THE FUGITIVE
After that roping match, on the ranch of the Three Sorrows—a small
island of human life and interests, surrounded on every side by a
sea of grass whose fishes were cattle—year followed year until five
had been added to the number of them, and Hilda was thirteen.
The carriage, now a sober, elderly vehicle, had carried Miss Val and
Burchie many times as far as Mesquite on their journeyings to Fort
Worth, for Miss Val—who was now frankly the invalid—found there at
the sanitarium a system of baths and massage which she said helped
her neuralgia very much. But it never helped it enough to let her
live at the ranch more than a month or so at a time, and Burch she
must have with her. She put him in a Fort Worth school and said
she’d keep him under the doctor’s observation till he should be
perfectly sound.
To anybody else’s notion but hers, he had been that for a long time.
It appeared there had never been anything the matter with his
hearing; anyhow, he was now a particularly well-grown boy for his
years, still silent, and with that air he might have inherited from
his father, or caught from Aunt Val, of being just a visitor at the
ranch. He never seemed to belong to it—or it to him. Hardly any of
the things Hilda cared most for were of interest to Burch.
Of course, he was off there in Fort Worth during the “Winter of the
Big Snow,” that heart-breaking season which followed the blizzard
that marooned Uncle Hank and Hilda on the Bar Thirteen. The Three
Sorrows had been provided, as well as Uncle Hank could provide,
against such a happening with stacks of the coarse laguna hay; but
Hilda would never forget that time when, kept home from school by
the weather, she tried to help with the poor weak cows that pawed at
the frozen snow without being able to get through to anything they
could eat, or licked it without being able to get anything they
could drink. Uncle Hank said she worked like a little Trojan, and
from that year she felt herself more and more increasingly his right
hand.
So the brother to whom she wrote dutiful letters, whenever she wrote
to Aunt Val, and who soon began to send her back short answers that
were rather better written and spelled than her own, came to
cut little figure in her life of work and play. At school there
were companions of her own age to contend against, confide
in—boys and girls who lived the ranch life. And there was always
The-Boy-On-The-Train to remember. In all this time, Hilda had never
forgotten him. He seemed more real in some ways than Burch or Aunt
Val or any one or anything that had belonged to the old life. All
else that concerned that time got dim and changed; he remained the
one who was always just right—the one who could do no wrong.
But when there is a live boy, like Kenny Tazewell or Clarke
Capadine, at hand to ride races with, how then? Does one forget the
absent—at least while the hot blood is drumming in one’s ears, and
every trick that Uncle Hank has taught is needed to keep the pony
going straight, to stay on him and avoid dog-holes? We-ell, maybe
so. But when the there-present boy wins, and isn’t very nice about
it, and there might be some suspicion that he didn’t ride fairly,
ah, then one recalls with pride and joy The-Boy-On-The-Train, the
being without fault, the dweller in the fair mirage-land of memory,
who could be nothing less than noble and generous!
_He_ would never have ridden the faster pony. _He_ would be
incapable of crowding one in so close to the fence that it was pull
up or be scraped off—and that, too, after treacherously offering
that side of the road in all appearance of good faith. No, no! Far
otherwise. _He_ would have brought the proud-crested barb, or the
milk-white palfrey swifter than the steeds of dawn, or the
coal-black stallion eagle-winged, for his lady to ride. _He_ would
have helped her on, resigned the best place, and smiled when her
mount outran his’n—oh, well, then, _his_.
The Marchbanks children had never come again to the Capadine ranch.
Colonel Lee Marchbanks stayed in New Mexico. They all went into
Hilda’s world of memory and tradition. The further edge of this
world of tradition and memory melted into the world of books. And
Hilda had got to be a great reader of books.
There had come to Texas with the Van Brunt furniture quite a
library. Some of it was unpacked and filled the bookshelves in the
living-room; when it overflowed these, a lot of it went into the
little place they called the office; but there were still books in
boxes in the cellar. The things Hilda loved best she read over and
over; she knew pages of Marmion and Lady of the Lake by heart, not
to mention her beloved ballads. Great musical, stirring lines from
these were always jingling through her head when she played at home.
Sometimes she went about saying them under her breath. Or—and this
was a sort of fearful pleasure—saying some lines of her own that she
more or less made up as she went along.
If you did that long enough, the things around you changed, kind of
melted into a dream: the ranch house became a castle; Shorty and
Missou’ and the others were retainers; old Sam Kee, in the kitchen,
was a Swart Paynim—he made a very good Swart Paynim, indeed.
With one of Aunt Val’s cast-off dresses on, a veil arranged for the
headdress of a castle lady, the dream thrived splendidly. At these
times she instinctively dodged Uncle Hank and the boys as much as
she could. It broke in dreadfully to have one of them sing out:
“Hello, Hilda—playin’ lady?” It even hurt to have Uncle Hank look at
her with absent fondness and call her “Pettie,” when it seemed he
might almost have seen that she was the despairing lady of “the
house of the Rhodes,” with bloody Edom o’ Gordon besieging her
walls.
But one day, in the spring of the year she was thirteen, rummaging
in the cellar, trying to pry open a heavy box of books, she made a
wonderful find. Back of these boxes, concealed by them and
forgotten, because they had stood untouched there for years, she
discovered an opening in the earth wall—an unmistakable door. It was
low, not very wide, unframed except by the earth-and-stone walls of
the cellar side, made of rough, heavy planks marked with
hieroglyphics of dust and draped mournfully with cobwebs; it had
iron hinges like those on the stable door, and was closed only with
a loop of leather and a big nail. Silent, unknown, unsuspected—a
very gateway of mystery—all alone down there under the ground, this
crude, sinister, little door stung Hilda’s imagination like a
strange, threatening word out of another tongue, whispered in the
dark.
Trembling, she pushed upon it. It gave inward creakingly. Utter
blackness was beyond it. She flew up the cellar stairs to Sam Kee
with a breathless demand for a candle. After some argument, the
candle was secured and lighted. She hurried to the cellar and, with
a heart that beat to suffocation, cautiously shoved open the
door—her door—her discovery.
She entered, not without half-ecstatic tremors. It was an
underground passage! She traversed twelve or fifteen feet of the
narrow corridor, where earth showed between rough planking, and came
to another door. This one sagged half-way open, revealing a
fair-sized chamber, earth-walled also behind its planks, and with a
heavily timbered ceiling, big beams in its corners and at intervals
along the sides, and a window with a batten shutter opposite the
entrance. She stood a moment, enraptured, the candle flame going up
very straight and sickly in that unaired space. Then she went almost
reverently across the floor of beaten earth, set down her candle and
pulled at the rusty hasp of the shutter. It came back suddenly with
a creak. Daylight streamed in—sunlight—checkered by a strong lattice
of naked woodbine stems. Between these she peered. There was the
spring, with the sheen dancing on its waters as it pulsed away into
the asequia. She must be standing inside of the steep green mound by
the willows, the “mountain” up which Burch had proposed to drive the
new carriage. This window must pierce its slope, masked by the
woodbine. She had in fact come upon the forgotten cyclone cellar of
the ranch house. In a daze of delight, she looked about her.
“Oh, oh!” she whispered under her breath, then flew to bring in an
old broom from the cellar outside, and with it some cloths; swept
and wiped away the accumulated dust. Her mind was clamorous with
plans. Rose Marie and Captain Snow would be the only companions she
could have here, the only sharers of the secret whose discretion
might be trusted; and the place must be made fit for the great white
cat’s fastidious fancy, the doll’s cambric daintiness.
There was a big box for the table, a smaller one for a chair, and
Burchie’s disused high-chair to prop the doll in. At one side was a
shelf with some empty bottles and cans on it. These she replaced by
an armload of her favorite books from the library. She made a game
of this, though there was nobody in the house but stolid Sam Kee,
who never asked any questions. It was delightful to pile up the
things she wanted taken down, then scout and see that “the coast was
clear,” catch them up and run with them, outwitting espionage,
evading pursuit. When all was done she surveyed the chamber and its
furnishings with satisfaction. Here was the place to read, to make
up stories, to dream and act those she read or made up. In short,
here was a new stage—secret, safe, solitary—on which the
never-ending, always-changing drama might go forward. Here was
innocent escape from the world about her, well-loved, comfortable,
but too definite, too importunate to permit the dream—the blessed
and beautiful dream—which would undoubtedly come true in such a
place as this.
One sunny, blowy Sunday afternoon Hilda forsook the light of day and
made her way through the dark passage into the cyclone cellar, her
candle held high in one hand, the other carefully conveying a
battered tray on which were some cakes and half a glass of jelly. On
the box table lay a sort of costume into which she got, after she
had set down tray and candle before the doll’s fixed stare.
The dress was her favorite of all those cast-offs of Miss Valeria’s,
a changeable silk, shimmering from green to gold as the plain itself
did when the buffalo grass was tall on it and the wind went over.
There was a froth of lace and little bright-colored ribbon bows for
trimming, exactly like the tossing bells of wild hollyhock or the
phlox that bloomed in millions on that plain. Oh, it was a heavenly
dress to wear when you were playing Flora MacDonald rowing Prince
Charlie across the lake, or Katherine Douglass barring the door
against the enemies of King Jamie—barring it with her arm, which
they broke as they burst through!
To-day it was to be Flora MacDonald, and the _asequia_—the little
irrigating ditch—was to be the “practicable water” for the scene.
Hilda pulled the veil into place on her hair, swung the long
trailing skirts smoothly down her slim little figure and slipped
across to open the shutter behind the masking lattice of woodbine
stems, her lips already moving, murmuring fragments of high
converse, phrases of faith, loyalty, gratitude, renunciation. Her
big black eyes swam full, misty with the vision. She had stepped—as
always on entering the cyclone cellar—from Texas soil into the realm
of romance.
The open shutter let in the dancing light reflected from the water,
and all checkered with the beautiful thatch of tender green leaves
that the woodbine was sprouting. Without coming to earth at all,
Hilda felt the joy of it. Leaning ardently forward, she rustled the
woodbine stems, whereupon some one, stooping to drink at the spring
just outside her casement, started violently, sprang half erect,
whirled and stood staring directly into her face.
A fugitive! Even to Hilda the fact spoke plain. She—expecting to
see, with the vision of fancy, exactly what now confronted her in
the flesh—was not greatly startled. The young fellow stood looking
at her, his head, with its fair hair flung up, the blue eyes full of
terror. While she gazed at him, lips apart, unable to emerge from
her spell of fantasy, he reached out vaguely to the dusty, big hat
that lay beside him on the grass, got quite to his feet and, with a
glance behind him, came up to the woodbine lattice. He laid a
shaking hand upon it, peering through at her face, anxiously,
doubtfully—and began with a sort of faltering haste:
“Can I—could I get—in there? Can you hide me? They’re close after
me!”
“They” had been “close after” pretty much everybody in Hilda’s
cyclone-cellar world for a long time now. He looked the part, and
this was the one thing he could have said without jarring the dream,
without so much as brushing the down from the tip of its rainbow
wing. At the words, she sank back gratefully into the realm of the
fabulous, and he receded from the world of reality to follow her
there.
“Why, yes,—your—” she hesitated an instant. “Your Majesty,” she
whispered, just above her breath.
Perhaps he was not quite sure of the word; perhaps he was too
perturbed to notice such a detail.
“Quick!” he urged; “show me how to get in there.”
Something about his face challenged and puzzled her. There was a
haunting resemblance about the look of his eyes. Yet all realities
strove vainly for more than vague recognition now. She was in a sort
of rapture as she leaned forward and whispered:
“Stay for me; I will not fail you.” Then, to make sure: “I’m coming.
I’ll bring you in here.”
She gathered up her draperies and ran. The daylight world of the
Three Sorrows had never seen those trailing, faded splendors,
ravished from Aunt Val’s cast-offs; but haste was indicated. A
moment later, to the young fellow at the spring, hanging doubtfully
on his heel, a hunted glance over his shoulder, preparing for
flight, there came skimming across the grass a quaint figure. The
dress of Hilda’s contriving trailed behind her flying feet, the
tangle of mist-fine dark curls was half covered by a coiffing veil,
worn in the manner of castle ladies as they appear in the
frontispieces of feudal romances. The fugitive looked in wonder. She
ran to him and took his hand and pulled him toward the house. He
held back a little, but she urged vehemently:
“You’ll have to come right through here. It’s the only way.”
In the kitchen door, at sight of the Chinese cook, the young fellow
checked wildly. Hilda gripped his hand in both hers, and dropped
momentarily out of her part to explain:
“It’s only Sam Kee. He doesn’t count. He never tells on me—do you,
Sam?”
The Chinaman looked placidly about eighteen inches over their heads,
smiled, and seemed to imply that the room was empty except for
himself. There was something reassuring in this attitude, and
Hilda’s chance guest followed her quickly down the cellar steps,
behind the pile of boxes, and through the passage that led to the
cyclone chamber.
“Are you—are you an-hungered?” she asked, with a sort of
half-tentative hardihood.
He dropped down on the box seat and eyed the food with an air so
exactly suited to his rôle that she took heart and fell into the
familiar phraseology:
“Here is the humble meal I have provided. If you will rest and
refresh yourself, I’ll, I’ll—”
Her voice trailed a bit at last. The newcomer was looking at her
with so sharp an inquisition that it sent a vague pang through her
heart.
“Yes,” he said slowly, “I’m hungry.” The blue eyes went swiftly over
the items on the cracker-box table. Under that glance they seemed to
diminish somewhat in bulk and decline in nourishing quality. Hilda
became acutely aware of the realness of his trouble, the actual dust
on his clothes, the parched, cracked lips, the exhaustion and
distress of his whole young figure.
“I can get something more,” she said hurriedly. “I can make
Sam Kee give me a glass of milk and some bread, and, I guess,
some—some—chicken.”
“Wait—” He caught her as she passed, examining her face with that
bluntly inquiring, suspicious gaze. “Can you get the things without
anybody else knowing? You wouldn’t tell any one else—”
“Oh,” cried Hilda, aghast. “Betray you? No, no, no—never—of course
not!”
Slowly, as though still half uncertain, he released her. She turned
and almost ran through the familiar dark passage. In her breast
choking sympathy reproached the triumphant delight of having her
play come true. And there hung, as it were, on the heels of these
swifter emotions, a slow, uncomprehending sense of hurt at the
fugitive’s lack of trust in her.
Negotiations with Sam Kee were brief, for Hilda had that within her
which reckoned with no refusal. It seemed to her but a moment that
she was gone, yet she found that her guest had eaten the last crumb
of the little cakes. He fell ravenously upon the more substantial
food she brought back.
“Sam Kee’s making a cup of coffee,” said Hilda.
The young fellow nodded his head. When he had finished the food, he
looked across at her and said:
“I guess I’ve got to tell you about myself.”
“You needn’t,” Hilda maintained loyally.
He sat for a while, looking away, a clenched hand lying on his knee.
Twice he drew in his breath to speak, and turned his head, without
ever quite bringing his gaze around to hers. Suddenly he got up and
went to the window. He stood there, plucking at the vine leaves. Her
big black eyes followed him; they noted that bright hair—dusty now,
sweat-darkened in streaks, yet such as a prince ought to have; they
dwelt on the outlines of his tired figure, rimmed with its halo of
light; gallant, victorious, yet in danger, needing her—she could
read all that into it. He whirled abruptly and came toward her.
“Suppose they told you I’d killed a man,” he said.
There was an awful silence in the close little room. Hilda was as
one who comes upon a dizzying abyss, horrible, chaotic, yawning to
swallow both dream and reality. But she was made of heroic stuff. In
spirit she approached the edge and looked down, wincing but resolute
and clinging to the hand of her hero.
It was terrible; why, yes, to be sure it was terrible. But, oh, it
had a gorgeous thrill to it! What was the use of hiding a fugitive
and enduring “all” for his sake if he hadn’t committed some dreadful
deed—several of them, for that matter? Richard Cœur de Lion slew men
in heaps and piles; so did King Harold. Why, all the kings and
princes did, and the splendid warriors, in those old times. Shorty
knew fellows that had killed their man, and Buster and the others,
too; and they said they were good boys just the same. More than once
there had been a man at the Three Sorrows table, or sequestered in
the Three Sorrows bunk house, about whom it had been an open secret
that he was “on the dodge” because of a shooting scrape. If you came
right down to it, Uncle Hank himself had lent the last one a horse
and money. These considerations did not decide Hilda’s course. She
was for her fugitive anyhow, right or wrong, and whatever or whoever
might have been against him. But there was a certain pleasure in
realizing her immediate public opinion to be with her. Aloud, she
said:
“How—why—how did you know to come to me?”
He answered, curiously, with another question, coming slowly back
and sitting down again:
“This is the Three Sorrows ranch, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I thought it was, but I didn’t dare to ride up and ask.” Then,
after a moment’s pause, in which he studied her, “You must be Hilda
Van Brunt.”
“I am Hilda.”
“Thank God. I’m all right, then.”
“Yes,” said Hilda. “I’ll take care of you.”
“Is your father in the house? Can you bring him down here?”
They were sitting on opposite sides of the box table, the candle
between them sending up its flame very tall and straight and steady.
When the boy said this Hilda’s little peaked face looked suddenly
white, because the eyes became bigger and darker with the dilation
of their pupils. She locked her hands hard together in her lap to
keep from sobbing outright in her excitement. She reminded herself
of the dust on his clothes, the feeling of his hand when she had
taken it to drag him past Sam Kee. There was nothing to be so
dreadfully frightened about. After a long time—the boy watching her,
puzzled and uneasy—she got her voice under control.
“Didn’t you know my father was dead?” she asked, very low. “He was
killed in a roundup seven years ago, and there’s nobody to look
after my brother and me and the ranch—and even Aunt Val—but Uncle
Hank.”
The newcomer sat perfectly still a moment, staring blankly. Slowly
the bright head went down on his arms, his shoulders began to heave.
Hilda gazed with an agony of repressed pity at that prone, boyish
head. The young fellow seemed to her a man, and his grief a thing to
shake the foundations. Her hand longed to steal out and touch him,
but she drew it back. She looked about the dark little plank-walled
chamber, lit by its one candle. With a start of something so alien
that it was almost distaste, her eye encountered Rose Marie’s saucy,
smiling beauty over among the shadows of one corner. Yet the big,
somber burden of Hilda’s yearning sympathy was played upon, shot
through and through and lightened by delectable, rosy shafts. It was
so very real; it was so very dear to be of use—to be of great use.
With instinctive tact she took no notice of her guest’s outburst,
but crept away to take the dishes to Sam Kee. Returning, she gave
considerate warning with a little fumble at the inner door, and when
she entered caught up Rose Marie and thrust her out of sight (a
gesture as significant in its way as, in an earlier day, was the
investing of the Roman lad with the toga _virilis_) this was no
affair for dolls. She edged into the seat across from the fugitive.
Presently he raised his head and spoke:
“Hilda” (somehow his use of her name startled her), “those men are
after me—if they get their hands on me—I guess they’ll hang me.”
“Oh,” breathed Hilda, and the dream began to draw away.
“I remembered that Three Sorrows was right over here in Lame Jones
County”—yes, that’s just what he said: “I _remembered_ that the
Three Sorrows was right over here in Lame Jones County,” and Hilda’s
eyes grew bigger as she gazed at him. Her breath began to come
short.
“You’re—” she whispered.
But he went on, not heeding, “I knew if I could get here, I’d be
safe.”
Then Hilda cried out:
“You’re The-Boy-On-The-Train!”