental reservation as he spoke; there was no pleading for
exception in Grace Kerr's dark eyes that he could grant. Long as he had
nestled the romance between them in his breast, long as he had looked
into the West and sent his dream out after her, he could not, in this
sore hour, forgive her the taint of her blood.
He felt that all tenderness in him toward any of her name was dead. It
had been a pretty fancy to hold, that thought of finding her, but she
was only swamp-fire that had lured him to the door of hell. Still the
marvel of his meeting her, the violet scent of his old dream, lingered
sweetly with him like the perfume that remains after a beautiful woman
whose presence has illuminated a room. So hard does romance die.
"I think I'll have to break my word to you and buckle on my gun again
for a little while," she said. "Mr. Wilson can't ride the fence alone,
capable and willing as he is, and ready to go day and night."
"Leave it to him till I'm out again, Vesta; that will only be a day or
two----"
"A day or two! Three or four weeks, if you do well."
"No, not that long, not anything like that long," he denied with
certainty. "They didn't hurt me very much."
"Well, if they didn't hurt you much they damaged you considerably."
He grinned over the serious distinction that she made between the words.
Then he thought, pleasantly, that Vesta's voice seemed fitted to her
lips like the tone of some beautiful instrument. It was even and soft,
slow and soothing, as her manner was deliberate and well calculated, her
presence a comfort to the eye and the mind alike.
An exceptional combination of a girl, he reflected, speculating on what
sort of man would marry her. Whoever he was, whatever he might be, he
would be only secondary to her all through the compact. That chap would
come walking a little way behind her all the time, with a contented eye
and a certain pride in his situation. It was a diverting fancy as he lay
there in the darkening room, Vesta coming down the years a strong,
handsome, proud figure in the foreground, that man just far enough
behind her to give the impression as he passed that he belonged to her
_entourage_, but never quite overtaking her.
Even so, the world might well envy the man his position. Still, if a
man should happen along who could take the lead--but Vesta wouldn't have
him; she wouldn't surrender. It might cost her pain to go her way with
her pretty head up, her eyes on the road far beyond, but she would go
alone and hide her pain rather than surrender. That would be Vesta
Philbrook's way.
Myrtle, the negro woman, came in with chicken broth. Vesta made a light
for him to sup by, protesting when he would sit up to help himself, the
spoon impalpable in his numb fingers, still swollen and purple from the
long constriction of his bonds.
Next morning Vesta came in arrayed in her riding habit, her sombrero on,
as she had appeared the first time he saw her. Only she was so much
lovelier now, with the light of friendship and tender concern in her
face, that he was gladdened by her presence in the door. It was as of a
sudden burst of music, or the voice of someone for whom the heart is
sick.
He was perfectly fine, he told her, although he was as sore as a burn.
In about two days he would be in the saddle again; she didn't need to
bother about riding fence, it would be all right, he knew. His
declaration didn't carry assurance. He could see that by the changing
cast of her face, as sensitive as still water to a breathing wind.
She was wearing her pistol, and appeared very competent with it on her
hip, and very high-bred and above that station of contention and strife.
He was troubled not a little at sight of her thus prepared to take up
the battles which she had renounced and surrendered into his hands only
yesterday. She must have read it in his eyes.
"I'm only going to watch the fence and repair it to keep the cattle in
if they cut it," she said. "I'll not take the offensive, even if I see
her--them cutting it; I'll only act on the defensive, in any case. I
promise you that, Duke."
She left him with that promise, before he could commend her on the
wisdom of her resolution, or set her right on the matter of Grace Kerr.
From the way Vesta spoke, a man would think she believed he had some
tender feeling for that wild girl, and the idea of it was so
preposterous that he felt his face grow hot.
He was uneasy for Vesta that day, in spite of her promise to avoid
trouble, and fretted a good deal over his incapacitated state. His
shoulder burned where Tom Hargus' knife had scraped the bone, his
wounded back was stiff.
Without this bodily suffering he would have been miserable, for he had
the sweat of his humiliation to wallow in, the black cloud of his
contemplated vengeance across his mind in ever-deepening shadow. On his
day of reckoning he cogitated long, planning how he was to bring it
about. The law would not justify him in going out to seek these men and
shooting them down where overtaken. Time and circumstance must be ready
to his hand before he could strike and wipe out that disgraceful score.
It was not to be believed that they would allow the matter to stand
where it was; that was a comforting thought. They would seek occasion to
renew the trouble, and push it to their desired conclusion. That was the
day to which he looked forward in hot eagerness. Never again would he be
taken like a rabbit in a trap. He felt that, to stand clear before the
law, he would have to wait for them to push their fight on him, but he
vowed they never would find him unprepared, asleep or awake, under roof
or under sky.
He would get Taterleg to oil up a pair of pistols from among the number
around the bunkhouse and leave them with him that night. There was
satisfaction in the anticipation of these preparations. Dwelling on them
he fell asleep. He woke late in the afternoon, when the sun was yellow
on the wall, the shadow of the cottonwood leaves quivering like
dragonflies' wings.
On the little table beside his bed, near his glass, a bit of white paper
lay. He looked at it curiously. It bore writing in ink and marks as of a
pin.
_Just to say hello, Duke._
That was the message, unsigned, folded as it had been pinned to the
wire. Vesta had brought it and left it there while he slept.
He drew himself up with stiff carefulness and read it again, holding it
in his fingers then and gazing in abstraction out of the window,
through which he could pick up the landscape across the river, missing
the brink of the mesa entirely.
A softness, as of the rebirth of his old romance, swept him, submerging
the bitter thoughts and vengeful plans which had been his but a few
hours before, the lees of which were still heavy in him. This little
piece of writing proved that Grace was innocent of anything that had
befallen him. In the friendly good-will of her heart she thought him, as
she doubtless wished him, unharmed and well.
There was something in that girl better than her connections would seem
to guarantee; she was not intractable, she was not beyond the influence
of generosity, nor deaf to the argument of honor. It would be unfair to
hold her birth and relationship against her. Nobility had sprung out of
baseness many times in the painful history of human progress. If she was
vengeful and vindictive, it was what the country had made her. She
should not be judged for this in measure harsher than Vesta Philbrook
should be judged. The acts of both were controlled by what they
believed to be the right.
Perhaps, and who knows, and why not? So, a train of dreams starting and
blowing from him, like smoke from a censer, perfumed smoke, purging the
place of demons which confuse the lines of men's and women's lives and
set them counter where they should go in amity, warm hand in warm hand,
side by side.