TORN TWO WAYS
Steele lay in a shady little glade, partly walled by the masses of
upreared rocks that we used as a lookout point. He was asleep, yet far
from comfortable. The bandage I had put around his head had been made
from strips of soiled towel, and, having collected sundry bloody spots,
it was an unsightly affair. There was a blotch of dried blood down one
side of Steele's face. His shirt bore more dark stains, and in one place
was pasted fast to his shoulder where a bandage marked the location of
his other wound. A number of green flies were crawling over him and
buzzing around his head. He looked helpless, despite his giant size; and
certainly a great deal worse off than I had intimated, and, in fact,
than he really was.
Miss Sampson gasped when she saw him and both her hands flew to her
breast.
"Girls, don't make any noise," I whispered. "I'd rather he didn't wake
suddenly to find you here. Go round behind the rocks there. I'll wake
him, and call you presently."
They complied with my wish, and I stepped down to Steele and gave him a
little shake. He awoke instantly.
"Hello!" I said, "Want a drink?"
"Water or champagne?" he inquired.
I stared at him. "I've some champagne behind the rocks," I added.
"Water, you locoed son of a gun!"
He looked about as thirsty as a desert coyote; also, he looked flighty.
I was reaching for the canteen when I happened to think what pleasure it
would be to Miss Sampson to minister to him, and I drew back. "Wait a
little." Then with an effort I plunged. "Vaughn, listen. Miss Sampson
and Sally are here."
I thought he was going to jump up, he started so violently, and I
pressed him back.
"She--Why, she's been here all the time--Russ, you haven't
double-crossed me?"
"Steele!" I exclaimed. He was certainly out of his head.
"Pure accident, old man."
He appeared to be half stunned, yet an eager, strange, haunting look
shone in his eyes. "Fool!" he exclaimed.
"Can't you make the ordeal easier for her?" I asked.
"This'll be hard on Diane. She's got to be told things!"
"Ah!" breathed Steele, sinking back. "Make it easier for her--Russ,
you're a damned schemer. You have given me the double-cross. You have
and she's going to."
"We're in bad, both of us," I replied thickly. "I've ideas, crazy enough
maybe. I'm between the devil and the deep sea, I tell you. I'm about
ready to show yellow. All the same, I say, see Miss Sampson and talk to
her, even if you can't talk straight."
"All right, Russ," he replied hurriedly. "But, God, man, don't I look a
sight! All this dirt and blood!"
"Well, old man, if she takes that bungled mug of yours in her lap, you
can be sure you're loved. You needn't jump out of your boots! Brace up
now, for I'm going to bring the girls." As I got up to go I heard him
groan. I went round behind the stones and found the girls. "Come on," I
said. "He's awake now, but a little queer. Feverish. He gets that way
sometimes. It won't last long." I led Miss Sampson and Sally back into
the shade of our little camp glade.
Steele had gotten worse all in a moment. Also, the fool had pulled the
bandage off his head; his wound had begun to bleed anew, and the flies
were paying no attention to his weak efforts to brush them away. His
head rolled as we reached his side, and his eyes were certainly wild and
wonderful and devouring enough. "Who's that?" he demanded.
"Easy there, old man," I replied. "I've brought the girls." Miss Sampson
shook like a leaf in the wind.
"So you've come to see me die?" asked Steele in a deep and hollow voice.
Miss Sampson gave me a lightning glance of terror.
"He's only off his head," I said. "Soon as we wash and bathe his head,
cool his temperature, he'll be all right."
"Oh!" cried Miss Sampson, and dropped to her knees, flinging her gloves
aside. She lifted Steele's head into her lap. When I saw her tears
falling upon his face I felt worse than a villain. She bent over him for
a moment, and one of the tender hands at his cheeks met the flow of
fresh blood and did not shrink. "Sally," she said, "bring the scarf out
of my coat. There's a veil too. Bring that. Russ, you get me some
water--pour some in the pan there."
"Water!" whispered Steele.
She gave him a drink. Sally came with the scarf and veil, and then she
backed away to the stone, and sat there. The sight of blood had made her
a little pale and weak. Miss Sampson's hands trembled and her tears
still fell, but neither interfered with her tender and skillful dressing
of that bullet wound.
Steele certainly said a lot of crazy things. "But why'd you come--why're
you so good--when you don't love me?"
"Oh, but--I do--love you," whispered Miss Sampson brokenly.
"How do I know?"
"I am here. I tell you."
There was a silence, during which she kept on bathing his head, and he
kept on watching her. "Diane!" he broke out suddenly.
"Yes--yes."
"That won't stop the pain in my head."
"Oh, I hope so."
"Kiss me--that will," he whispered. She obeyed as a child might have,
and kissed his damp forehead close to the red furrow where the bullet
cut.
"Not there," Steele whispered.
Then blindly, as if drawn by a magnet, she bent to his lips. I could not
turn away my head, though my instincts were delicate enough. I believe
that kiss was the first kiss of love for both Diane Sampson and Vaughn
Steele. It was so strange and so long, and somehow beautiful. Steele
looked rapt. I could only see the side of Diane's face, and that was
white, like snow. After she raised her head she seemed unable, for a
moment, to take up her task where it had been broken off, and Steele lay
as if he really were dead. Here I got up, and seating myself beside
Sally, I put an arm around her. "Sally dear, there are others," I said.
"Oh, Russ--what's to come of it all?" she faltered, and then she broke
down and began to cry softly. I would have been only too glad to tell
her what hung in the balance, one way or another, had I known. But
surely, catastrophe! Then I heard Steele's voice again and its
huskiness, its different tone, made me fearful, made me strain my ears
when I tried, or thought I tried, not to listen.
"Diane, you know how hard my duty is, don't you?"
"Yes, I know--I think I know."
"You've guessed--about your father?"
"I've seen all along you must clash. But it needn't be so bad. If I can
only bring you two together--Ah! please don't speak any more. You're
excited now, just not yourself."
"No, listen. We must clash, your father and I. Diane, he's not--"
"Not what he seems! Oh, I know, to my sorrow."
"What do you know?" She seemed drawn by a will stronger than
her own. "To my shame I know. He has been greedy, crafty,
unscrupulous--dishonest."
"Diane, if he were only that! That wouldn't make my duty torture. That
wouldn't ruin your life. Dear, sweet girl, forgive me--your father's--"
"Hush, Vaughn. You're growing excited. It will not do. Please--please--"
"Diane, your father's--chief of this--gang that I came to break up."
"My God, hear him! How dare you--Oh, Vaughn, poor, poor boy, you're out
of your mind! Sally, Russ, what shall we do? He's worse. He's saying the
most dreadful things! I--I can't bear to hear him!"
Steele heaved a sigh and closed his eyes. I walked away with Sally, led
her to and fro in a shady aisle beyond the rocks, and tried to comfort
her as best I could. After a while, when we returned to the glade, Miss
Sampson had considerable color in her cheeks, and Steele was leaning
against the rock, grave and sad. I saw that he had recovered and he had
reached the critical point. "Hello, Russ," he said. "Sprung a surprise
on me, didn't you? Miss Sampson says I've been a little flighty while
she bandaged me up. I hope I wasn't bad. I certainly feel better now. I
seem to--to have dreamed."
Miss Sampson flushed at his concluding words. Then silence ensued. I
could not think of anything to say and Sally was dumb. "You all seem
very strange," said Miss Sampson.
When Steele's face turned gray to his lips I knew the moment had come.
"No doubt. We all feel so deeply for you," he said.
"Me? Why?"
"Because the truth must no longer be concealed."
It was her turn to blanch, and her eyes, strained, dark as night,
flashed from one of us to the other.
"The truth! Tell it then." She had more courage than any of us.
"Miss Sampson, your father is the leader of this gang of rustlers I
have been tracing. Your cousin George Wright, is his right-hand man."
Miss Sampson heard, but she did not believe.
"Tell her, Russ," Steele added huskily, turning away. Wildly she whirled
to me. I would have given anything to have been able to lie to her. As
it was I could not speak. But she read the truth in my face. And she
collapsed as if she had been shot. I caught her and laid her on the
grass. Sally, murmuring and crying, worked over her. I helped. But
Steele stood aloof, dark and silent, as if he hoped she would never
return to consciousness.
When she did come to, and began to cry, to moan, to talk frantically,
Steele staggered away, while Sally and I made futile efforts to calm
her. All we could do was to prevent her doing herself violence.
Presently, when her fury of emotion subsided, and she began to show a
hopeless stricken shame, I left Sally with her and went off a little way
myself. How long I remained absent I had no idea, but it was no
inconsiderable length of time. Upon my return, to my surprise and
relief, Miss Sampson had recovered her composure, or at least,
self-control. She stood leaning against the rock where Steele had been,
and at this moment, beyond any doubt, she was supremely more beautiful
than I had ever seen her. She was white, tragic, wonderful. "Where is
Mr. Steele?" she asked. Her tone and her look did not seem at all
suggestive of the mood I expected to find her in--one of beseeching
agony, of passionate appeal to Steele not to ruin her father.
"I'll find him," I replied turning away.
Steele was readily found and came back with me. He was as unlike himself
as she was strange. But when they again faced each other, then they were
indeed new to me.
"I want to know--what you must do," she said. Steele told her briefly,
and his voice was stern.
"Those--those criminals outside of my own family don't concern me now.
But can my father and cousin be taken without bloodshed? I want to know
the absolute truth." Steele knew that they could not be, but he could
not tell her so. Again she appealed to me. Thus my part in the situation
grew harder. It hurt me so that it made me angry, and my anger made me
cruelly frank.
"No. It can't be done. Sampson and Wright will be desperately hard to
approach, which'll make the chances even. So, if you must know the
truth, it'll be your father and cousin to go under, or it'll be Steele
or me, or any combination luck breaks--or all of us!"
Her self-control seemed to fly to the four winds. Swift as light she
flung herself down before Steele, against his knees, clasped her arms
round him. "Good God! Miss Sampson, you mustn't do that!" implored
Steele. He tried to break her hold with shaking hands, but he could not.
"Listen! Listen!" she cried, and her voice made Steele, and Sally and me
also, still as the rock behind us. "Hear me! Do you think I beg you to
let my father go, for his sake? No! No! I have gloried in your Ranger
duty. I have loved you because of it. But some awful tragedy threatens
here. Listen, Vaughn Steele. Do not you deny me, as I kneel here. I love
you. I never loved any other man. But not for my love do I beseech you.
"There is no help here unless you forswear your duty. Forswear it! Do
not kill my father--the father of the woman who loves you. Worse and
more horrible it would be to let my father kill you! It's I who make
this situation unnatural, impossible. You must forswear your duty. I can
live no longer if you don't. I pray you--" Her voice had sunk to a
whisper, and now it failed. Then she seemed to get into his arms, to
wind herself around him, her hair loosened, her face upturned, white and
spent, her arms blindly circling his neck. She was all love, all
surrender, all supreme appeal, and these, without her beauty, would have
made her wonderful. But her beauty! Would not Steele have been less than
a man or more than a man had he been impervious to it? She was like some
snow-white exquisite flower, broken, and suddenly blighted. She was a
woman then in all that made a woman helpless--in all that made her
mysterious, sacred, absolutely and unutterably more than any other thing
in life. All this time my gaze had been riveted on her only. But when
she lifted her white face, tried to lift it, rather, and he drew her up,
and then when both white faces met and seemed to blend in something
rapt, awesome, tragic as life--then I saw Steele.
I saw a god, a man as beautiful as she was. They might have stood,
indeed, they did stand alone in the heart of a desert--alone in the
world--alone with their love and their agony. It was a solemn and
profound moment for me. I faintly realized how great it must have been
for them, yet all the while there hammered at my mind the vital thing at
stake. Had they forgotten, while I remembered? It might have been only a
moment that he held her. It might have been my own agitation that
conjured up such swift and whirling thoughts. But if my mind sometimes
played me false my eyes never had. I thought I saw Diane Sampson die in
Steele's arms; I could have sworn his heart was breaking; and mine was
on the point of breaking, too.
How beautiful they were! How strong, how mercifully strong, yet shaken,
he seemed! How tenderly, hopelessly, fatally appealing she was in that
hour of her broken life! If I had been Steele I would have forsworn my
duty, honor, name, service for her sake. Had I mind enough to divine his
torture, his temptation, his narrow escape? I seemed to feel them, at
any rate, and while I saw him with a beautiful light on his face, I saw
him also ghastly, ashen, with hands that shook as they groped around
her, loosing her, only to draw her convulsively back again. It was the
saddest sight I had ever seen. Death was nothing to it. Here was the
death of happiness. He must wreck the life of the woman who loved him
and whom he loved. I was becoming half frantic, almost ready to cry out
the uselessness of this scene, almost on the point of pulling them
apart, when Sally dragged me away. Her clinging hold then made me feel
perhaps a little of what Miss Sampson's must have been to Steele.
How different the feeling when it was mine! I could have thrust them
apart, after all my schemes and tricks, to throw them together, in
vague, undefined fear of their embrace. Still, when love beat at my own
pulses, when Sally's soft hand held me tight and she leaned to me--that
was different. I was glad to be led away--glad to have a chance to pull
myself together. But was I to have that chance? Sally, who in the stife
of emotion had been forgotten, might have to be reckoned with. Deep
within me, some motive, some purpose, was being born in travail. I did
not know what, but instinctively I feared Sally. I feared her because I
loved her. My wits came back to combat my passion. This hazel-eyed girl,
soft, fragile creature, might be harder to move than the Ranger. But
could she divine a motive scarcely yet formed in my brain? Suddenly I
became cool, with craft to conceal.
"Oh, Russ! What's the matter with you?" she queried quickly. "Can't
Diane and Steele, you and I ride away from this bloody, bad country? Our
own lives, our happiness, come first, do they not?"
"They ought to, I suppose," I muttered, fighting against the insidious
sweetness of her. I knew then I must keep my lips shut or betray myself.
"You look so strange. Russ, I wouldn't want you to kiss me with that
mouth. Thin, shut lips--smile! Soften and kiss me! Oh, you're so cold,
strange! You chill me!"
"Dear child, I'm badly shaken," I said. "Don't expect me to be natural
yet. There are things you can't guess. So much depended upon--Oh, never
mind! I'll go now. I want to be alone, to think things out. Let me go,
Sally."
She held me only the tighter, tried to pull my face around. How
intuitively keen women were. She felt my distress, and that growing,
stern, and powerful thing I scarcely dared to acknowledge to myself.
Strangely, then, I relaxed and faced her. There was no use trying to
foil these feminine creatures. Every second I seemed to grow farther
from her. The swiftness of this mood of mine was my only hope. I
realized I had to get away quickly, and make up my mind after that what
I intended to do. It was an earnest, soulful, and loving pair of eyes
that I met. What did she read in mine? Her hands left mine to slide to
my shoulders, to slip behind my neck, to lock there like steel bands.
Here was my ordeal. Was it to be as terrible as Steele's had been? I
thought it would be, and I swore by all that was rising grim and cold in
me that I would be strong. Sally gave a little cry that cut like a blade
in my heart, and then she was close-pressed upon me, her quivering
breast beating against mine, her eyes, dark as night now, searching my
soul.
She saw more than I knew, and with her convulsive clasp of me confirmed
my half-formed fears. Then she kissed me, kisses that had no more of
girlhood or coquetry or joy or anything but woman's passion to blind and
hold and tame. By their very intensity I sensed the tiger in me. And it
was the tiger that made her new and alluring sweetness fail of its
intent. I did not return one of her kisses. Just one kiss given
back--and I would be lost.
"Oh, Russ, I'm your promised wife!" she whispered at my lips. "Soon, you
said! I want it to be soon! To-morrow!" All the subtlety, the
intelligence, the cunning, the charm, the love that made up the whole of
woman's power, breathed in her pleading. What speech known to the tongue
could have given me more torture? She chose the strongest weapon nature
afforded her. And had the calamity to consider been mine alone, I would
have laughed at it and taken Sally at her word. Then I told her in
short, husky sentences what had depended on Steele: that I loved the
Ranger Service, but loved him more; that his character, his life,
embodied this Service I loved; that I had ruined him; and now I would
forestall him, do his work, force the issue myself or die in the
attempt.
"Dearest, it's great of you!" she cried. "But the cost! If you kill one
of my kin I'll--I'll shrink from you! If you're killed--Oh, the thought
is dreadful! You've done your share. Let Steele--some other Ranger
finish it. I swear I don't plead for my uncle or my cousin, for their
sakes. If they are vile, let them suffer. Russ, it's you I think of! Oh,
my pitiful little dreams! I wanted so to surprise you with my beautiful
home--the oranges, the mossy trees, the mocking-birds. Now you'll never,
never come!"
"But, Sally, there's a chance--a mere chance I can do the job without--"
Then she let go of me. She had given up. I thought she was going to
drop, and drew her toward the stone. I cursed the day I ever saw Neal
and the service. Where, now, was the arch prettiness, the gay, sweet
charm of Sally Langdon? She looked as if she were suffering from a
desperate physical injury. And her final breakdown showed how, one way
or another, I was lost to her.
As she sank on the stone I had my supreme wrench, and it left me numb,
hard, in a cold sweat. "Don't betray me! I'll forestall him! He's
planned nothing for to-day," I whispered hoarsely. "Sally--you dearest,
gamest little girl in the world! Remember I loved you, even if I
couldn't prove it your way. It's for his sake. I'm to blame for their
love. Some day my act will look different to you. Good-by!"