THE SPECIES
"Well, pretty one, you got lonesome here all by yourself? So you
holler for 'Sim! Sim!'" Big Aleck's voice was close to her as she sat
in the tent.
Mary Warren felt about her, back of her on the blankets, stealthily
seeking some weapon of defense. She paused. Under her fingers was
something which felt like leather. She made no sudden movement, but
temporized.
"How could I help it?" she asked.
Always her hand was feeling behind her on the blankets. Yes, there was
a holster. It felt familiar--it might be Sim Gage's gun, taken from
her at the house. She waited.
"Well, that's too bad you can't see," said Aleck. "You can't see what
a fine feller I'd make for you! I'm chief. I'm a big man."
"You're a big coward," said Mary Warren calmly. "What's a blind woman
to you? Why don't you let me go?"
"Well, even a blind woman can tell what she's heard," said he
thoughtfully. "And then," his coarse voice undertaking a softness
foreign to it, "I'm just as tired as Sim Gage was of keeping house
alone. I'm a better man than Sim Gage. I'm making plenty of money."
She made no reply, leaned back upon the blanket roll.
"Now, then, gal, listen. I like you. You're handsome--the handsomest
gal ever come in this valley. A pretty girl as you shouldn't stay
single, and as good a man as me neither. I work on my ranch, but I'm a
big man, miss. I'm a thinker, you can see that. I'm a leader of the
laboring men. I begun with nothing; and look at me!"
"Well, look at you!" She taunted him. "What would you have been if
you hadn't come to America? You'd be shoveling dirt over there at half
a dollar a day, or else you'd be dead. You think this is Russia? You
call this Germany?"
Pretending to rest her weight on her arm back of her, she felt the
touch of leather, felt the stock of the pistol in the holster.
Her tormentor went on. "We don't need no army--we free men can fight
the way we are. We'll spoil ten million feet of timber in here before
we're through."
"I despise you--I hate you!" she cried suddenly, almost forgetful of
herself. "Why do you come to this country, if you don't like it? If
you hate America, why don't you go back to your own country and live
there? You ought to be hung--I hope to God you will be!"
He only laughed. "That's fine talk for you, ain't it? You'd better
listen to what I tell you." He reached out a hand and touched her arm.
With one movement, of sheer instinct, with a primal half-snarl, she
swung the revolver out of the scabbard behind her, flung it almost into
his face. He cowered, but not soon enough. The shot struck him. He
dropped, tried to escape. She heard him scuffling on the sand, fired
again and missed--fired yet again and heard him cry out, gasping,
begging for mercy.
The range was too short for her to hear the impact of the bullets; she
did not know she had struck him with two shots, the second of which had
broken his leg and left him disabled. She had shot a man. He was
there in front of her, about to die.
"Are you hurt?" she demanded, staring, the revolver in both her hands.
"Keep away. I'll kill you!"
"You---- Don't shoot again," he cried, as she moved. She could not
tell what he meant, what really had happened, except that he was
helpless. She rose and fled, groping, stumbling, falling. She could
hear him crying out. He did not follow her.
In the forest growth at this altitude the trees stood large, straight
and tall, not very close together. The earth was covered with a dense
floor of pine needles. As she ran she felt her feet slipping, sinking.
Now and again she brought up against a tree. Still she kept on,
sobbing, her hands outstretched, getting away farther than would have
been possible in denser cover. She felt the sand of the roadway under
her feet as her course curved back toward the road, endeavored to
follow the trail for a time, but found herself again on the pine
needles, running she knew not where or how. She had no hope. She knew
she was fleeing death and facing death. Very well, she would meet it
further on and in a better guise.
She felt that she was passing down, along the mountain side, advanced
more rapidly, stumbling, tripping--and so at last fell full length over
a log which lay across her course. Stunned by the impact of her fall
beyond and below the unseen barrier, she lay prone and quite
unconscious.
At a length of unknown moments, she gained her senses. She sat up,
felt about her, listened. There was no sound of pursuit. Only the
high wailing of the pines came to her ears.
She could not know it, but the men were not following her. When they
heard the sound of three shots ring out, every man busy in his work of
sabotage stopped where he was. Was it a surprise? Were officers or
the ranchers coming? They scattered, hiding among the trees.
They could hear the bellowing of Big Aleck, beseeching aid. They
advanced cautiously, to spy out what had happened and saw him rolling
from side to side, striving to rise, falling back. The woman was
nowhere visible.
"Who done it, Aleck?" demanded the man next in command, when he had
ventured closer. "Did she shoot you?"
Aleck groaned as he rolled over, his face upward. A nod showed his
crippled shoulder. His other hand Big Aleck feebly placed upon his
hip. They bent over him.
"By God, she got you fair that time!" said one investigator. "She's
plugged you twice. She wasn't blind. Where did she go?"
"I don't know where--I heard her run. God, that leg! What will I do?
I can't stay here alone!"
"I tell you, you'll have to! If that girl's not blind she'll get out
and give this snap away."
"But you can take me out with you, fellers. I can ride." Aleck was
pleading, his face gray with pain.
"Worst thing we could do, either for you or for us," replied the other,
coldly. "If we got you down to the settlements what could we say? If
you was shot once we could call it an accident, but shot twice, and
once through the hip from behind--how would that be explained, I'd like
to know? Folks would begin to ask too many questions. Besides, they'd
ask where that girl was. Then there's the fires you set. No, sir, you
stay right here. We other fellers'll get out of here as fast as we
can."
"And leave me here?" The terror in Big Aleck's voice had been piteous
for any men but these.
"Listen! Before midnight I'll be at the Company dam. I'll tell that
new doctor there's been an accident up here in the timber camp. I'll
tell him to come up here to-morrow morning sure. When he gets here,
you tell him how the accident happened. It's up to you, then. You'll
have to pay him pretty well, of course."
"And that reminds me," he went on, "we fellers has got to have the
funds, Aleck. We'll need money more'n you will now. Here!"
He stooped over and began to feel in Aleck's coat, drew out a heavy
wallet, and began to transfer the bills to his own pocket.
"I'll leave you a hundred and fifty. That's enough," said he. "No
telling what we fellers'll have to do before we get out of this. Your
getting shot here is apt to blow the whole thing. Did she take the gun
away with her?"
Aleck groaned and rolled his head. "I don't know," he said.
Jim Denny was the new leader of the brigand party. "Hell's bells!"
said he, impatiently now. "We can't be fooling around--this don't look
good to me. Noon to-morrow, anyways, the Doctor ought to be here. As
for us, we got to beat it now."
The wolf pack knew no mercy nor unselfishness. Aleck got no more
attention from them. There were two cars beside the one which had
brought Aleck and Mary Warren up the day before. This last one they
left, seeing that the tire was in bad condition. Not one of them
turned to say good-by to Aleck as he lay in the tent where he had been
dragged.
"Got it right on top the hip bone," said one man. "She busted him
plenty with that soft-nose."
"And served him right," said Jim Denny, the new leader, grumbling.
"Aleck has never been looking for the worst of it, any way of the game.
If he had left that woman down below where she belonged, we wouldn't be
in this fix. I tell you them ranchers'll be out in a pack after us,
and the only thing we can do is to pull our freight good and plenty
right now."
The whir of the engine drowned conversation. An instant later the two
carloads of banditti were passing down around curve after curve of the
sandy road. Mary Warren, still dazed, and dull where she lay, heard
them go by. Yonder then, lay the trail--but could she know which way?
If she turned her head she would lose the direction. She kept her eyes
fixed upon the last point of the compass from which she had heard the
car distinctly, and taking the muzzle of the revolver in her hand,
endeavored to scratch a mark in the sand to give her the direction
later by the sense of touch. She laid the pistol itself at the upper
end of the little furrow, pointing toward the road which she had left.
Sinking down, she resigned herself to what she felt must soon be the
end.
The chill of the mountain night was coming on. The whispering in the
pines grew less. Vaguely she sensed that the sun was low, that soon
twilight would come. She had no means of making a fire, had no
covering, no food. Simply a lost unit of one of the many species
inhabiting the earth, surviving each as it may, she cowered alone and
helpless in the wilderness.
The hush of the evening came. The pines were silent. There was only
one little faint sound above her--in some tree, she thought. It was
made by a worm boring under the bark, seeking place for the larvae
which presently it would leave, in order that its species might endure.
A small sound, of no great carrying power.