THE TRUTH
With the desperation of a joy born of despair she laid her burning
cheek hysterically against his cheek. She rained kisses on his
ice-crusted brows and snow-beaten eyes. Her arms held him rigidly. He
could not move nor speak till she would let him. Transformed, this
mountain girl who gave herself so shyly, forgot everything. Her words
crowded on his ears. She repeated his name in an ecstasy of welcome,
drew down his lips, laughed, rejoiced, knew no shamefacedness and no
restraint--she was one freed from the stroke of a descending knife. A
moment before she had faced death alone; it was still death she
faced--she realized this--but it was death, at least, together, and
her joy and tears rose from her heart in one stream.
De Spain comforted her, quieted her, cut away one of the coats from
his horse, slipped it over her shoulders, incased her in the heavy
fur, and turned his eyes to Duke.
The old man's set, square face surrendered nothing of implacability
to the dangers confronting him. De Spain looked for none of that. He
had known the Morgan record too long, and faced the Morgan men too
often, to fancy they would flinch at the drum-beat of death.
The two men, in the deadly, driving snow, eyed each other. Out of the
old man's deep-set eyes burned the resistance of a hundred storms
faced before. But he was caught now like a wolf in a trap, and he knew
he had little to hope for, little to fear. As de Spain regarded him,
something like pity may have mixed with his hatred. The old outlaw was
thinly clad. His open throat was beaten with snow and, standing beside
the wagon, he held the team reins in a bare hand. De Spain cut the
other coat from his saddle and held it out. Duke pretended not to see
and, when not longer equal to keeping up the pretense, shook his
head.
"Take it," said de Spain curtly.
"No."
"Take it, I say. You and I will settle our affairs when we get Nan out
of this," he insisted.
"De Spain!" Duke's voice, as was its wont, cracked like a pistol, "I
can say all I've got to say to you right here."
"No."
"Yes," cried the old man.
"Listen, Henry," pleaded Nan, seeking shelter from the furious blast
within his arm, "just for a moment, listen!"
"Not now, I tell you!" cried de Spain.
"He was coming, Henry, all the way--and he is sick--just to say it to
you. Let him say it here, now."
"Go on!" cried de Spain roughly. "Say it."
"I'm not afraid of you, de Spain!" shouted the old man, his neck bared
to the flying ice. "Don't think it! You're a better man than I am,
better than I ever was--don't think I don't know that. But I'm not
afraid of e'er a man I faced, de Spain; they'll tell you that when I'm
dead. All the trouble that ever come 'tween you and me come by an
accident--come before you was born, and come through Dave Sassoon, and
he's held it over me ever since you come up into this country. I was a
young fellow. Sassoon worked for my father. The cattle and sheep war
was on, north of Medicine Bend. The Peace River sheepmen raided our
place--your father was with them. He never did us no harm, but my
brother, Bay Morgan, was shot in that raid by a man name of Jennings.
My brother was fifteen years old, de Spain. I started out to get the
man that shot him. Sassoon trailed him to the Bar M, the old de Spain
ranch, working for your father."
The words fell fast and in a fury. They came as if they had been
choked back till they strangled. "Sassoon took me over there. Toward
night we got in sight of the ranch-house. We saw a man down at the
corral. 'That's Jennings,' Sassoon says. I never laid eyes on him
before--I never laid eyes on your father before. Both of us fired.
Next day we heard your father was killed, and Jennings had left the
country. Sassoon or I, one of us, killed your father, de Spain. If it
was I, I did it never knowing who he was, never meaning to touch him.
I was after the man that killed my brother. Sassoon didn't care a damn
which it was, never did, then nor never. But he held it over me to
make trouble sometime 'twixt you and me. I was a young fellow. I
thought I was revenging my brother. And if your father was killed by a
patched bullet, his blood is not on me, de Spain, and never was.
Sassoon always shot a patched bullet. I never shot one in my life. And
I'd never told you this of my own self. Nan said it was the whole
truth from me to you, or her life. She's as much mine as she is yours.
I nursed her. I took care of her when there weren't no other living
soul to do it. _She got me and herself out into this, this morning.
I'd never been caught like this if I'd had my way._ I told her 'fore
we'd been out an hour we'd never see the end of it. She said she'd
rather die in it than you'd think she quit you. I told her I'd go on
with her and do as she said--that's why we're here, and that's the
whole truth, so help me God!
"I ain't afraid of you, de Spain. I'll give you whatever you think's
coming to you with a rifle or a gun any time, anywhere--you're a
better man than I am or ever was, I know that--and that ought to
satisfy you. Or, I'll stand my trial, if you say so, and tell the
truth."
The ice-laden wind, as de Spain stood still, swept past the little
group with a sinister roar, insensible alike to its emotions and its
deadly peril. Within the shelter of his arm he felt the yielding form
of the indomitable girl who, by the power of love, had wrung from the
outlaw his reluctant story--the story of the murder that had stained
with its red strands the relations of each of their lives to both the
others. He felt against his heart the faint trembling of her frail
body. So, when a boy, he had held in his hand a fluttering bird and
felt the whirring beat of its frightened heart against his strong,
cruel fingers.
A sudden aversion to more bloodshed, a sickening of vengeance, swept
over him as her heart mutely beat for mercy against his heart. She had
done more than any man could do. Now her. In the breathless embrace
that drew her closer she read her answer from him. She looked up into
his eyes and waited. "There's more than what's between you and me,
Duke, facing us now," said de Spain sternly, when he turned. "We've
got to get Nan out of this--even if we don't get out ourselves. Where
do you figure we are?" he cried.
"I figure we're two miles north of the lava beds, de Spain," shouted
Morgan.
De Spain shook his head in dissent. "Then where are we?" demanded the
older man rudely.
"I ought not to say, against you. But if I've got to guess, I say two
miles east. Either way, we must try for Sleepy Cat. Is your team all
right?"
"Team is all right. We tore a wheel near off getting out of the lava.
The wagon's done for."
De Spain threw the fur coat at him. "Put it on," he said. "We'll look
at the wheel."
They tried together to wrench it into shape, but worked without avail.
In the end they lashed it, put Nan on the Lady, and walked behind
while the team pushed into the pitiless wind. Morgan wanted to cut the
wagon away and take to the horses, but de Spain said, not till they
found a trail or the stage road.
So much snow had fallen that in spite of the blizzard, driving with
an unrelenting fury, the drifts were deepening, packing, and making
all effort increasingly difficult. It was well-nigh impossible to head
the horses into the storm, and de Spain looked with ever more anxious
eyes at Nan. After half an hour's superhuman struggle to regain a
trail that should restore their bearings, they halted, and de Spain,
riding up to the wagon, spoke to Morgan, who was driving: "How long is
this going to last?"
"All day and all night." Nan leaned closely over to hear the curt
question and answer. Neither man spoke again for a moment.
"We'll have to have help," said de Spain after a pause.
"Help?" echoed Morgan scornfully. "Where's help coming from?"
De Spain's answer was not hurried. "One of us must go after it." Nan
looked at him intently.
Duke set his hard jaw against the hurtling stream of ice that showered
on the forlorn party. "I'll go for it," he snapped.
"No," returned de Spain. "Better for me to go."
"Go together," said Nan.
De Spain shook his head. Duke Morgan, too, said that only one should
go; the other must stay. De Spain, while the storm rattled and shook
at the two men, told why he should go himself. "It's not claiming you
are not entitled to say who should go, Duke," he said evenly. "Nor
that our men, anywhere you reach, wouldn't give you the same attention
they would me. And it isn't saying that you're not the better man for
the job--you've travelled the Sinks longer than I have. But between
you and me, Duke, it's twenty-eight years against fifty. I ought to
hold out a while the longer, that's all. Let's work farther to the
east."
Quartering against the mad hurricane, they drove and rode on until the
team could hardly be urged to further effort against the infuriated
elements--de Spain riding at intervals as far to the right and the
left as he dared in vain quest of a landmark. When he halted beside
the wagon for the last time he was a mass of snow and ice; horse and
rider were frozen to each other. He got down to the ground with a
visible effort, and in the singing wind told Duke his plan and
purpose.
He had chosen on the open desert a hollow falling somewhat abruptly
from the north, and beneath its shoulder, while Morgan loosened the
horses, he scooped and kicked away a mass of snow. The wagon had been
drawn just above the point of refuge, and the two men, with the aid of
the wind, dumped it over sidewise, making of the body a windbreak
over the hollow, a sort of roof, around which the snow, driven by the
gale, would heap itself in hard waves. Within this shelter the men
stowed Nan. The horses were driven down behind it, and from one of
them de Spain took the collar, the tugs, and the whiffletree. He stuck
a hitching-strap in his pocket, and while Morgan steadied the Lady's
head, de Spain buckled the collar on her, doubled the tugs around the
whiffletree, and fastened the roll at her side in front of the
saddle.
Nan came out and stood beside him as he worked. When he had finished
she put her hand on his sleeve. He held her close, Duke listening, to
tell her what he meant to try to do. Each knew it well might be the
last moment together. "One thing and another have kept us from
marriage vows, Nan," said de Spain, beckoning at length to Morgan to
step closer that he might clearly hear. "Nothing must keep us longer.
Will you marry me?"
She looked up into his eyes. "I've promised you I would. I will
promise every time you ask me. I never _could_ have but one answer to
that, Henry--it must always be yes!"
"Then take me, Henry," he said slowly, "here and now for your wedded
husband. Will you do this, Nan?"
[Illustration: "I've promised you I would. I will promise every time you
ask me."]
Still looking into his eyes, she answered without surprise or fear:
"Henry, I do take you."
"And I, Henry, take you, Nan, here and now for my wedded wife, for
better for worse, for richer for poorer, from this day forward, until
death us do part."
They sealed their pact with a silent embrace. De Spain turned to Duke.
"You are the witness of this marriage, Duke. You will see, if an
accident happens, that anything, everything I have--some personal
property--my father's old ranch north of Medicine Bend--some little
money in bank at Sleepy Cat--goes to my wife, Nan Morgan de Spain.
Will you see to it?"
"I will. And if it comes to me--you, de Spain, will see to it that
what stock I have in the Gap goes to my niece, Nan, your wife."
She looked from one to the other of the two men. "All that I have,"
she said in turn, "the lands in the Gap, everywhere around Music
Mountain, go to you two equally together, or whichever survives. And
if you both live, and I do not, remember my last message--bury the
past in my grave."
Duke Morgan tested the cinches of the saddle on the Lady once more,
unloosed the tugs once more from the horse's shoulder, examined each
buckle of the collar and every inch of the two strips of leather, the
reinforced fastenings on the whiffletree, rolled all up again,
strapped it, and stood by the head till de Spain swung up into the
saddle. He bent down once to whisper a last word of cheer to his wife
and, without looking back, headed the Lady into the storm.