It was very quiet in Dalton’s cabin. Were it not for the figures which
the flickering firelight found out uncertainly, casting their grotesque
wavering shadows upon the floor and wall, one would have said that there
was no living thing there.
Dalton sat hunched forward in his chair—his elbows on his knees, his big
hands knotted together, his eyes on the coals scattered across the stone
hearth. Near the door, standing erect, his eyes upon the still figure,
his whole attitude that of a man waiting, was Dick Farley. Now and then
he turned his head a little and looked sharply over his shoulder into
the darkness outside as if he feared interruption.
“So,” said Dalton after a long silence, no part of his body moving save
his lips, his voice without expression. “So you’re his pardner. I was
afraid so, all along.”
“Yes.” Farley’s answer was as quietly expressionless. “I was his
pardner.”
Dalton stirred in his chair. Farley’s body lost none of its rigid
motionlessness, but his hand, the right one, dropped quickly to his hip.
Dalton had reached for his pipe, filled it and lighted it with a coal
which he picked up in his fingers. Farley’s hand remained upon the grip
of his revolver.
“I’m sorry, mighty sorry,” Dalton went on, without looking up. And then,
“Is there anything else you want to say?”
“I guess I’ve said about all. I came into this country with Johnny—my
pardner. We were looking for gold. We were interfering with no man.
Johnny is dead, murdered. It wasn’t even a fair fight. Who did it? I
haven’t jumped at conclusions. I probably would if it hadn’t been for—”
he hesitated a fraction of a second, during which for the first time
Dalton glanced up swiftly at him—“for Miss Dalton. I wanted to be sure.
I tracked you from one end of the trail to the other, to the cabin here.
I think it’s pretty clear. So I came here to accuse you of his murder.”
It was the first time he had spoken so clearly. But the two men had
understood each other without this putting a name to a deed.
“I don’t like that word, Farley,” Dalton cut in, his voice as
expressionless as before, his form as still. “You call him Johnny? Well,
men’s names change often enough out in this country for us not to
quibble. I suppose he’s carried a good many names since I saw him last.”
“You knew him? A long time ago?”
“Yes. I hadn’t seen him for over fifteen years, until——”
He didn’t finish. Instead, he said after a moment:
“And being his pardner, you are going to try to square things for him;
to be judge and jury and hangman; to kill the man who killed him? Well,
every man is his own court out here, where we are so far beyond the law.
And when a man is dead it is up to his pardner. That is the way you feel
about it?”
“Yes,” Dalton laughed mirthlessly. “We are beyond the law here—we are
not beyond the reach of justice. Justice—or revenge? It is hard to see
one for the other, sometimes! You want to kill me, then?”
“There is no use talking that way, Dalton,” Farley frowned. “You have
lived here too long; you know too well what is the result of the thing
which you have done—you don’t deny it?”
“Will it make any difference what I say?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“You are going to try to kill me,” Dalton continued. “That won’t help
your dead friend much, but you’ll do it just the same. I have no desire
to be killed by you or by any other man. But soon there is going to be
another dead man here—you or I? And Virginia! I wonder what she is going
to do. That complicates matters, but it doesn’t in any great degree
alter them, does it? She’ll be back from the lake pretty soon. We’d
better get this over with, unless you’ll listen to a proposition I’m
going to make?”
“What is it?”
“That you let me tell you a story. Then that you give over your thoughts
of revenge—or justice—for tonight; and that tomorrow or the next day, as
soon as I can get things in shape for the girl so that if I am killed
she will have a chance with the world, we go out into the woods
somewhere and—finish it.”
“It can wait,” Farley replied, “until tomorrow.”
Dalton inclined his head gravely.
“Thank you. Now, if you will listen to my story. Won’t you sit down?”
Farley dropped to the chair at his side. “I had trouble in Richmond,
where our home was. I killed a man. Why, doesn’t matter to you.
Unfortunately for me, I killed that man in the presence of another who
saw the thing done. That other man was your pardner. He hated me as
cordially as I hated him. In any court in the world he would have sworn
that it was cold-blooded murder, and his word would have hanged me.
“He would have lied when he said it, but he would have sworn it just the
same. As it was, I had to run for it. Virginia was a little baby, six
months old. Her mother—” his voice growing very hard—“was not strong.
She died. I wasn’t with her. I was being hounded from one place to the
other; and the man who hounded me when the whole thing would have been
dropped, the man who was the real murderer of my wife, was the man who
made it necessary for me to run before what men call justice. I did go
back and get the baby. Then we came here.
“Again and again, as the years rolled around, I got word from the world;
each time to hear that what the world had forgotten was not forgotten by
the man who was not satisfied in my exile, my loss of all the things
which counted. He was still looking for me, he still would stop only
when he saw me given over into the hangman’s hands. A few days ago I
found that he had penetrated into this wilderness. His prospector’s
outfit did not mislead me. He was looking for me. I was glad of it. I
told Virginia that soon we were going back into the world from which we
had hidden so many long years. I killed him.”
“You murdered him,” replied Farley coldly. “If you had given him a
chance——”
“How do you know I murdered him? How do you know I didn’t give him a
chance?”
“The hole in his throat—death came upon him suddenly, unexpectedly. He
may have been asleep, even.”
“Talking about it doesn’t help.” Dalton spoke like a man bored with a
worn-out topic. “You are going to wait until tomorrow for your—justice?
I have some letters I want to write for Virginia to carry with her; I
have some instructions to leave her; I have a good deal to do. For,
somehow—” he looked up with a strange smile upon the tightened lips—“I
imagine that you are going to come out of this alive, and I’m going to
come out of it—dead! You’ll wait until tomorrow?”
“I’ll wait.”
Farley got to his feet. Dalton rose with him.
“You’ll sleep here tonight?”
“No. I’ll sleep outside—not far away,” meaningly.
“Oh, I won’t run away,” laughed Dalton. “Good night!”
Farley made no answer as he backed to the door and stepped swiftly
outside. He closed the door behind him, and strode rapidly away into the
darkness. Of no mind to sleep, he built a little fire of dead twigs and
pine-cones, and sitting upon a fallen log stared into the flames
moodily.
* * * * *
He had sat there, motionless, for five minutes when something impelled
him to look up. Standing a few feet from him, just without the circle of
his firelight, was Virginia Dalton. He rose quickly, took a step forward
and stopped. He did not at once speak, waiting for her.
“So you have come back?” she said gently. “I have missed you.”
“Yes, I have come back.”
“And you found what you wanted to find?”
“I found what I was looking for. I don’t know that I wanted to find just
that,” he ended bitterly.
She came slowly toward him until she stood in the firelight, so near
that he could have put out his hand and touched her. He saw the brown
arms reflecting the wavering fire, the dark braids, the full, round
throat, her eyes even, deep and earnest. And something he glimpsed in
their quiet depths sent a quick pain to his heart.
“Yes,” she answered as if he had spoken. “I heard. I listened outside. I
heard every word.” She broke off, only her hands clasping each other
tightly showing him that the calmness of her still figure was forced
over a tumult within. “And so,” she barely whispered after a little,
“you have come back to kill dear old Daddy!”
He moved back, away from her, back from the quiet misery in her eyes,
making no answer. And she came with him, step by step until he had
stopped, and put her hand upon his arm.
“You have come back,” she repeated in the same lifeless tone, so
different from the glad note which he had so often thrill through her
voice, “to kill Daddy. Is that it?”
“You heard,” he muttered heavily.
“Yes. He killed your pardner.” She shivered and the hand upon his arm
grew very tense. “So you want to kill him. Will that do any good? It
will make me very miserable. It will take my father away from me—all I
have. And will it do your pardner any good?”
“Why did you come?” he cried out fiercely. “You don’t understand.”
“Don’t I understand?” She smiled at him—a wistful, wan little smile
which hurt him more than if she had cried out aloud. “I understand this
much: that in all the world I have but Daddy, and that he has been
always so good to me, and that you want to take him away from me!
“I understand that you want to kill him because he killed your pardner,
and that it won’t do any good for you to kill him; it won’t bring your
pardner back to life, it won’t make him rest any easier. I understand
that these things are not for men to do, but for God. God sees better
than we can see, and clearer and deeper down into our hearts. And He
would not do what you are going to do. He would not take my Daddy away
from me.”
When he made no answer, finding no answer to make, she stood silent a
little, letting her head sink forward despairingly. And then, again
lifting her eyes to his, her lips, her chin quivering as she strove to
make her faltering voice firm:
“Don’t you see that you will make it seem almost as if I had killed him,
myself? For if I had not brought you to the cabin you would never have
found it, maybe. If I had not thought you were a friend and brought you
there, maybe you would not have lived! Don’t you see?
“Don’t you see?” Again, groaning aloud he had drawn back from her, and
she had come to his side once more, had again lain her hand softly upon
his arm. “And don’t you see something else? We were growing to be such
friends, you and I, Dick Farley. Didn’t I read right the things which
you did not say that day you went away, the things which were in your
heart? Didn’t you see the things in my heart, too? Didn’t you see?”
He felt her hand tremble pitifully, saw the anguish written upon her
young face.
“We were going to be good friends—oh, such good friends! And now”—with a
dry sob as she put her face in her two hands and shook from head to foot
with the storm in her bosom—“and now you want to end it all, and to kill
him!”
For a blind moment he fought hard with the thing which she had thought
was friendship. And then, seeing her swaying there, seeing her mute
misery, he put out his arms and drew her close to him.
“Friends!” he cried, his voice harsh in her ears, like the voice of a
man in anger. “Friends! Can’t you see that I love you—love you as a man
can not love his friends—as he can love only the one woman in all the
world!”
She lifted her face quickly to his, and through the tears glistening
upon her cheeks he could see a new look, a look of gladness and of hope.
“Oh!” she whispered, drawing closer in the embrace of his arms. “I am
glad! And you won’t hurt him now; you can’t!”
For a little he held her to him, tightly pressed, as if defying the
world to take her away from him. And then slowly his arms loosened and
dropped to his side. For again he had seen Johnny Watson’s face staring
up at him through the faint light of the dawn; again he realized that
because she was Dalton’s daughter, Dalton was none the less his
partner’s murderer.
“What is it?” she asked softly. “Isn’t it all right now?”
“It is all wrong, Virginia, dear,” he said bitterly. “And this only
makes it more and more wrong. Don’t ask me anything more. Only go back
to your father and let me think things over. I—” his voice was hard and
steady—“I don’t know what is going to happen. I don’t think that I am
going to kill him. Will you kiss me good night, dear?”
He watched her as she went slowly through the night, watched her as for
a moment she stood in the dim rectangle of light made by the open door,
and then had only the darkness and the shooting flames of his camp-fire
about him.
“Johnny!” he muttered when at last there was but a dead pile of ashes
where his fire had been. “If I don’t kill him—if he kills me instead—it
will be all right, won’t it, Johnny?”