I GO WALKING AND MEET ENEMIES.
He and I had labored across those twenty miles in a wagon by daylight. I
could guess what it meant at night and in the saddle--and she had done
it! She had come alone, except for such chance escort as she could
recruit at the mining town, and now as she walked in the moon-bath of
the clearing, there was not a man of them all who carried himself with
so free and unwearied a stride. She was dressed in a short riding-skirt
and a heavy sweater. Her shoulders swung back as free as an Indian's,
and I knew at that moment, and without doubt, that this was the elusive
lady of Europe who had walked out of Shepheard's Hotel the night when I
sat on the terrace. She was no fragile ornament of drawing-rooms; she
was the woman who strode like a goddess and for whom timidities had no
existence. She was not then, after all, I exultantly reflected, the
hot-house orchid; a mere whisper and fragrance on waxy petals. She was
the splendid flower I had conceived, fit for God's good open skies. And
that thought sent a rich bugle note of triumph ringing through the chaos
of my misery.
Of a surety it was no place for me. In what was to be said behind that
door I had no part. She had come splendidly, but she had not come to me.
These thoughts raced tumultuously through my mind, and when she reached
the steps of the porch, and the light showed the mud and dust on her
corduroy skirt, and caught the gold of her hair under an upturned hat
brim, I bit savagely at my lips and turned away.
I sat for an hour or more in the shadow of a fence line, with the night
mists rising and congealing under the pale moonlight like the tracery of
frost on a julep mug. I had left my coat inside and at last I was
conscious of being deeply chilled. As often as I turned my eyes out upon
the mountain and forest they came back to dwell on the rough log wall
that separated her from me. I felt the drawing of the magnet. Inside at
least I could look at her, devour her with my eyes though I might not
open my arms to her or even my lips except to utter commonplaces. But
then the thought would come of the tenderness of the reunion which was
perhaps at that moment being enacted so near me, yet so far from me, and
at the picture I ground my teeth. Why had I at last discovered her to be
the sum of all my dreams, and more, only to sit outside a wall of logs
and know that inside she was pouring out on another man the miracle of
her tenderness?
To-morrow I would deliver her husband over to her and go back. Finally,
however, I realized that for to-night the Marcus house was my only
available abode, and that by this time the first affections of greeting
would be over. I could safely return.
Decency and civility demanded that I shake her hand and give an account
of my rough nursing. The cabin was already crowded. What shifting and
rearranging her arrival might necessitate was a thing to which I should
accommodate myself before the household settled down to sleep. Already I
might have caused inconvenience by my disappearance.
As I drew near the house, the cracks of the shutters still held threads
of light. At the threshold of the room where I had left Weighborne I
hesitantly knocked.
"Come in," said a low voice--her voice.
I opened the door and halted in astonishment.
She was sitting before the fire in the rough chair which was usually
occupied by the old woman and her eyes were fixed on the flaring logs
and the white ashes below them. She was leaning forward with her brows
slightly drawn in a troubled and pained expression. The blaze threw
shifting dashes of carmine on her cheeks and heightened the rose-madder
of her lips. Her slender fingers were intertwined across her knees and
one foot, cased in a riding-boot, was tapping the floor in evident
annoyance.
Her discarded sweater hung over the chair back and against its white
background her graceful slenderness was clear drawn despite the loose
folds of a blue flannel shirt. The open collar revealed the arch of her
throat, and though it was now circled by rough fabric instead of pearls,
it was the same throat and neck that had so imperiously supported the
head of the island goddess. But the deep wistfulness of her face and the
troubled rise and fall of her bosom with breathing that was akin to a
sigh filled me with wonder. Then the complete loveliness of her, the
yearning for her swept me, and I had to grip myself resolutely for
control.
I must have let myself in very quietly, for she did not turn her head.
But what held me in pause and anger was the discovery that Weighborne
lay asleep and breathing heavily, as though the last hours had brought
no exciting incident. Could it be possible that he had slept
uninterruptedly? At the thought a wave of savage resentment swept me.
Had she come to me I should have arisen to meet her, though I had to
shake off the sleep of death itself and push my way through the heavy
weight of the grave.
I went very quietly over to her, without speaking, and still she did
not raise her eyes. I looked down, cursing myself that I had dared to
suspect she could burgeon only in the affluence of satins.
Slowly her gaze came up and on seeing me she gave a little start. Then
she spoke in a low voice which was a trifle cool.
"Do you think your welcome is very prompt?"
I stiffened and flushed. Could she be so blindly indifferent as not to
know that I had taken myself off in misery and loneliness only because I
was not cad enough to intrude on that meeting? And now she permitted
herself to grow piqued over the only evidence of consideration it lay in
my power to show her.
"Do you think I could have done otherwise?" I inquired.
"I think if I were a man, and a woman had come across the mountains--"
she halted suddenly and colored. Then she added in an altered tone of
flat indifference, "It doesn't matter."
For a moment I stood there with no answer to frame. Her words bewildered
me. So she might have spoken had she been free or affianced to me. I was
standing above her looking down and her eyes, with the same pained
wideness, were looking at some picture which the flickering flames and
white embers held for her imagination. Then I understood. Her words were
not after all really addressed to me. She, too, was thinking of the man
asleep in the huge four-post bed who had not awakened to receive her,
and upon me was falling the expression of what was in her heart because
I was the only person with whom she could speak. Since he had not
aroused himself she had noticed my absence. Had it been otherwise I
should have been forgotten. It was the final note of my quaint and
unprecedented torture that I should come in as her husband's proxy for a
chiding that should have been his.
For the next few moments I stood helplessly silent. Outside I heard the
distant baying of hounds off on some ungoverned chase. She sat there
while the longings in my heart welled and the reason in my brain reeled,
until I could feel only one thing--that she should belong to me; that my
arms should enfold her--that everything which balked that end was a
monstrous and hideous injustice. Then as a drunken man may suddenly sink
into the irresponsible vagueness that carries him into total
irresponsibility, the tidal wave mastered me. There was an inarticulate
sound in my throat; something between a groan and a sob, which must have
startled her, for she looked suddenly up, and as she did so I dropped to
my knees beside her and carried both her hands to my lips. She flinched
back with a sudden little start of astonishment, but I was now the
primitive creature bereft of sanity and I gathered her to me and
crushed her in my arms and covered the cool softness of her cheeks and
eyes and lips with my kisses until they flushed hot and crimson. In an
instant the thing was over. A wave of returning reason swept me like a
sluicing from a bucket of ice-water, and I came to my feet sane and
unspeakably mortified. She was still sitting very silent and her flushed
color had at once died to pallor. Her eyes were wide with mystified
incomprehension. Her lips moved, but shaped no words. I tried to speak,
but the sense of my outrageous conduct stifled me.
She could not understand and I could not tell her, of all the torture
which had so culminated. After this, even should the powers of miracle
clear away every other obstacle between us, she would never listen. I
heard my voice groan miserably, and with no further effort at
explanation or apology, I walked, or rather stumbled, to the peg where
my coat hung beside the door and let myself out into the night.
Where I went I could not say. I was tramping along with the aimlessness
of the man whose steps are unguided. My one conscious intention was to
keep going, to kill the rest of the night and to try, as best I might to
bring myself to such a point of sanity that with to-morrow morning I
could return and take my medicine with at least the dignity of the
condemned criminal. Vaguely I planned self-destruction--after I had
faced whatever ordeal awaited me first and I had met the obligation of
supporting Marcus in court. I should tell the two of them my story and
let them at least realize that before I had become the madman and the
brute I had been through such things as might craze a man. Weighborne
was not the sort of husband who would tamely pass without punishment
such an affront to his wife and himself. I hoped that his method of
reprisal would be summary. That would bring a sort of relief, yet for
her sake he must let me be my own executioner, that it might end there.
The night was all a-sparkle under the moonlight, and the air, spiced
with frost, went into the lungs with the tingling stimulation of
needles. I tramped endlessly along the road, and all the heat of my
paroxysm cooled into a chill of self-contempt. Still I had no definite
idea of where I was going--I was simply plunging ahead in an effort to
burn up with physical exertion the restlessness and misery that
possessed me.
It was only when I had walked and run alternately for hours, frequently
halting to sit by the roadside and curse myself, that I realized I must
have come a long way from the house of Cal Marcus, and that the night
must be well spent. I might not have even then returned to a realization
of outward things had I not heard the sound of voices and the patter of
unshod hoofs on the roadbed. Some roistering riders of the night were
making their late way home, and had I been in a less heedless mood,
Marcus' frequent injunction and the things I myself had seen would have
prompted me to avail myself of the concealment offered by the fence
row's tangle. But these matters were all far from my thoughts, and I
merely turned back to the side to let the horsemen pass. I was walking
with my head downcast at a point where the moon bathed the road, when
the horses behind broke into a canter. As they passed me one of the
riders, with a surprised shout to his companions, wheeled his mount to a
halt just before me.
"Hold on thar!" sang out a voice. "Let's take this feller along with
us."
I looked resentfully up and as I did so recognized the figure above me
as that of Curt Dawson. When I met his eyes I met also the glitter of a
leveled pistol.
I was in no mood to be trifled with and I knew that surrender to such a
capture meant disaster to Marcus's plan of attack. Their purpose was to
dispose of a dangerous witness, and since my testimony was to be damning
to Curt Dawson, he above all others had a motive to serve which would
make him recklessly desperate. I was unarmed, but I sprang forward
meaning to strike up the weapon or force him to shoot without parley. I
did not greatly care which alternative he chose, but I had no mind to be
taken alive. Even if I succeeded in overpowering Garvin's gun-man, there
was still his ally to reckon with. However, neither thing happened. Curt
Dawson, merely laughed in his indolent fashion and jerked his horse back
in its haunches, sliding from the saddle as he did so.
His fellow-traveler had now reinforced him and the two of them came over
and faced me.
"Bud," said the gun-man with a slow, contemptuous drawl, "we hain't
ergoin' ter kill this feller--leastways not yit. Them's the orders. He
hain't ergoin' ter pester us inter hit, but we're goin' ter take him
along with us. He hain't got no gun. I reckon you kin put up yours."
Then he turned calmly to me and added, "Now, stranger, I low yer gwine
ter come along--or get the hell of a lickin'--and then come along
anyhow."
The second mountaineer slipped his revolver back into the case which,
mountain fashion, he wore strapped to his side beneath his left armpit.
Both men carefully buttoned their leather holsters. Meantime, I looked
from one to the other, gauging their distances, and made up my mind to
attack Dawson first. Then I heard the assassin calmly direct, "Now, Bud,
take hold of him."