AN ARGUMENT ENDS
Morning found Agnes only the more firmly determined to bear her troubles
alone. Smith came by early. He looked curiously at the revolver, which
she still carried at her waist, but there was approval in his eyes. The
sight of the weapon seemed to cheer Smith, and make him easier in his
mind about something that had given him unrest. She heard him singing as
he passed on to his work. Across the river the bride was singing also,
and there seemed to be a song in even the sound of the merry axes among
the cottonwoods, where her neighboring settler and his two lank sons
were chopping and hewing the logs for their cabin. But there was no song
in her own heart, where it was needed most.
She knew that Jerry Boyle had camped somewhere near the stage-road,
where he could watch her coming and going to carry the demand on Dr.
Slavens which he had left with her. He would be watching the road even
now, and he would watch all day, or perhaps ride up there to learn the
reason when he failed to see her pass. She tied back the flaps of her
tent to let the wind blow through, and to show any caller that she was
not at home, then saddled her horse and rode away into the hills. It
needed a day of solitude, she thought, to come to a conclusion on the
question how she was to face it out with Jerry Boyle. Whether to stay
and fight the best that she was able, or to turn and fly, leaving all
her hopes behind, was a matter which must be determined before night.
In pensive mood she rode on, giving her horse its head, but following a
general course into the east. As her wise animal picked its way over the
broken ground, she turned the situation in her mind.
There was no doubt that she had been indiscreet in the manner of taking
up her homestead, but she could not drive herself to the belief that she
had committed a moral crime. And the doctor. He would drop all his
prospects in the land that he held if she should call on him, she well
believed. He was big enough for a sacrifice like that, with never a
question in his honest eyes to cloud the generosity of the act. If she
had him by to advise her in this hour, and to benefit by his wisdom and
courage, she sighed, how comfortable it would be.
Perhaps she should have gone, mused she, pursuing this thought, to his
place, and put the thing before him in all its ugliness, with no
reservations, no attempts to conceal or defend. He could have told her
how far her act was punishable. Perhaps, at the most, it would mean no
more than giving up the claim, which was enough, considering all that
she had founded on it. Yes, she should have ridden straight to Dr.
Slavens; that would have been the wiser course.
Considering whether she would have time to go and return that day,
wasted as the morning was, she pulled up her horse and looked around to
see if she could estimate by her location the distance from her camp.
That she had penetrated the country east of the river farther than ever
before, was plain at a glance. The surroundings were new to her. There
was more vegetation, and marks of recent grazing everywhere.
She mounted the hill-crest for a wider survey, and there in a little
valley below her she saw a flock of sheep grazing, while farther along
the ridge stood a sheep-wagon, a strange and rather disconcerting figure
striding up and down beside it.
Doubtless it was the shepherd, she understood. But a queer figure he
made in that place; and his actions were unusual, to say the least, in
one of his sedate and melancholy calling. He was a young man, garbed in
a long, black coat, tattered more or less about the skirts and open in
front, displaying his red shirt. His hair was long upon his collar, and
his head was bare.
As he walked up and down a short beat near his wagon, the shepherd held
in his hand a book, which he placed before his eyes with a flourish now,
and then with a flourish withdrew it, meantime gesticulating with his
empty hand in the most extravagant fashion. His dog, sharper of
perception than its master, lay aside from him a little way, its ears
pricked up, its sharp nose lifted, sniffing the scent of the stranger.
But it gave no alarm.
Agnes felt that the man must be harmless, whatever his peculiarities.
She rode forward, bent on asking him how far she had strayed from the
river. As she drew near, she heard him muttering and declaiming,
illustrating his arguments of protestation with clenched fist and
tossing head, his long hair lifting from his temples in the wind.
He greeted her respectfully, without sign of perturbation or surprise,
as one well accustomed to the society of people above the rank of
shepherd.
"My apparent eccentric behavior at the moment when you first saw me,
madam, or miss, perhaps, most likely I should say, indeed----"
Agnes nodded, smiling, to confirm his penetration.
"So, as I was saying, my behavior may have led you into doubt of my
balance, and the consequent question of your safety in my vicinity," he
continued.
"Nothing of the kind, I assure you," said she. "I thought you might be
a--a divinity student by your dress, or maybe a candidate for the legal
profession."
"Neither," he disclaimed. "I am a philosopher, and at the moment you
first beheld me I was engaged in a heated controversy with Epictetus,
whose _Discourses_ I hold in my hand. We are unable to agree on many
points, especially upon the point which he assumes that he has made in
the discussion of grief. He contends that when one is not blamable for
some calamity which bereaves him or strips him of his possessions, grief
is unmanly, regret inexcusable.
"'How?' say I, meeting him foot to foot on the controversy, 'in case I
lose my son, my daughter, my wife--the wife of my soul and heart--shall
I not grieve? shall I not be permitted the solace of a tear?'
"And Epictetus: 'Were you to blame for the disease which cut them off?
Did you light the fire which consumed them, or sink the ship which
carried them down?'
"'No,' I answer; 'but because I'm blameless shall I become inhuman, and
close my heart to all display of tenderness and pain?'
"And there we have it, miss, over and over again. Ah, I am afraid we
shall never agree!"
"It is lamentable," Agnes agreed, believing that the young man's life in
the solitudes had unsettled his mind. "I never agree with him on that
myself."
The philosopher's hollow, weathered face glowed as she gave this
testimony. He drew a little nearer to her, shaking the long, dark, loose
hair back from his forehead.
"I am glad that you don't think me demented," said he. "Many, who do not
understand the deeper feelings of the soul, do believe it. The
hollow-minded and the unstable commonly lose their small balance of
reason in these hills, miss, with no companionship, month in and month
out, but a dog and the poor, foolish creatures which you see in the
valley yonder. But to one who is a philosopher, and a student of the
higher things, this situation offers room for the expansion of the soul.
Mine has gone forth and enlarged here; it has filled the universe."
"But a man of your education and capabilities," she suggested, thinking
to humor him, "ought to be more congenially situated, it seems to me.
There must be more remunerative pursuits which you could follow?"
"Remuneration for one may not be reward for another," he told her. "I
shall remain here until my mission is accomplished."
He turned to his flock, and, with a motion of the arm, sped his dog to
fetch in some stragglers which seemed straying off waywardly over the
crest of the opposite hill. As he stood so she marked his ascetic
gauntness, and noted that the hand which swung at his side twitched and
clenched, and that the muscles of his cleanly shaved jaws swelled as he
locked his teeth in determination.
"Your mission?" she asked, curious regarding what it might be, there in
the solitude of those barren hills.
"I see that you are armed," he observed irrelevantly, as if the subject
of his mission had been put aside. "I have a very modern weapon of that
pattern in the wagon, but there is little call for the use of it here.
Perhaps you live in the midst of greater dangers than I?"
"I'm one of the new settlers over in the river bottom," she explained.
"I rode up to ask you how far I'd strayed from home."
"It's about seven miles across to the river, I should estimate," he told
her. "I graze up to the boundary of the reservation, and it's called
five miles from there."
"Thank you; I think I'll be going back then."
"Will you do me the favor to look at this before you go?" he asked,
drawing a folded paper from the inner pocket of his coat and handing it
to her.
It was a page from one of those so-called _Directories_ which small
grafters go about devising in small cities and out-on-the-edge
communities, in which the pictures of the leading citizens are printed
for a consideration. The page had been folded across the center; it was
broken and worn.
"You may see the person whose portrait is presented there," said he,
"and if you should see him, you would confer a favor by letting me
know."
"Why, I saw him yesterday!" she exclaimed in surprise. "It's Jerry
Boyle!"
The sheep-herder's eyes brightened. A glow came into his brown face.
"You do well to go armed where that wolf ranges!" said he. "You know
him--you saw him yesterday. Is he still there?"
"Why, I think he's camped somewhere along the river," she told him,
unable to read what lay behind the excitement in the man's manner.
He folded the paper and returned it to his pocket, his breath quick upon
his lips. Suddenly he laid hold of her bridle with one hand, and with
the other snatched the revolver from her low-swinging holster.
"Don't be alarmed," said he; "but I want to know. Tell me true--lean
over and whisper in my ear. Is he your friend?"
"No, no! Far from it!" she whispered, complying with his strange order
out of fear that his insanity, flaming as it was under the spur of some
half-broken memory, might lead him to take her life.
He gave her back the revolver and released the horse.
"Go," said he. "But don't warn him, as you value your own life! My
mission here is to kill that man!"
Perhaps it was a surge of unworthiness which swept her, lifting her
heart like hope. The best of us is unworthy at times; the best of us is
base. Selfishness is the festering root of more evil than gold. In that
flash it seemed to her that Providence had raised up an arm to save her.
She leaned over, her face bright with eagerness.
"Has he wronged you, too?" she asked.
He lifted his hand to his forehead slowly, as if in a gesture of pain.
The blood had drained from his face; his cheek-bones were marked white
through his wind-hardened skin.
"It's not a subject to be discussed with a woman, sir," said he
absently. "There was a wife--somewhere there was a wife! This man came
between us. I was not then what I am today--a shepherd on the hills....
But I must keep you here; you will betray me and warn him if I let you
go!" he cried, rousing suddenly, catching her bridle again.
"No, I'll not warn him," Agnes assured him.
"If I thought you would"--he hesitated, searching her face with his
fevered eyes, in which red veins showed as in the eyes of an angry
dog--"I'd have to sacrifice you!"
Agnes felt that she never could draw her weapon in time, in case the
eccentric tried to take it away again, and her heart quailed as she
measured the distance she would have to ride before the fall of the
ground would protect her, even if she should manage to break his hold on
the bridle, and gallop off while he was fetching his pistol from the
wagon.
"I'll not warn him," said she, placing her hand on his arm. "I give you
my sincere word that I'll do nothing to save him from what I feel to be
your just vengeance."
"Go, before I doubt you again!" he cried, slapping her horse with his
palm as he let go the bridle.
From the tip of the hill she looked back. He had disappeared--into the
wagon, she supposed; and she made haste to swerve from the straight
course to put another hill between them, in case he might run after her,
his mad mind again aflame with the belief that she would cheat him of
his revenge.
Agnes arrived in camp full of tremors and contradictory emotions. One
minute she felt that she should ride and warn Boyle, guilty as he might
be, and deserving of whatever punishment the hand of the wronged man
might be able to inflict; the next she relieved herself of this impulse
by arguing that the insane sheep-herder was plainly the instrument of
fate--she lacked the temerity, after the first flush, to credit it to
Providence--lifted up to throw his troubles between her and her own.
She sat in the sun before her tent thinking it over, for and against,
cooling considerably and coming to a saner judgment of the situation.
Every little while she looked toward the hills, to see if the shepherd
had followed her. She had seen no horse in the man's camp; he could not
possibly make it on foot, under two hours, even if he came at all, she
told herself.
Perhaps it was an imaginary grievance, based upon the reputation which
Boyle had earned for himself; maybe the poor, declaiming philosopher had
forgotten all about it by now, and had returned to his discourses and
his argument. She brewed a pot of tea, for the shadows were marking
noonday, and began to consider riding down the river to find Boyle and
tell him of the man's threat, leaving him to follow his own judgment in
the matter. His conscience would tell him whether to stand or fly.
Strong as her resentment was against the man who had come into her plans
so unexpectedly and thrown them in a tangle, she felt that it would be
wrong to her own honesty to conceal from him the knowledge of his
danger. Perhaps there remained manliness enough in him to cause him to
withdraw his avaricious scheme to oust Dr. Slavens in return for a
service like that. She determined at last to seek Boyle in his camp.
She brought up her horse and saddled it, took a look around camp to see
that everything was in shape--for she liked to leave things tidy, in
case some of the neighbors should stop in--and was about to mount, when
a man's head and shoulders appeared from behind her own cottonwood log.
A glance showed her that it was the sheep-herder. His head was bare, his
wild hair in his eyes.
He got to his feet, his pistol in his hand.
"I watched you," said he, sheathing the weapon, as if he had changed his
mind about the use of it. "I knew you'd go!"
"But I didn't intend to when I parted from you up there on the hill,"
she declared, greatly confused over being caught in this breach of faith
with even a crazy man.
"I considered that, too," said the philosopher. "But I watched you. I'll
never be fool enough to entirely trust a woman again. You all lie!"
She wondered how he had arrived there so quickly and silently, for he
gave no evidence of fatigue or heat. She did not know the dry endurance
which a life like his builds up in a man. Sheep-herders in that country
are noted for their fleetness. It is a common saying of them that their
heels are as light as their heads.
But there he was, at any rate, and her good intentions toward Boyle must
be surrendered. Conscience had a palliative in the fact that she had
meant to go.
"Heaven knows I have as little reason to wish him well as you!" said
she, speaking in low voice, as if to herself, as she began to undo the
saddle girth.
"Stay here, then," said the sheep-herder, watching her with glistening
eyes. "I'll kill him for both of us! Where is his camp?"
"I don't know," she replied, shuddering.
The demented shepherd's way of speaking of taking a human life, even
though a worthless one, or a vicious one, was eager and hungry. He
licked his lips like a dog.
"You said he was camped on the river. Where?"
"I don't know," she returned again.
"I'll tell you," said he, staying her hand as she tugged on a strap.
"Both of us will go! You shall ride, and I'll run beside you. But"--he
bent over, grinding his teeth and growling between them--"you sha'n't
help kill him! That's for me, alone!"
She drew back from his proposal with a sudden realization of what a
desperately brutal thing this unstrung creature was about to do,
with a terrible arraignment of self-reproach because she had made no
effort to dissuade him or place an obstacle in the way of accomplishing
his design. It was not strange, thought she, with a revulsion of
self-loathing, that he accepted her as a willing accomplice and
proposed that she bear a hand. Even her effort to ride and find Boyle
had been half-hearted. She might have gone, she told herself, before
the herder arrived.
"No, no! I couldn't go! I couldn't!" she cried, forgetting that she was
facing an unbalanced man, all the force of pleading in her voice.
"No, you want to kill him yourself!" he charged savagely. "Give me that
horse--give it to me, I tell you! I'll go alone!"
He sprang into the saddle, not waiting to adjust the stirrups to his
long legs. With his knees pushed up like a jockey's, he rode off, the
pointer of chance, or the cunning of his own inscrutable brain,
directing him the way Boyle had gone the evening before.
His going left her nerveless and weak. She sat and watched him out of
sight beyond the cottonwoods and willows, thinking what a terrible thing
it was to ride out with the cold intention of killing a man. This man
was irresponsible; the strength of his desire for revenge had
overwhelmed his reason. The law would excuse him of murder, for in the
dimness of his own mind there was no conception of crime.
But what excuse could there be for one who sat down in deliberation----
Base Jerry Boyle might be, ready to sacrifice unfeelingly the innocent
for his own pleasure and gain, ready to strike at their dearest hopes,
ready to trample under his feet the green gardens of their hearts'
desire; yet, who should sit in judgment on him, or seek a justification
in his deeds to--to---- Even then she could not bring her thoughts to
express it, although her wild heart had sung over it less than
twenty-four hours before.
A shiver of sickness turned her cold. With quick, nervous fingers she
unbuckled the belt which held her revolver and cartridges; she carried
the weapon into the tent and flung it to the ground.
At dusk the sheep-herder returned, with the horse much blown.
"He had been there, but he's gone," he announced. "I followed him
eastward along the stage-road, but lost his trail."
He dismounted and dropped the reins to the ground. Agnes set about to
relieve the tired animal of the burden of the saddle, the sheep-herder
offering no assistance. He stood with his head bent, an air of dejection
and melancholy over him, a cloud upon his face. Presently he walked
away, saying no more. She watched him as he went, moodily and unheeding
of his way, until he passed out of view around a thicket of tangled
shrubs which grew upon the river-bank.
While her horse was relieving his weariness in contented sighs over his
oats, Agnes made a fire and started her evening coffee. She had a
feeling of cleanness in her conscience, and a lightness of heart which
she knew never could have been her own to enjoy again if the crazed
herder had come back with blood upon his hands.
There was no question about the feeling of loneliness that settled down
upon her with aching intensity when she sat down to her meal, spread on
a box, the lantern a yellow speck in the boundless night. A rod away its
poor, futile glimmer against such mighty odds was understood, standing
there with no encompassing walls to mark the boundary of its field. It
was like the struggle of a man who stands alone in the vastness of life
with no definite aim to circumscribe his endeavor, wasting his feeble
illumination upon a little rod of earth.
We must have walls around us, both lanterns and men, rightly to fill the
sphere of our designed usefulness; walls to restrain our wastrel forces;
walls to bind our lustful desires, our foolish ambitions, our outwinging
flights. Yet, in its way, the lantern served nobly, as many a man serves
in the circle which binds his small adventures, and beyond which his
fame can never pass.
From the door of her tent Agnes looked out upon the lantern, comparing
herself with it, put down there as she was in that blank land, which was
still in the night of its development. Over that place, which she had
chosen to make a home and a refuge, her own weak flame would fall dimly,
perhaps never able to light it all. Would it be worth the struggle, the
heart-hunger for other places and things, the years of waiting, the toil
and loneliness?
She went back to her supper, the cup which she had gone to fetch in her
hand. The strength of night made her heart timid; the touch of food was
dry and tasteless upon her lips. For the first time since coming to that
country she felt the pain of discouragement. What could she do against
such a great, rough thing? Would it ever be worth the labor it would
cost?
Feeble as her light was against the night, it was enough to discover
tears upon her cheeks as she sat there upon the ground. Her fair hair
lay dark in the shadows, and light with that contrast which painters
love, where it lifted in airy rise above her brow. And there were the
pensive softness of her chin, the sweep of her round throat, the profile
as sharp as a shadow against the mellow glow. Perhaps the lantern was
content in its circumscribed endeavor against the night, when it could
light to such good advantage so much loveliness.
* * * * *
"If I'd have put my hands over your eyes, who would you have named?"
asked a voice near her ear, a voice familiar, and fitted in that moment
with old associations.
"I'd have had no trouble in guessing, Jerry, for I was expecting you,"
she answered, scarcely turning her head, although his silent manner of
approach had startled her.
"Agnes, I don't believe you've got any more nerves than an Indian," he
said, dropping down beside her.
"If one wanted to make a facetious rejoinder, the opening is excellent,"
she said, fighting back her nervousness with a smile. "Will you have
some supper?"
"I'd like it, if you don't mind."
She busied herself with the stove, but he peremptorily took away from
her the office of feeding the fire, and watched her as she put bacon on
to fry.
"Agnes, you ought to have been frying bacon for me these four years
past--figuratively, I mean," he remarked, musingly.
"If you don't mind, we'll not go back to that," she said.
Boyle made no mention of the purpose of his visit. He made his supper
with ambassadorial avoidance of the subject which lay so uneasily on her
mind. When he had finished, he drew out his tobacco-sack and rolled a
cigarette, and, as it dangled from his lip by a shred of its wrapping,
he turned to her.
"Well?" he asked.
She was standing near the lantern, removing the few utensils--the bacon
had been served to him in the pan--from her outdoor table. When she
answered him she turned away until her face was hidden in the shadow.
"I didn't carry your message to Dr. Slavens as you ordered, Jerry."
"I know it," said he. "What next?"
"I guess it's 'up to you,' as you put it. I'm not going to try to save
myself at the expense of any of my friends."
Boyle got up. He took a little turn away from the box whereon the
lantern stood, as if struggling to maintain the fair front he had worn
when he appeared. After a little he turned and faced her, walking back
slowly until only the length of the little stove was between them.
"Have you considered your own danger?" he asked.
"It wouldn't help you a great deal here, among these rough, fair-minded
people, to take an advantage like that of a woman, especially when her
transgression is merely technical and not intentional," she rejoined.
"I wouldn't have to appear in it," he assured her.
"Well, set the United States marshal after me as soon as you want to;
I'll be here," she said, speaking with the even tone of resignation
which one commands when the mind has arrived at a determined stand to
face the last and worst.
"Agnes, I told you yesterday that I was all over the old feeling that I
had for you."
Boyle leaned forward as he spoke, his voice earnest and low.
"But that was a bluff. I'm just as big a fool as I ever was about it. If
you want to walk over me, go ahead; if you want to--oh, rats! But I'll
tell you; if you'll come away with me I'll drop all of this. I'll leave
that tin-horn doctor where he is, and let him make what he can out of
his claim."
"I couldn't marry you, Jerry; it's impossible to think of that," she
told him gently.
"Oh, well, that's a formality," he returned, far more in his voice than
his words. "I'll say to you----"
"You've said too much!" she stopped him, feeling her cheeks burn under
the outrage which he had offered to her chaste heart. "There's no room
for any more words between you and me--never! Go now--say no more!"
She walked across the bright ring of light toward the tent, making a
little detour around him, as if afraid that his violent words might be
followed by violent deeds.
Boyle turned where he stood, following her with his eyes. The light of
the lantern struck him strongly up to the waist, leaving his head and
shoulders in the gloom above its glare. His hands were in the pockets of
his trousers, his shoulders drooping forward in that horseback stoop
which years in the saddle had fastened on him.
Agnes had reached the tent, where she stood with her hand on the flap,
turning a hasty look behind her, when a shot out of the dark from the
direction of the river-bank struck her ears with a suddenness and a
portent which seemed to carry the pain of death. She was facing that
way; she saw the flash of it; she saw Jerry Boyle leap with lithe
agility, as if springing from the scourge of flames, and sling his
pistol from the hostler under his coat.
In his movement there was an admirable quickness, rising almost to the
dignity of beauty in the rapidity with which he adjusted himself to meet
this sudden exigency. In half the beat of a heart, it seemed, he had
fired. Out of the dark came another leap of flame, another report. Boyle
walked directly toward the point from which it came, firing as he went.
No answer came after his second shot.
Agnes pressed her hand over her eyes to shut out the sight, fearing to
see him fall, her heart rising up to accuse her. She had forgotten to
warn him! She had forgotten!
Boyle's voice roused her. There was a dry harshness in it, a hoarseness
as of one who has gone long without water on the lips.
"Bring that lantern here!" he commanded.
She did not stand to debate it, but took up the light and hurried to the
place where he stood. A man lay at his feet, his long hair tossed in
disorder, his long coat spread out like a black blotch upon the ground.
Boyle took the lantern and bent over the victim of his steady arm,
growled in his throat, and bent lower. The man's face was partly hidden
by the rank grass in which he lay. Boyle turned it up to the light with
his foot and straightened his back with a grunt of disdain.
"Huh! _That_ rabbit!" said he, giving her back the light.
It did not require that gleam upon the white face to tell Agnes that the
victim was the polemical sheep-herder, whose intention had been steadier
than his aim.
Boyle hesitated a moment as if to speak to her, but said nothing before
he turned and walked away.
"You've killed him!" she called after him sharply. "Don't go away and
leave him here like this!"
"He's not dead," said Boyle. "Don't you hear him snort?"
The man's breathing was indeed audible, and growing louder with each
labored inspiration.
"Turn him over on his face," directed Boyle. "There's blood in his
throat."
"Will you go for Smith?" she asked, kneeling beside the wounded man.
"He's coming; I can hear the sauerkraut jolt in him while he's half a
mile away. If anybody comes looking for me on account of this--coroner
or--oh, anybody--I'll be down the river about a quarter below the
stage-ford. I'll wait there a day longer to hear from you, and this is
my last word."
With that Boyle left her. Smith came very shortly, having heard the
shots; and the people from up the river came, and the young man from the
bridal nest across on the other side. They made a wondering, awed ring
around the wounded man, who was pronounced by Smith to be in deep
waters. There was a bullet through his neck.
Smith believed there was life enough left in the sheep-herder to last
until he could fetch a doctor from Meander.
"But that's thirty miles," said Agnes, "and Dr. Slavens is not more than
twenty. You know where he's located--down by Comanche?"
Smith knew, but he had forgotten for the minute, so accustomed to
turning as he was to the center of civilization in that section for all
the gentle ministrants of woe, such as doctors, preachers, and
undertakers.
"I'll have him here before morning," said Smith, posting off to get his
horse.
The poor sheep-herder was too sorely hurt to last the night out. Before
Smith had been two hours on his way the shepherd was in the land of
shades, having it out face to face with Epictetus--if he carried the
memory of his contention across with him, to be sure.
The neighbors arranged him respectably upon a board, and covered him
over with a blanket, keeping watch beside him in the open, with the
clear stars shining undisturbed by this thing which made such a turmoil
in their breasts. There he lay, waiting the doctor and the coroner, and
all who might come, his earthly troubles locked up forever in his cold
heart, his earthly argument forever at an end.