LOVE AND DEATH
Maggie and Alvino had the ranch to themselves when the military party
from the upper valley arrived, Mrs. Chadron and Nola having driven to
Meander that morning. It had been their intention to return that
evening, Maggie said. Mrs. Chadron had gone after chili peppers, and
other things, but principally chili peppers. There was not one left in
the house, and the mistress could not live without them, any more than
fire could burn without wood.
Dusk had settled when they reached the ranch, and night thickened
fast. The lieutenant dropped two men at the corral gate--her guard,
Frances understood--and went back to his task of watching for armed
men upon the highroads.
Under the direction of Frances, Maggie had placed a cot in Mrs.
Chadron's favored sitting-room with the fireplace. There Macdonald lay
in clean sheets, a blaze on the hearth, and Maggie was washing his
wound with hot water, groaning in the pity which is the sweetest part
of the women of her homely race.
"I think that he will live, miss," she said hopefully. "See, he has a
strong breath on my damp hand--I can feel it like a little wind."
She spoke in her native tongue, which Frances understood thoroughly
from her years in Texas and Arizona posts. Frances shook her head
sorrowfully.
"I am afraid his breath will fail soon, Maggie."
"No, if they live the first hour after being shot, they get well,"
Maggie persisted, with apparent sincerity. "Here, put your hand on his
heart--do you feel it? What a strong heart he has to live so well!
what a strong, strong heart!"
"Yes, a strong, strong heart!" Tears were falling for him now that
there was none to see them, scalding their way down her pale cheeks.
"He must have carried something sacred with him to give him such
strength, such life."
"He carried honor," said Frances, more to herself than to Maggie,
doubting that she would understand.
"And love, maybe?" said Maggie, with soft word, soft upward-glancing
of her feeling dark eyes.
"Who can tell?" Frances answered, turning her head away.
Maggie drew the sheet over him and stood looking down into his severe
white face.
"If he could speak he would ask for his mother, and for water then,
and after that the one he loves. That is the way a man's mind carries
those three precious things when death blows its breath in his face."
"I do not know," said Frances, slowly.
There was such stress in waiting, such silence in the world, and such
emptiness and pain! Reverently as Maggie's voice was lowered, soft and
sympathetic as her word, Frances longed for her to be still, and go
and leave her alone with him. She longed to hold the dear spark of his
faltering life in her own hands, alone, quite alone; to warm it back
to strength in her own lone heart. Surely her name could not be the
last in his remembrance, no matter for the disturbing breath of
death.
"I will bring you some food," said Maggie. "To give him life out of
your life you must be strong."
* * * * *
Frances started out of her sleep in the rocking-chair before the fire.
She had turned the lamp low, but there was a flare of light on her
face. Her faculties were so deeply sunk in that insidious sleep which
had crept upon her like a bindweed upon wheat that she struggled to
rise from it. She sprang up, her mind groping, remembering that there
was something for which she was under heavy responsibility, but unable
for a moment to bring it back to its place.
Nola was in the door with a candle, shading the flame from her eyes
with her hand. Her hair was about her shoulders, her feet were bare
under the hem of her long dressing-robe. She was staring, her lips
were open, her breath was quick, as if she had arrived after a run.
"Is he--alive?" she whispered.
"Why should you come to ask? What is his life to you?" asked Frances,
sorrowfully bitter.
"Oh, Maggie just woke and came up to tell me, mother doesn't
know--she's just gone to bed. Isn't it terrible, Frances!"
Nola spoke distractedly, as if in great agony, or great fear.
"He can't harm any of you now, you're safe." Frances was hard and
scornful. She turned from Nola and laid her hand on Macdonald's brow,
drawing her breath with a relieved sigh when she felt the warmth of
life still there.
"Oh, Frances, Frances!" Nola moaned, with expression of despair,
"isn't this terrible!"
"If you mean it's terrible to have him here, I can't help it. I'm a
prisoner, here against my will. I couldn't leave him out there alone
to die."
Nola lowered her candle and stared at Frances, her eyes big and blank
of everything but a wild expression that Frances had read as fear.
"Will he die?" she whispered.
"Yes; you are to have your heartless way at last. He will die, and his
blood will be on this house, never to be washed away!"
"Why didn't you come back when we called you--both of you?" Nola drew
near, reaching out an appealing hand. Frances shrank from her, to bend
quickly over Macdonald when he groaned and moved his head.
"Put out that light--it's in his eyes!" she said.
Nola blew out the candle and came glimmering into the room in her soft
white gown.
"Don't blame me, Frances, don't blame any of us. Mother and I wanted
to save you both, we tried to stop the men, and we could have held
them back if it hadn't been for Chance. Chance got three of them to
go, the others--"
"They paid for that!" said Frances, a little lift of triumph in her
voice.
"Yes, but they--"
"Chance didn't do it, I tell you! If he says he did it he lies! It
was--somebody else."
"The soldiers?"
"No, not the soldiers."
"I thought maybe--I saw one of them on guard in front of the house as
we came in."
"He's guarding me, I'm under arrest, I tell you. The soldiers have
nothing to do with him."
Nola stood looking down at Macdonald, who was deathly white in the
weak light of the low, shaded lamp. With a little timid outreaching, a
little starting and drawing back, she touched his forehead, where a
thick lock of his shaggy hair fell over it, like a sheaf of ripe wheat
burst from its band.
"Oh, it breaks my heart to see him dying--it--breaks--my--heart!" she
sobbed.
"You struck him! You're not--you're not fit to touch him--take your
hand away!"
Frances pushed her hand away roughly. Nola drew back, drenched with a
sudden torrent of penitential tears.
"I know it, I know it!" she confessed in bitterness, "I knew it when
he took me away from those people in the mountains and brought me
home. He carried me in his arms when I was tired, and sang to me as we
rode along there in the lonesome night! He sang to me, just like I was
a little child, so I wouldn't be afraid--afraid--of him!"
"Oh, and you struck him, you struck him like a dog!"
"I've suffered more for that than I hurt him, Frances--it's been like
fire in my heart!"
"I pray to God it will burn up your wicked pride!"
"We believed him, mother and I believed him, in spite of what Chance
said. Oh, if you'd only come back then, Frances, this thing wouldn't
have happened!"
"I can't see what good that would have done," said Frances, wearily;
"there are others who don't believe him. They'd have got him some
time, just like they got him--in a coward's underhanded way, never
giving him a chance for his life."
"We went to Meander this morning thinking we'd catch father there
before he left. We wanted to tell him about Mr. Macdonald, and get him
to drop this feud. If we could have seen him I know he'd have done
what we asked, for he's got the noblest heart in the world!"
Whatever Frances felt on the noble nature of Saul Chadron she held
unexpressed. She did not feel that it fell to her duty to tell Nola
whose hand had struck Macdonald down, although she believed that the
cattleman's daughter deserved whatever pain and humiliation the
revelation might bring. For it was as plain as if Nola had confessed
it in words that she had much more than a friendly feeling of
gratitude for the foeman of her family.
Her heart was as unstable as mercury, it seemed. Frances despised her
for her fickleness, scorned her for the mean face of friendship over
the treachery of her soul. Not that she regretted Major King. Nola was
free to take him and make the most of him. But she was not to come in
as a wedge to rive her from this man.
Let her pay her debt of gratitude in something else than love. Living
or dead, Alan Macdonald was not for Nola Chadron. Her penance and her
tears, her meanings and sobs and her broken heart, even that, if it
should come, could not pay for the humiliation and the pain which that
house had brought upon him.
"When did it happen?" asked Nola, the gust of her weeping past.
"This morning, early."
"Who did it--how did it happen? You got away from Chance--you said it
wasn't Chance."
"We got away from that gang yesterday; this happened this morning,
miles from that place."
"Who was it? Why don't you tell me, Frances?"
They were standing at Macdonald's side. A little spurt of flame among
the ends of wood in the chimney threw a sudden illumination over them,
and played like water over a stone upon Macdonald's face, then sank
again, as if it had been plunged in ashes. Frances remained silent,
her vindictiveness, her hardness of heart, against this vacillating
girl dying away as the flame had died. It was not her desire to hurt
her with that story of treachery and cowardice which must leave its
stain upon her name for many a year.
"The name of the man who shot him is a curse and a blight on this
land, a mockery of every holy human thought. I'll not speak it."
Nola stared at her, horror speaking from her eyes. "He must be a
monster!"
"He is the lowest of the accursed--a coward!" Frances said.
Nola shuddered, standing silently by the couch a little while. Then:
"But I want to help you, Frances, if you'll let me."
"There's nothing that you can do. I'm waiting for Mrs. Mathews and the
doctor from the agency."
"You can go up and rest until they come, Frances, you look so tired
and pale. I'll watch by him--you can tell me what to do, and I'll call
you when they come."
"No; I'll stay until--I'll stay here."
"Oh, please go, Frances; you're nearly dead on your feet."
"Why do you want me to leave him?" Frances asked, in a flash of
jealous suspicion. She turned to Nola, as if to search out her hidden
intention.
"You were asleep in your chair when I came in, Frances," Nola chided
her, gently.
Again they stood in silence, looking down upon the wounded man.
Frances was resentful of Nola's interest in him, of her presence in
the room. She was on the point of asking her to leave when Nola
spoke.
"If he hadn't been so proud, if he'd only stooped to explain things to
us, to talk to us, even, this could have been avoided, Frances."
"What could he have said?" Frances asked, wondering, indeed, what
explanation could have lessened his offense in Saul Chadron's eyes.
"If I had known him, I would have understood," Nola replied, vaguely,
in soft low voice, as if communing with herself.
"You! Well, perhaps--perhaps even you would have understood."
"Look--he moved!"
"Sh-h-h! your talking disturbs him, Nola. Go to bed--you can't help me
any here."
"And leave him all to you!"
The words flashed from Nola, as if they had sprung out of her mouth
before her reason had given them permission to depart.
"Of course with me; he's mine!"
"If he's going to die, Frances, can't I share him with you till the
end--can't I have just a little share in the care of him here with
you?"
Nola laid her hand on Frances' arm as she pleaded, turning her white
face appealingly in the dim light.
"Don't talk that way, girl!" said Frances, roughly; "you have no part
in him at all--he is nothing to you."
"He is all to me--everything to me! Oh, Frances! If you knew, if you
knew!"
"What? If I knew what?" Frances caught her arm in fierce grip, and
shook her savagely.
"Don't--don't--hurt me, Frances!" Nola cringed and shrank away, and
lifted her arms as if to ward a blow.
"What did you mean by that? Tell me--tell me!"
"Oh, the way it came to me, the way it came to me as he carried me in
his arms and sang to me so I wouldn't be afraid!" moaned Nola, her
face hidden in her hands. "I never knew before what it was to care for
anybody that way--I never, never knew before!"
"You can't have this man, nor any share in him, living or dead! I gave
up Major King to you; be satisfied."
"Oh, Major King!"
"Poor shadow that he is in comparison with a man, he'll have to serve
for you. Living or dead, I tell you, this man is mine. Now go!"
Nola was shaking again with sudden gust of weeping. She had sunk to
the floor at the head of the couch, a white heap, her bare arms
clasping her head.
"It breaks my heart to see him die!" she moaned, rocking herself in
her grief like a child.
And child Frances felt her to be in her selfishness, a child never
denied, and careless and unfeeling of the rights of others from this
long indulgence. She doubted Nola's sincerity, even in the face of
such demonstrative evidence. There was no pity for her, and no
softness.
"Get up!" Frances spoke sternly--"and go to your room."
"He must not be allowed to die--he must be saved!" Nola reached out
her hands, standing now on her knees, as if to call back his
struggling soul.
"Belated tears will not save him. Get up--it's time for you to go."
Nola bent forward suddenly, her hair sweeping the wounded man's face,
her lips near his brow. Frances caught her with a sound in her throat
like a growl, and flung her back.
"You'll not kiss him--you'll never kiss him!" she said.
Nola sprang up, not crying now, but hot with sudden anger.
"If you were out of the way he'd love me!"
"Love _you!_ you little cat!"
"Yes, he'd love me--I'd take him away from you like I've taken other
men! He'd love me, I tell you--he'd love _me!_"
Frances looked at her steadily a moment, contempt in her eloquent
face. "If you have no other virtue in you, at least have some respect
for the dying," she said.
"He's not dying, he'll not die!" Nola hotly denied. "He'll live--live
to love me!"
"Go! This room--"
"It's my house; I'll go and come in it when I please."
"I'm a prisoner in it, not a guest. I'll force you out of the room if
I must. This disgraceful behavior must end, and end this minute. Are
you going?"
"If you were out of the way, he'd love me," said Nola from the door,
spiteful, resentful, speaking slowly, as if pressing each word into
Frances' brain and heart; "if you were out of the way."