A PROMISE
Dr. Slavens rode in before dawn, more concerned about Agnes than about
the person in whose behalf he had been summoned. On the way he asked
Smith repeatedly how the tragedy affected her; whether she was
frightened or greatly disturbed.
"She's as steady as a compass," said Smith; and so he found her.
Somewhat too steady, in fact. It was the steadiness of a deep and
settled melancholy, through which his best efforts could do no more than
strike a feeble, weary smile.
Immediately upon the death of the herder, one of the men had ridden to
Meander and carried word to the coroner. That official arrived in the
middle of the forenoon, bringing with him the undertaker and a wagon.
After some perfunctory inquiries, the coroner concluded that an inquest
was not necessary. He did not go to the trouble to find Boyle and
question him, but he looked with a familiar understanding in his piggish
eyes at Agnes when she related the circumstances of the tragedy.
Coroners, and others who knew the Governor's son, had but one measure
for a woman who entertained Jerry Boyle alone in her tent, or even
outside it, at night. Boyle's associations had set the standard of his
own morality, as well as that of his consorts. The woman from up the
river, and the little bride from across the ford, drew off together,
whispering, after Agnes had told her story. Presently they slipped away
without a word.
Even Dr. Slavens, cool and just-minded as he was, felt the hot stirring
of jealous suspicion. It brought to his mind unpleasantly the
ruminations of his solitary days in camp among the rocks, when he had
turned over in his mind the belief that there was something of the past
between Agnes and Boyle.
He had not convicted her in his own judgment of any wrong, for the
sincerity of her eyes had stood between him and the possibility of any
such conclusion. Now the thought that, after all his trust, she might be
unworthy, smote painfully upon his heart.
When the others had gone away, after a little standing around,
hitch-legged and wise, in close discussion of the event, the doctor
sitting, meantime, with Agnes in front of the tent, he spoke of the
necessity of getting back to his claim. She was pale after the night's
strain, although apparently unconscious of the obloquy of her neighbors.
Nevertheless, she pressed him to remain for the midday meal.
"I've not been very hospitable, I'm afraid," said she; "but this thing
has stunned me. It seems like it has taken something away from the
prospect of life here."
"Yes, it has taken something away," he responded, gravely thoughtful,
his look bent upon the ground.
She sprang up quickly, a sharp little cry upon her lips as if from the
shock of a blow from a hand beloved.
"I saw it in their eyes!" she cried. "But you--but you! Oh--oh--I
_trusted_ you to know!"
"Forgive me," he begged. "I did not mean to hurt you. Perhaps I was
thinking of the romance and the glamour which this had stripped away
from things here. I think my mind was running on that."
"No," she denied. "You were thinking like that little woman across the
river with the fright and horror in her big eyes. You were thinking that
I am guilty, and that there can be but one answer to the presence of
that man in my camp last night. His notorious name goes before him like
a blight."
"You'll have to move your camp now," as if seeking delicately to avoid
the ghost that seemed to have risen between them; "this place will have
unpleasant associations."
"Yes; it cannot be reconsecrated and purified."
He stood as if prepared to leave. Agnes placed her hand upon his
shoulder, looking with grieved eyes into his face.
"Will you stay a little while," she asked, "and hear me? I want to part
from you with your friendship and respect, for I am entitled to both, I
am worthy of both--if ever."
"Let me move your stool out into the sun," he suggested. "There's a
chill in the wind today. Of course I'll stay, and we'll have some more
of that excellent coffee before I go. You must teach me how you make it;
mine always turns out as muddy as a bucket of Missouri River water."
His cheerfulness was like that which a healthy man displays at the
bedside of a dying friend--assumed, but helpful in its way. He placed
her folding canvas stool in the sun beyond the shadow of the tent and
found a box for himself. Thus arranged, he waited for her to speak.
"Still, I am not sure of what I protested in regard to your friendship
and respect," said she after a little brooding silence. "I am a fraud,
taken at the best, and perhaps a criminal."
Dr. Slavens studied her face as she paused there and looked away, as if
her thoughts concentrated beyond the blue hills in the west.
"My name is not Horton," she resumed, facing him suddenly. "It is Gates,
and my father is in the Federal penitentiary at Leavenworth."
"But there was no call for you to tell me this," he protested softly.
"Yes, every reason for it," she averred. "The fabric of all my troubles
rests on that. He was president of a bank--you remember the scandal,
don't you? It was nation-wide."
He nodded.
"I spoke to you once of the ghosts of money. They have worried me for
four years and more, for nothing but the ghosts are left when one loses
place and consequence before the world. It was a national bank, and the
charge was misapplication of funds. He had money enough for all the sane
uses of any man, but the pernicious ambition to be greater assailed him,
even old as he was.
"He never said, and I never have held it so, that his punishment was
unjust. Only it seemed to us unfair when so many greater evildoers
escape or receive pardons. You will remember, perhaps, that none of the
depositors lost anything. Wild as his schemes appeared, they turned out
sound enough after a while, and everything was liquidated.
"We gave up everything of our own; mother and I have felt the rub of
hardship before today. The hardest of all was the falling away of those
whom we believed to be friends. We learned that the favors of society
are as fickle as those of fortune, and that they walk hand in hand.
"No matter. Father's term will expire in less than one month. He is an
old, broken, disgraced man; he never will be able to lift up his face
before the world again. That is why I am here. Mother and I concluded
that we might make a refuge for him here, where he would be unknown. We
planned for him to leave his name, and as much of his past as he could
shake off, behind him at the prison door.
"It was no sacrifice for me. All that I had known in the old life was
gone. Sneers followed me; the ghosts of money rose up to accuse. I was a
felon's daughter; but, worse than that--I was poor! This country held
out its arms to me, clean and undefiled. When I got my first sight of
it, and the taste of its free air in my nostrils, my heart began to
unfold again, and the cramped wrinkles fell out of my tired soul."
The sunshine was around them, and the peace of the open places. They sat
for the world to see them, and there was nothing to hide in the sympathy
that moved Dr. Slavens to reach out and take the girl's hand. He
caressed it with comforting touch, as if to mitigate the suffering of
her heart, in tearing from it for his eyes to see, her hoarded sorrow
and unearned shame.
"There is that freedom about it," said he, "when one sees it by day and
sunlight."
"But it has its nights, too," she shuddered, the shadow of last night in
her eyes.
"Yet they all pass--the longest of them and the most painful," he
comforted her.
"And leave their scars sometimes. How I came here, registered, drew a
claim, and filed on it, you know. I did all that under the name of
Horton, which is a family name on mother's side, not thinking what the
consequence might be. Now, in payment for this first breach of the law,
I must at least give up all my schemes here and retreat. I may be
prosecuted; I may even go to prison, like my father did."
"Surely not!" he protested. "Who is there to know it, to lay a charge
against you?"
"Such person is not wanting in the miserable plot of my life," she
answered. "I will reach him soon in my sorry tale."
"Boyle!" Slavens said, as if thinking aloud. "He's the man!"
"You take the name from my mouth," she told him. "He has threatened me
with prosecution. Perjury, he says it would be called, and prison would
be the penalty."
"It might be so here," he admitted.
"I met Jerry Boyle about five years ago, when father was in Congress.
His father was at that time Senator from this state. We lived in
Washington, and Jerry Boyle was then considered a very original and
delightful young man. He was fresh in from the range, but he had the
polish of a university education over his roughness, and what I know now
to be inborn coarseness was then accepted for ingenuousness. He passed
current in the best society of the capital, where he was coddled as a
butterfly of new species. We met; he made love to me, and I--I am afraid
that I encouraged him to do it at first.
"But he drank and gambled, and got into brawls. He stabbed an attaché of
the Mexican Legation over a woman, and the engagement to marry him which
I had entered into was broken. I was foolish in the first instance, but
I plead the mitigation of frivolity and youth. My heart was not in it. I
beg you to believe, Dr. Slavens, that my heart was not in it at all."
She looked at him with pleading sincerity, and from her eyes his heart
gathered its recesses full of joy.
"I need no further assurance of that," he smiled.
"You are generous. It was on the afternoon of the day that followed your
disappearance from Comanche that Boyle came into camp there. I had not
forgotten him, of course, nor his influential position in this state;
but I never thought of meeting him there. It was a sickening shock to
me. I denied his protestations of acquaintanceship, but it passed off
poorly with all of them who were present, except William Bentley,
generous gentleman that he is."
"He is so," testified Slavens.
"I left Comanche because I was afraid of him, but he rode post the night
that I engaged passage and beat me to Meander; but he wasn't hurrying on
my account, as you know. He tried to see me there in Meander, but I
refused to meet him. The day before yesterday he came here and solicited
my help in carrying out a scheme. I refused. He threatened me with
exposure and arrest on account of false entry and affidavit."
Agnes told then of her ride into the hills, the meeting with the herder,
and subsequent events up to the shooting. But she said nothing of
Boyle's base proposal to her, although her face burned at the
recollection, giving Slavens more than half a guess what was behind that
virtuous flame.
"And so, you poor little soul, all your plans for your City of Refuge
are shattered because you refuse to sacrifice somebody to keep them
whole," said he.
"No matter," she returned in that voice of abnegation which only a long
marching line of misfortunes can give a woman or a man command over. "I
have decided, anyway, to give it up. It's too big and rough and lonesome
for me."
"And that person whom you put up your heart and soul to shield," he went
on, looking steadily into her face and pursuing his former thought, "has
something in his possession which this man Boyle covets and thinks he
must have? And the cheapest and easiest way to get it is to make you pay
for it in the violation of your honest principles, if he can drive you
to it in his skulking way?"
She bowed assent, her lips tightly set.
"Yes," said he. "Just so. Well, why didn't Boyle come to me with his
threats, the coward!"
"No, no!" she cried in quick fright. "Not that; it is something--something
else."
"You poor dissembler!" he laughed. "You couldn't be dishonest if you
wanted to the worst way in the world. Well, don't you worry; I'll take
it up with him today."
"You'll _not_ give it up!" she exclaimed vehemently. "All your hopes are
there, and it's yours, and _you'll not_ give it up!"
"Never mind," he soothed, again taking her hand, which she had withdrawn
to aid in emphasizing her protest. "I don't believe he'd carry out his
threats about the United States marshal and all that."
"You'll not give it up to him unless he pays you for it," she
reiterated, ignoring her own prospect of trouble. "It's valuable, or he
wouldn't be so anxious to get it."
"Perhaps," Slavens assented.
"I'm going to leave here," she hurriedly pursued. "It was foolish of me
to come, in the first place. The vastness of it bewildered me, and 'the
lonesomeness,' as Smith calls it, is settling in my heart."
"Well, where will you go?" he asked bewilderedly.
"Somewhere--to some village or little farm, where we can raise poultry,
mother and I."
"But I haven't planned it that way," Slavens smiled. "If you leave, what
am I going to do?"
"I don't know," she acknowledged, "unless--unless you come some time."
"Look here, Agnes," said he, taking the matter entirely in hand. "When
we leave this place, we'll leave together. I've arranged that all in my
mind and intention. It's all disposed of and settled. Here comes Boyle
now, I think."
Boyle left his horse standing a few rods distant and came over to where
they sat.
"You look comfortable," he commented, as serene and unperturbed as if
the load of one more human life on his soul were a matter too light to
be felt with inconvenience.
"Very comfortable," answered Slavens, rising stiffly. "We have nothing
on our hands that common water will not wash off."
"Oh, that nut!" depreciated Boyle. "He'd talked around for a year or two
about getting me. I only beat him to it when he tried; that's all."
"But there was another occasion--another attempt that didn't turn out
quite like you intended," said Slavens. "Do you remember me?"
"Yes; you're the tin-horn doctor that held a man up in Comanche and
stole the coat off of his back," Boyle retorted with easy insolence.
Agnes looked at the doctor imploringly, plainly begging him not to
provoke Boyle to another outbreak of violence. She was standing beside
him, the fear and loathing which Boyle's presence aroused undisguised in
her frank face.
"It was an outrage against one of the honest men who tried to murder
me," said the doctor. "But, vicious as it was, neither Shanklin nor you,
his side-partner, has ever made a squeal. If it was a holdup, why
haven't you sent one of your little sheriffs out after me?"
"I'm no partner of Hun Shanklin's!" denied Boyle.
"Maybe you've parted company since the night you slugged me and nailed
me up in that box for the river to hide your work."
"I'll make you prove that charge!" threatened Boyle hotly.
"I can't prove it," admitted the doctor. "If I could, I'd have you in
court tomorrow. But you were one of them, and I want you to understand
fully that I know it, and will treat you accordingly in any private
dealings that may come up between you and me."
"If you keep spoutin' it around that I ever slugged you, I'll pull you
into court and make you prove it! It'll either be put up or shut up with
you, mister!"
"Whenever you're ready," invited Slavens.
With somewhat more of ostentation than the simple act seemed to warrant,
Boyle unbuttoned his coat, displaying his revolver as he made an
exploration of his vest-pockets for a match to light his cigarette.
"Well, I guess you know what I'm here for?" Boyle suggested, passing his
glance significantly from one to the other of them.
"Dr. Slavens is acquainted with your proposal," said Agnes; "and it
ought to be needless for me to say that I'll not permit him to make any
concession to shield myself."
"Fine! fine!" said Boyle in mock applause, throwing his head back and
snorting smoke.
"In the first place," said Slavens, "your bluff don't go. Miss Gates has
not broken any law in registering and entering this land under an
_alias_. There's no crime in assuming a name, and no felony in acquiring
property under it, unless fraud is used. She has defrauded nobody, and
you could not make a case against her in a thousand years!"
"I can get an indictment--that's a cinch!" declared Boyle.
"Go ahead," said the doctor. "We've got some new blood in this country
now, and we can find a jury that you don't own and control when it comes
to trial."
"And after the indictment comes arrest and jail," Boyle continued,
overlooking the doctor's argument in the lofty security of his position.
"It would make a lot of noisy talk, considering the family reputation
and all that."
"And the outcome of it might be--and I doubt even that--that Miss Gates
would lose her homestead," Slavens supplied.
"You don't know the Federal judge in this district," Boyle grinned.
"Jail's what it means, and plenty of it, for the judge has to approve a
bond, if you know what that means."
"Why don't you pay Dr. Slavens for his homestead, as you were ready to
pay that man Peterson if you could have filed him on it?" Agnes asked.
"Because it's mine already," said Boyle. "This man stole the description
of that land, as I have told you before, at the point of a gun."
"Then you lied!" Slavens calmly charged.
Boyle hitched his hip, throwing the handle of his pistol into sight.
"You can say that," said he, "because I've got to have your name on a
paper."
"I'll never permit Dr. Slavens to sign away his valuable claim to you,"
declared Agnes. "I'll not allow----"
Slavens lifted his hand for silence.
"I'll do the talking for this family from now on," said he, smiling
reassuringly as he held her eyes a moment with his own.
He turned abruptly to Boyle.
"And the fighting, too, when necessary. You keep that little gun in its
place when you're around me, young man, or you'll get hurt! One more
break like that to show me that you've got it, and you and I will mix.
Just put that down in your book."
"Oh, all right, pardner!" returned Boyle with that jerky insolence which
men of his kind assume when they realize that they have been called, and
called hard. He buttoned his coat.
"And as far as Miss Gates is concerned, consider her out of this case,"
said Slavens. "But I want to have some private talk with you."
They walked over to the place where Boyle's horse stood, and there, out
of the hearing of Agnes, Slavens sounded Jerry sharply on his
intentions. It was plain that there was no bluff in Boyle; he meant what
he threatened, and he was small enough to carry it through.
As an illustration of his far-reaching influence, Boyle pointed out to
Slavens that nobody had approached the physician with an offer to buy
him out, although one had appeared anxious enough to open negotiations
the day he filed.
"When we tell a man to lay down in this part of the country, he lays
down," said Boyle; "and when we order him to walk on his hind legs, he
walks. Nobody will offer you any money for that place; it isn't worth
anything to a soul on earth but me. You couldn't sell out in a century.
You'll get that through your nut if you hang around here long enough."
For a little while Slavens thought it over, walking away a few paces and
appraising the situation studiously. Suddenly he wheeled and confronted
Boyle, leveling his finger at his face.
"Your bluff don't go, Boyle!" said he. "You'd just as well get on your
horse and light out; and if you want to bring it to a fight, then let it
be a fight. We'll meet you on any ground you pick."
"You're a fool!" snarled Boyle.
"Then I'll be a bigger one--big enough to call you to account before
another day has passed over your head for your part in that dirty work
in Comanche that night. And I want to lay it off to you right now that
all the influence you can command in this state isn't going to save you
when I go after you!"
Boyle picked up his bridle-reins and threaded his arm through them,
standing so, legs wide apart, while he rolled a cigarette. As it dangled
between his lips and the smoke of it rose up, veiling his eyes, he
peered narrowly through it at the doctor.
"There's a man in the graveyard up at Cheyenne that made a talk like
that one time," he said.
"I'll have to take your word for that," returned Slavens, quite unmoved.
"I'll meet you at the hotel in Meander tomorrow morning at nine o'clock
for a settlement, one way or the other."
"One way or the other," repeated Boyle.
He mounted his horse and rode away toward Meander, trailing a thin line
of smoke behind him.
Agnes hurried forward to meet Slavens as he turned toward her. Her face
was bloodless, her bosom agitated.
"I heard part of what you said," she told him. "Surely you don't mean to
go over there and fight him on his own ground, among his friends?"
"I'm going over there to see the county attorney," said he. "He's from
Kansas, and a pretty straight sort of chap, it seemed to me from what I
saw of him. I'm going to put this situation of ours before him, citing a
hypothetical case, and get his advice. I don't believe that there's a
shred of a case against you, and I doubt whether Boyle can bluff the
government officials into making a move in it, even with all his
influence."
"And you'll come back here and tell me what he says, no matter what his
opinion may be, before you act one way or another?"
"If you wish it, although--Well, yes--if you wish it."
"I do, most earnestly," she assured him.
"You need a good sleep," he counseled. "Turn in as soon as I'm gone, and
don't worry about this. There's a good deal of bluff in Boyle."
"He's treacherous, and he shoots wonderfully. He killed that poor fellow
last night without ever seeing him at all."
"But I'm not going to take a shot at him out of the dark," said he.
"I know. But I'll be uneasy until you return."
"There's too much trouble in your face today for one of your years," he
said, lifting her chin with rather a professional rebuke in his eyes.
"You'll have to put it down, or it will make you old. Go right on
dreaming and planning; things will come out exactly as you have
designed."
"Perhaps," she agreed, but with little hope in her voice.
Slavens saddled his horse after they had refreshed themselves with
coffee. Agnes stood by, racked with an anxiety which seemed to grind her
heart. The physician thought of the pioneer women of his youth, of those
who lived far out on the thin edge of prairie reaches, and in the gloom
of forests which groaned around them in the lone winds of winter nights.
There was the same melancholy of isolation in Agnes' eyes today as he
had seen in theirs; the same sad hopelessness; the same hunger, and the
longing to fly from the wilderness and its hardships, heart-weariness,
and pain.
Her hand lay appealingly upon his shoulder for a moment before he
mounted, and her face was turned up to him, unspoken yearning on her
lips.
"Promise me again before you go that you will come back here before you
relinquish your homestead to Boyle," she demanded. "Promise me that, no
matter what the lawyer's opinion may be, you'll return here before you
do anything else at all."
"I promise you," said he.
When he had ridden a little way he halted his horse and turned in his
saddle to look back. She was sitting there in the sun, her head bowed,
her hands clasped over her face, as if she wept or prayed. A little
while he waited there, as if meditating a return, as if he had forgotten
something--some solace, perhaps, for which her lips had appealed to his
heart dumbly.
Yet a sincere man seldom knows these things, which a trifler is so quick
to see. He did not know, perhaps; or perhaps he was not certain enough
to turn his horse and ride back to repair his omission. Presently he
rode on slowly, his head bent, the bridle-reins loose in his hand.