For miles Pierre and Halby rode without a word. Then they got down and
walked for a couple of miles, to bring the blood into their legs again.
“The old man goes to By-by bientot,” said Pierre at last.
“You don’t think he’ll last long?”
“Maybe ten days; maybe one. If we don’t get the girl, out goes his
torchlight straight.”
“She’s been very good to him.”
“He’s been on his knees to her all her life.”
“There’ll be trouble out of this, though.”
“Pshaw! The girl is her own master.”
“I mean, someone will probably get hurt over there.” He nodded in the
direction of Fort O’Battle.
“That’s in the game. The girl is worth fighting for, hein?”
“Of course, and the law must protect her. It’s a free country.”
“So true, my captain,” murmured Pierre drily. “It is wonderful what a
man will do for the law.”
The tone struck Halby. Pierre was scanning the horizon abstractedly.
“You are always hitting at the law,” he said. “Why do you stand by it
now?”
“For the same reason as yourself.”
“What is that?”
“She has your picture in her room, she has my lucky dollar in her
pocket.”
Halby’s face flushed, and then he turned and looked steadily into
Pierre’s eyes.
“We’d better settle this thing at once. If you’re going to Fort O’Battle
because you’ve set your fancy there, you’d better go back now. That’s
straight. You and I can’t sail in the same boat. I’ll go alone, so give
me the pistol.”
Pierre laughed softly, and waved the hand back. “T’sh! What a
high-cock-a-lorum! You want to do it all yourself--to fill the eye of
the girl alone, and be tucked away to By-by for your pains--mais, quelle
folie! See: you go for law and love; I go for fun and Jimmy Throng. The
girl? Pshaw! she would come out right in the end, without you or me. But
the old man with half a lung--that’s different. He must have sweet bread
in his belly when he dies, and the girl must make it for him. She shall
brush her hair with the ivory brush by Sunday morning.”
Halby turned sharply.
“You’ve been spying,” he said. “You’ve been in her room--you--”
Pierre put out his hand and stopped the word on Halby’s lips.
“Slow, slow,” he said; “we are both--police to-day. Voila! we must not
fight. There is Throng and the girl to think of.” Suddenly, with a soft
fierceness, he added: “If I looked in her room, what of that? In all the
North is there a woman to say I wrong her? No. Well, what if I carry her
room in my eye; does that hurt her or you?”
Perhaps something of the loneliness of the outlaw crept into Pierre’s
voice for an instant, for Halby suddenly put a hand on his shoulder and
said: “Let’s drop the thing, Pierre.”
Pierre looked at him musingly.
“When Throng is put to By-by what will you do?” he asked.
“I will marry her, if she’ll have me.”
“But she is prairie-born, and you!”
“I’m a prairie-rider.”
After a moment Pierre said, as if to himself: “So quiet and clean, and
the print calico and muslin, and the ivory brush!”
It is hard to say whether he was merely working on Halby that he be true
to the girl, or was himself softhearted for the moment. He had a
curious store of legend and chanson, and he had the Frenchman’s power
of applying them, though he did it seldom. But now he said in a half
monotone:
“Have you seen the way I have built my nest?
(O brave and tall is the Grand Seigneur!)
I have trailed the East, I have searched the West,
(O clear of eye is the Grand Seigneur!)
From South and North I have brought the best:
The feathers fine from an eagle’s crest,
The silken threads from a prince’s vest,
The warm rose-leaf from a maiden’s breast
(O long he bideth, the Grand Seigneur!).”
They had gone scarce a mile farther when Pierre, chancing to turn round,
saw a horseman riding hard after them. They drew up, and soon the man--a
Rider of the Plains--was beside them. He had stopped at Throng’s to find
Halby, and had followed them. Murder had been committed near the border,
and Halby was needed at once. Halby stood still, numb with distress, for
there was Lydia. He turned to Pierre in dismay. Pierre’s face lighted
up with the spirit of fresh adventure. Desperate enterprises roused him;
the impossible had a charm for him.
“I will go to Fort O’Battle,” he said. “Give me another pistol.”
“You cannot do it alone,” said Halby, hope, however, in his voice.
“I will do it, or it will do me, voila!” Pierre replied. Halby passed
over a pistol.
“I’ll never forget it, on my honour, if you do it,” he said.
Pierre mounted his horse and said, as if a thought had struck him: “If I
stand for the law in this, will you stand against it some time for me?”
Halby hesitated, then said, holding out his hand, “Yes, if it’s nothing
dirty.”
Pierre smiled. “Clean tit for clean tat,” he said, touching Halby’s
fingers, and then, with a gesture and an au revoir, put his horse to the
canter, and soon a surf of snow was rising at two points on the prairie,
as the Law trailed south and east.
That night Pierre camped in the Jim-a-long-Jo, finding there firewood in
plenty, and Tophet was made comfortable in the lean-to. Within another
thirty hours he was hid in the woods behind Fort O’Battle, having
travelled nearly all night. He saw the dawn break and the beginning of
sunrise as he watched the Fort, growing every moment colder, while his
horse trembled and whinnied softly, suffering also. At last he gave a
little grunt of satisfaction, for he saw two men come out of the Fort
and go to the corral. He hesitated a minute longer, then said: “I’ll not
wait,” patted his horse’s neck, pulled the blanket closer round him, and
started for the Fort. He entered the yard--it was empty. He went to the
door of the Fort, opened it, entered, shut it, locked it softly, and put
the key in his pocket. Then he passed through into a room at the end of
the small hallway. Three men rose from seats by the fire as he did so,
and one said: “Hullo, who’re you?” Another added: “It’s Pretty Pierre.”
Pierre looked at the table laid for breakfast, and said: “Where’s Lydia
Throng?”
The elder of the three brothers replied: “There’s no Lydia Throng here.
There’s Lydia Bontoff, though, and in another week she’ll be Lydia
something else.”
“What does she say about it herself?”
“You’ve no call to know.”
“You stole her, forced her from Throng’s-her father’s house.”
“She wasn’t Throng’s; she was a Bontoff--sister of us.
“Well, she says Throng, and Throng it’s got to be.”
“What have you got to say about it?”
At that moment Lydia appeared at the door leading from the kitchen.
“Whatever she has to say,” answered Pierre.
“Who’re you talking for?”
“For her, for Throng, for the law.”
“The law--by gosh, that’s good! You, you darned gambler; you scum!” said
Caleb, the brother who knew him.
Pierre showed all the intelligent, resolute coolness of a trained
officer of the law. He heard a little cry behind him, and stepping
sideways, and yet not turning his back on the men, he saw Lydia.
“Pierre! Pierre!” she said in a half-frightened way, yet with a sort of
pleasure lighting up her face; and she stepped forward to him. One of
the brothers was about to pull her away, but Pierre whipped out his
commission. “Wait,” he said. “That’s enough. I’m for the law; I belong
to the mounted police. I have come for the girl you stole.”
The elder brother snatched the paper and read. Then he laughed loud and
long. “So you’ve come to fetch her away,” he said, “and this is how you
do it!”--he shook the paper. “Well, by--” Suddenly he stopped. “Come,”
he said, “have a drink, and don’t be a dam’ fool. She’s our sister,--old
Throng stole her, and she’s goin’ to marry our partner. Here, Caleb,
fish out the brandy-wine,” he added to his younger brother, who went to
a cupboard and brought the bottle.
Pierre, waving the liquor away, said quietly to the girl: “You wish
to go back to your father, to Jimmy Throng?” He then gave her Throng’s
message, and added: “He sits there rocking in the big chair and
coughing--coughing! And then there’s the picture on the wall upstairs
and the little ivory brush--”
She put out her hands towards him. “I hate them all here,” she said. “I
never knew them. They forced me away. I have no father but Jimmy Throng.
I will not stay,” she flashed out in sudden anger to the others; “I’ll
kill myself and all of you before I marry that Borotte.”
Pierre could hear a man tramping about upstairs. Caleb knocked on
the stove-pipe, and called to him to come down. Pierre guessed it was
Borotte. This would add one more factor to the game. He must move at
once. He suddenly slipped a pistol into the girl’s hand, and with a
quick word to her, stepped towards the door. The elder brother sprang
between--which was what he looked for. By this time every man had a
weapon showing, snatched from wall and shelf.
Pierre was cool. He said: “Remember, I am for the law. I am not one man.
You are thieves now; if you fight and kill, you will get the rope, every
one. Move from the door, or I’ll fire. The girl comes with me.” He had
heard a door open behind him, now there was an oath and a report, and a
bullet grazed his cheek and lodged in the wall beyond. He dared not turn
round, for the other men were facing him. He did not move, but the girl
did. “Coward!” she said, and raised her pistol at Borotte, standing with
her back against Pierre’s.
There was a pause, in which no one stirred, and then the girl, slowly
walking up to Borotte, her pistol levelled, said: “You low coward--to
shoot a man from behind; and you want to be a decent girl’s husband!
These men that say they’re my brothers are brutes, but you’re a sneak.
If you stir a step I’ll fire.”
The cowardice of Borotte was almost ridiculous. He dared not harm the
girl, and her brothers could not prevent her harming him. Here there
came a knocking at the front door. The other brothers had come, and
found it locked. Pierre saw the crisis, and acted instantly. “The girl
and I--we will fight you to the end,” he said, “and then what’s left of
you the law will fight to the end. Come,” he added, “the old man can’t
live a week. When he’s gone then you can try again. She will have what
he owns. Quick, or I arrest you all, and then--”
“Let her go,” said Borotte; “it ain’t no use.” Presently the elder
brother broke out laughing. “Damned if I thought the girl had the pluck,
an’ damned if I thought Borotte was a crawler. Put an eye out of him,
Liddy, an’ come to your brother’s arms. Here,” he added to the others,
“up with your popguns; this shindy’s off; and the girl goes back till
the old man tucks up. Have a drink,” he added to Pierre, as he stood his
rifle in a corner and came to the table.
In half an hour Pierre and the girl were on their way, leaving Borotte
quarrelling with the brothers, and all drinking heavily. The two arrived
at Throng’s late the next afternoon. There had been a slight thaw during
the day, and the air was almost soft, water dripping from the eaves down
the long icicles.
When Lydia entered, the old man was dozing in his chair. The sound of
an axe out behind the house told where Duc was. The whisky-and-herbs
was beside the sick man’s chair, and his feet were wrapped about with
bearskins. The girl made a little gesture of pain, and then stepped
softly over and, kneeling, looked into Throng’s face. The lips were
moving.
“Dad,” she said, “are you asleep?”
“I be a durn fool, I be,” he said in a whisper, and then he began to
cough. She took his’ hands. They were cold, and she rubbed them softly.
“I feel so a’mighty holler,” he said, gasping, “an’ that bread’s sour
agin.” He shook his head pitifully.
His eyes at last settled on her, and he recognised her. He broke into a
giggling laugh; the surprise was almost too much for his feeble mind and
body. His hands reached and clutched hers. “Liddy! Liddy!” he whispered,
then added peevishly, “the bread’s sour, an’ the boneset and camomile’s
no good.... Ain’t tomorrow bakin’-day?” he added.
“Yes, dad,” she said, smoothing his hands.
“What damned--liars--they be--Liddy! You’re my gel, ain’t ye?”
“Yes, dad. I’ll make some boneset liquor now.”
“Yes, yes,” he said, with childish eagerness and a weak, wild smile.
“That’s it--that’s it.”
She was about to rise, but he caught her shoulder. “I bin a good dad to
ye, hain’t I, Liddy?” he whispered.
“Always.”
“Never had no ma but Manette, did ye?”
“Never, dad.”
“What danged liars they be!” he said, chuckling. She kissed him, and
moved away to the fire to pour hot water and whisky on the herbs.
His eyes followed her proudly, shining like wet glass in the sun. He
laughed--such a wheezing, soundless laugh!
“He! he! he! I ain’t no--durn--fool--bless--the Lord!” he said.
Then the shining look in his eyes became a grey film, and the girl
turned round suddenly, for the long, wheezy breathing had stopped. She
ran to him, and, lifting up his head, saw the look that makes even the
fool seem wise in his cold stillness. Then she sat down on the floor,
laid her head against the arm of his chair, and wept.
It was very quiet inside. From without there came the twang of an axe,
and a man’s voice talking to his horse. When the man came in, he lifted
the girl up, and, to comfort her, bade her go look at a picture hanging
in her little room. After she was gone he lifted the body, put it on a
couch, and cared for it.