HOPE FORLORN
There were hours in that night that each had reason long to remember;
a night that seemed to bring them, in spite of their devotion, to the
end of their dream. They parted late, each trying to soften the blow
as it fell on the other, each professing a courage which, in the face
of the revelation, neither could clearly feel.
In the morning Jeffries brought down to de Spain, who had spent a
sleepless night at the office, a letter from Nan.
De Spain opened it with acute misgivings. Hardly able to believe his
eyes, he slowly read:
DEAREST:
A wild hope has come to me. Perhaps we don't know the truth of
this terrible story as it really is. Suppose we should be
condemning poor Uncle Duke without having the real facts? Sassoon
was a wretch, Henry, if ever one lived--a curse to every one. What
purpose he could serve by repeating this story, which he must have
kept very secret till now, I don't know; but there was some
reason. I _must_ know the whole truth--I feel that I, alone, can
get hold of it, and that you would approve what I am doing if you
were here with me in this little room, where I am writing at
daybreak, to show you my heart.
Long before you get this I shall be speeding toward the Gap. I am
going to Uncle Duke to get from him the exact truth. Uncle Duke is
breaking--has broken--and now that the very worst has come, and we
must face it, he will tell me what I ask. Whether I can get him to
repeat this to you, to come to you, to throw himself on your pity,
my dearest one, I don't know. But it is for this I am going to
try, and for this I beg of your love--the love of which I have
been so proud!--that you will let me stay with him until I at
least learn everything and can bring the whole story to you. If I
can bring him, I will.
And I shall be safe with him--perfectly safe. Gale has been driven
away. Pardaloe, I know I can trust, and he will be under the roof
with me. _Please, do not try to come to me._ It might ruin
everything. Only forgive me, and I shall be back with what I hope
for, or what I fear, very, very soon. Not till then can I bear to
look into your eyes. You have a better right than anyone in the
world to know the whole truth, cost what it may. Be patient for
only a little while with
NAN.
It was Jeffries who said, afterward, he hoped never again to be the
bearer of a letter such as that. Never until he had read and grasped
the contents of Nan's note had Jeffries seen the bundle of resource
and nerve and sinew, that men called Henry de Spain, go to pieces. For
once, trouble overbore him.
When he was able to speak he told Jeffries everything. "It is my
fault," he said hopelessly. "I was so crippled, so stunned, she must
have thought--I see it now--that I was making ready to ride out by
daybreak and shoot Duke down on sight. It's the price a man must pay,
Jeffries, for the ability to defend himself against this bunch of
hold-up men and assassins. Because they can't get me, I'm a
'gunman'----"
"No, you're not a 'gunman.'"
"A gunman and nothing else. That's what everybody, friends and
enemies, reckon me--a gunman. You put me here to clean out this
Calabasas gang, not because of my good looks, but because I've been,
so far, a fraction of a second quicker on a trigger than these
double-damned crooks.
"I don't get any fun out of standing for ten minutes at a time with a
sixty-pound safety-valve dragging on my heart, watching a man's eye to
see whether he is going to pull a gun on me and knock me down with a
slug before I can pull one and knock him down. I don't care for that
kind of thing, Jeff. Hell's delight! I'd rather have a little ranch
with a little patch of alfalfa--enough alfalfa to feed a little bunch
of cattle, a hundred miles from every living soul. What I would like
to do is to own a piece of land under a ten-cent ditch, and watch the
wheat sprout out of the desert."
Jeffries, from behind his pipe, regarded de Spain's random talk
calmly.
"I do feel hard over my father's death," he went on moodily. "Who
wouldn't? If God meant me to forget it, why did he put this mark on my
face, Jeff? I did talk pretty strong to Nan about it on Music
Mountain. She accused me then of being a gunman. It made me hot to be
set down for a gunman by her. I guess I did give it back to her too
strong. That's the trouble--my bark is worse than my bite--I'm always
putting things too strong. I didn't know when I was talking to her
then that Sandusky and Logan were dead. Of course, she thought I was a
butcher. But how could I help it?
"I did feel, for a long time, I'd like to kill with my own hands the
man that murdered my father, Jeff. My mother must have realized that
her babe, if a man-child, was doomed to a life of bloodshed. I've been
trying to think most of the night what she'd want me to do now. I
don't know what I _can_ do, or can't do, when I set eyes on that old
scoundrel. He's got to tell the truth--that's all I say now. If he
lies, after what he made my mother suffer, he ought to die like a
dog--no matter who he is.
"I don't want to break Nan's heart. What can I do? Hanging him here in
Sleepy Cat, if I could do it, wouldn't help her feelings a whole lot.
If I could see the fellow--" de Spain's hands, spread before him on
the table, drew up tight, "if I could get my fingers on his throat,
for a minute, and talk to him, tell him what I think of him--I might
know what I would want to do--Nan might be there to see and judge
between us. I'd be almost willing to leave things to her to settle
herself. I only want what's right. But," the oath that recorded his
closing threat was collected and pitiless, "if any harm comes to that
girl now from this wild trip back among those wolves--God pity the men
that put it over. I'll wipe out the whole accursed clan, if I have to
swing for it right here in Sleepy Cat!"
John Lefever, Jeffries, Scott in turn took him in hand to hold him
during three days, to restrain the fury of his resentment, and keep
him from riding to the Gap in a temper that each of them knew would
mean only a tragedy worse than what had gone before. Mountain-men who
happened in and out of Sleepy Cat during those three days remember how
it seemed for that time as if the attention of every man and woman in
the whole country was fixed on the new situation that balked de Spain.
They knew only that Nan had gone back to her people, not why she had
gone back; but the air was eager with surmise and rumor as to what had
happened, and in this complete overturning of all de Spain's hopes,
what would happen before the story ended.
Even three days of tactful representation and patient admonition from
cool-headed counsellors did not accomplish all they hoped for in de
Spain's attitude. His rage subsided, but only to be followed by a
settled gloom that they knew might burst into uncontrollable anger at
any moment.
A report reached McAlpin that Gale Morgan was making ready to return
to Music Mountain with the remnant of Sandusky's gang, to make a
demand on Duke for certain property and partnership adjustments. This
rumor he telephoned to Jeffries. Before talking with de Spain,
Jeffries went over the information with Lefever. The two agreed it was
right, in the circumstances, that de Spain should be nearer than
Sleepy Cat to Nan. Moreover, the period of waiting she had enjoined on
him was almost complete.
Without giving de Spain the story fully, the two men talking before
him let the discussion drift toward a proposal on his part to go down
to Calabasas, where he could more easily keep track of any movement to
or from the Gap, and this they approved. De Spain, already chafing
under a hardly endured restraint, lost no time in starting for
Calabasas, directing Lefever to follow next day.
It added nothing to his peace of mind in the morning to learn
definitely from McAlpin that Gale Morgan, within twenty-four hours,
had really disappeared from Calabasas. No word of any kind had come
from Music Mountain for days. No one at Calabasas was aware even that
Nan had gone into the Gap again. Bob Scott was at Thief River. De
Spain telephoned to him to come up on the early stage, and turned his
attention toward getting information from Music Mountain without
violating Nan's injunction not to frustrate her most delicate effort
with her uncle.
As a possible scout to look into her present situation and report on
it, McAlpin could point only to Bull Page. Bull was a ready
instrument, but his present value as an assistant had become a matter
of doubt, since practically every man in the Gap had threatened within
the week to blow his head off--though Bull himself felt no scruples
against making an attempt to reach Music Mountain and get back again.
It was proposed by the canny McAlpin to send him in with a team and
light wagon, ostensibly to bring out his trunk, which, if it had not
been fed to the horses, was still in Duke's barn. As soon as a rig
could be got up Page started out.
It was late November. A far, clear air drew the snow-capped ranges
sharply down to the eye of the desert--as if the speckless sky,
lighted by the radiant sun, were but a monster glass rigged to trick
the credulous retina. De Spain, in the saddle in front of the barn,
his broad hat brim set on the impassive level of the Western horseman,
his lips seeming to compress his thoughts, his lines over his forearm,
and his hands half-slipped into the pockets of his snug leather coat,
watched Page with his light wagon and horses drive away.
Idling around the neighborhood of the barns in the saddle, de Spain
saw him gradually recede into the long desert perspective, the
perspective which almost alone enabled the watcher to realize as he
curtained his eyes behind their long, steady lashes from the blazing
sun, that it was a good bit of a way to the foot of the great outpost
of the Superstition Range.
De Spain's restlessness prevented his remaining quietly anywhere for
long. As the morning advanced he cantered out on the Music Mountain
trail, thinking of and wishing for a sight of Nan. The deadly shock of
Pardaloe's story had been dulled by days and nights of pain. His
deep-rooted love and his loneliness had quieted his impulse for
vengeance and overborne him with a profound sadness. He realized how
different his feelings were now from what they had been when she knelt
before him in the darkened room and, not daring to plead for mercy
for her uncle, had asked him only for the pity for herself that he had
seemed so slow to give. Something reproached him now for his coldness
at the moment that he should have thought of her suffering before his
own.
The crystal brightness of the day brought no elation to his thoughts.
His attention fixed on nothing that did not revert to Nan and his
hunger to see her again. If he regarded the majestic mountain before
him, it was only to recall the day she had fed him at its foot, long
before she loved him--he thought of that truth now--when he lay dying
on it. If the black reaches of the lava beds came within view, it was
only to remind him that, among those desolate rocks, this simple,
blue-eyed girl, frail in his eyes as a cobweb despite her graceful
strength, had intrusted all her life and happiness to him, given her
fresh lips to his, endured without complaint the headstrong ardor of
his caresses and, by the pretty mockery of her averted eyes, provoked
his love to new adventure.
Memory seemed that morning as keen as the fickle air--so sharply did
it bring back to him the overwhelming pictures of their happiness
together. And out of his acute loneliness rose vague questionings and
misgivings. He said to himself in bitter self-reproach that she would
not have gone if he had been to her all he ought to have been in the
crisis of that night. If harm should befall her now! How the thought
clutched and dragged at his heart. Forebodings tortured him, and in
the penumbra of his thoughts seemed to leave something he could not
shake off--a vague, haunting fear, as if of some impending tragedy
that should wreck their future.
It was while riding in this way that his eyes, reading mechanically
the wagon trail he was aimlessly following--for no reason other
than that it brought him, though forbidden, a little closer to
her--arrested his attention. He checked his horse. Something, the
trail told him, had happened. Page had stopped his horses. Page had
met two men on horseback coming from the Gap. After a parley--for
the horses had tramped around long enough for one--the wagon had
turned completely from the trail and struck out across the desert,
north; the two horsemen, or one with a led horse, had started back
for the Gap.
All of this de Spain gathered without moving his horse outside a
circle of thirty feet. What did it mean? Page might have fallen in
with cronies from the Gap, abandoned his job, and started for Sleepy
Cat, but this was unlikely. He might have encountered enemies, been
pointedly advised to keep away from the Gap, and pretended to start
for Sleepy Cat, to avoid trouble with them. Deeming the second the
more probable conclusion, de Spain, absorbed in his speculations,
continued toward the Gap to see whether he could not pick up the trail
of Page's rig farther on.
Within a mile a further surprise awaited him. The two horsemen, who
had headed for the Gap after stopping Page, had left the trail, turned
to the south, down a small draw, which would screen them from sight,
and set out across the desert.
No trail and no habitation lay in the direction they had taken--and it
seemed clearer to de Spain that the second horse was a led horse.
There was a story in the incident, but his interest lay in following
Page's movements, and he spurred swiftly forward to see whether his
messenger had resumed the Gap trail and gone on with his mission. He
followed this quest almost to the mountains, without recovering any
trace of Page's rig. He halted. It was certain now that Page had not
gone into the Gap.
Perplexed and annoyed, de Spain, from the high ground on which he sat
his horse, cast his eyes far out over the desert. The brilliant
sunshine flooded it as far as the eye could reach. He scanned the
vast space without detecting a sign of life anywhere, though none
better than he knew that any abundance of it might be there. But his
gaze caught something of interest on the farthest northern horizon,
and on this his scrutiny rested a long time. A soft brown curtain rose
just above the earth line against the blue sky. Toward the east it
died away and toward the west it was cut off by the Superstition
peaks.
De Spain, without giving the weather signs much thought, recognized
their import, but his mind was filled with his own anxieties and he
rode smartly back toward Calabasas, because he was not at ease over
the puzzles in the trail. When he reached the depression where the
horsemen had, without any apparent reason, turned south, he halted.
Should he follow them or turn north to follow Page's wanderings? If
Page had been scared away from the Gap, for a time, he probably had no
information that de Spain wanted, and de Spain knew his cunning and
persistence well enough to be confident he would be back on the Gap
road, and within the cover of the mountains, before a storm should
overtake him. On the north the brown curtain had risen fast and
already enveloped the farthest peaks of the range. Letting his horse
stretch its neck, he hesitated a moment longer trying to decide
whether to follow the men to the south or the wagon to the north. A
woman might have done better. But no good angel was there to guide his
decision, and in another moment he was riding rapidly to the south
with the even, brown, misty cloud behind him rolling higher into the
northern sky.