"_Made_ you! Did you get a divorce?"
"N-no!"
Daniels cursed so harshly that she flinched, although she had long since
grown accustomed to profanity. Then he turned away, but, reading murder
in his face, she seized him with fingers that were like claws.
"Wait! Don't do that!"
"You love him, don't you?"
"No, no! But--he's bad now, and--and probably drunk. He'll kill you,
McGill. He's bad, I tell you--tough--don't you understand? He's bad, and
he's made me bad, too, that's why I'm here. He's not worth it, McGill;
neither am I!"
"You can't stay in Arcadia, neither of you. I got out of Ophir and let
you alone, but this is my town; I can't leave it."
"We'll go," she cried, wringing her hands; "anyhow, I'll go, if you'll
help me. But I'll need help--Oh, God! Yes, I'll need help! You don't
know--You and he can settle things afterward."
"You want to leave him?"
"I've tried to break away, I've been trying ever since that first day in
Ophir, but he won't let me. I kept trying--until I learned better; now
I'm afraid. He's broken me, Dan, but you'll help me to leave him, won't
you?"
After a time the husband answered, more to himself than to her: "I guess
I'm even with _you_, anyhow. You've gone to hell, hand in hand with him.
I won't interfere--not that way. I s'pose he beats you?"
She nodded, and saw his bearded face twitch. "Yes, and he'll make me
like these other women--you understand? I've fought until I'm tired,
worn out. I'm in a trap, McGill, and--I'm afraid--afraid for the little
soul I have left."
"You sprung the trap," he told her, bitterly.
But his wife had seen a way to freedom and clutched at it with desperate
persistence.
"Listen! I want to talk to you. Come with me for a minute."
"Come? Why?"
"Never mind. Oh, it's all right. You owe me something, for I still have
your name. Do this for me, please! It's only a step."
He yielded to her imploring eyes and followed grudgingly down the back
stairs and into the night, wondering the while at his own weakness. She
led the way, bareheaded, heedless of the cold. They were in that
ill-favored district he had penetrated earlier in the day, but if it had
been offensive then it was doubly so now, with its muffled sounds of
debauchery and wickedness. She paused finally, fumbling at the door of
one miserable structure, whereupon he growled:
"You live here? You're worse than--"
"'Sh-h!" She laid a finger on her lips as she let him in and lit a lamp,
then she beckoned him toward the single rear room, shading the light
with one hand and inviting him silently to peer over her shoulder.
The surprise of what he saw struck McGill dumb, for there in a crib lay
the tiny lass who had befriended him that afternoon. Her lips were
pouting sweetly, her face was flushed with dreams, one plump little arm
was outside the covers, and just below the doubled fist McGill saw the
deep dimpled bracelet of babyhood. Her presence made of these squalid
surroundings a place of purity; the room became suddenly a shrine.
"The son-of-a-gun!" said McGill, inanely, then his face darkened once
more. "I know her," he announced, grimly. "What are _you_ doing with
that kid--in this hell-hole?"
From the alleyways near by came a burst of ribaldry, but the woman's
face was shining when she answered:
"Why, she's mine--my baby. We have no other home."
He did not--could not--speak, so she said, simply:
"Now you see why I must leave Barclay, and--all this."
"_Your_ baby!" McGill's eyes dropped to the index finger of his right
hand, then he touched his lips curiously.
"Barclay won't let me run straight. I've always wanted to, and now I
must, for the baby's sake." When this brought no response she continued,
with growing intensity, but in a lowered tone. "She'll begin to
understand things before long. She'll hear about him--and me. Then what?
She'll think for herself, and she'll never forget a thing like that,
never. How can she grow up to be good if she learns the truth? It
wouldn't let her. Nobody could stay good around Barclay. Even I
couldn't, and I was a woman when I met him. I'm decent, inside, McGill.
Honestly I am, and I've been sorry every day since you left. Oh, I've
paid for what I did! And I'll pay more, if I have to, but she mustn't be
part of the price. No! You've got to help me. Don't you see?"
She mistook his gesture of bewilderment for one of refusal, then hurried
to one final, frenzied appeal, although at a fearful cost to herself. It
was this which had come to her in the dance-hall; it was this that she
had led up to without allowing herself time in which to weaken.
"Listen! She shouldn't stay with me, even if I get away; it wouldn't be
good for her; besides, Barclay would find us some time; or, if he
didn't, I'm too sick to last much longer. Then she'd be alone. You're
rich, McGill. You're John Daniels. You'll have to take her--not for my
sake, understand, but--"
"_I?_" The man started. "I take Barclay's baby? Great God!"
There was a moment of silence during which the wife strove to steady
herself, then she said:
"She's not his--she's yours--ours."
McGill uttered a great cry. It issued from the depths of his being and
racked him dreadfully. He swung ponderously toward the rear room, then
fell to trembling so that he could not proceed. He stared at the woman,
lifted his hands, then dropped them; his lips shook. A fretful, sleepy
complaint issued from the chamber, at which the mother raised a warning
finger, and the necessity for silence calmed him more quickly than
anything else could have done.
"_My--baby!_" he whispered, while he felt something melt within him and
was filled with such an aching joy that he sobbed with the agony of it.
His wife's punishment overflowed when he breathed, fiercely:
"Then give her to me. You can't keep her. You can't touch her. You ain't
fit."
She bowed her head in assent, although his torture was nothing as
compared with hers.
"You'll help me get away from Barclay, won't you?" she asked, supporting
herself unsteadily.
"Barclay! I forgot him! He's the one that did all this, ain't he? He
brought you to--this; and my baby, too. He made her live among women
like these. He raised her in slime--" The speaker's face became slowly,
frightfully distorted.
His wife went swiftly to him; she struggled to fend him away from the
door, but he moved irresistibly. They wrestled breathlessly so as not to
awaken the child, while she begged him in the baby's name not to go, not
to bring blood upon her; but he plucked her arms from around him and
went out, closing the door softly.
When he had gone Mrs. McGill stood motionless, her eyes closed, her
palms pressed over her ears as if to shut out a sound she dreaded.
Barclay was dealing "bank" in one of the saloons when McGill entered and
came toward him down the full length of the room. They recognized each
other as their eyes met, and the former sat back stiffly in his chair,
feeling that the dead had risen. What he saw written in the face of the
bearded man drove the blood from his cheeks, for it was something he had
dreaded in his dreams. He knew himself to be cornered, and fear set his
nerves to jumping so uncontrollably that when he snatched the Colt's
from its drawer and fired blindly, he missed. The place was crowded, and
it broke into a frightful confusion at the first shot.
None of those present told the same tale of what immediately followed,
but the stories agreed in this, that John Daniels neither hesitated nor
quickened his approach, although Barclay emptied his gun so swiftly that
the echoes blended, then snapped it on a spent cartridge as the two
clinched. Curious ones later searched out the bullet-marks in wall and
ceiling which showed beyond doubt the nervous panic under which the
gambler had gone to pieces, and so long as the building stood they
remained objects of great interest.
Now McGill--or Daniels, as he was known to the onlookers--never went
armed, having yet to feel the need of other weapons than his hands. He
tore the gun from his victim's grasp, then mauled him with it so
fearfully that men shouted at him and hid their faces. Meanwhile he was
speaking, growling something into Barclay's ears. No one understood what
it was he said until the confusion died and they heard these words:
"--And you'll go with my brand on you where everybody 'll read it and
know you're a rat."
Next he did something that a great many had heard of but few, even of
the old-timers, had witnessed. He gun-branded his enemy. Barclay was
little more than a pulp by this time; he lay face up across the
faro-table with McGill's fingers at his throat. They thought the older
man was about to brain him, but instead he turned the revolver in his
hand and drew the thin, sharp-edged sight across Barclay's forehead from
temple to temple, then from forelock to bridge of nose. A stream of
blood followed as the sight ripped through to the skull like a dull
scalpel, leaving a ragged disfiguring cross above the gambler's eyes; it
scarred the bone; it formed a hideous mutilation that would last as long
as the fellow lived, and constitute a brand of infamy to single him out
from ten thousand, telling the story of his dishonor.
When he had finished, McGill raised the wretch bodily and flung him half
across the room as if he were unclean, then, without a glance to right
or left, he went forth as he had come.
His wife was waiting with her ears covered, but she saw the blood on his
hands when she opened her eyes, and cried out.
"It's his," he told her, roughly. "I don't think I killed him. I tried
not to, for her sake." He inclined his head toward the inner door. "But
it was hard to hold in, after all this time. He'll never trouble you
again."
"When do you--mean to take the baby?" she whispered.
"Now--She--"
"No, no! Not yet. Let her stay here a little while--till I'm strong
enough to let her go. Just a little while, McGill. You're a good man.
Don't you understand?" She was palsied, incoherent with dread; in her
eyes was a look of death.
But he held out his empty arms, crying, hoarsely, "Let me have my
kiddie!"
So she went in and gathered up the sleeping babe.
It may have been the father's heart-beats that awakened the little one
when she lay against his breast; at any rate the blue eyes opened and
stared up at him gravely. Astonishment, alarm gave way to recognition;
she smiled drowsily and her lids closed again, then a tiny hand curled
about one of McGill's fingers.
His face was wet when he raised it to the stricken woman and said,
gently, "We'll go now, if you're ready, Alice."
"What do you--?" She stared at him wildly. "You don't want _me_, McGill;
not after all I've done, all I--am?"
"I've always wanted you," he told her, simply. "You'll have to come, for
_she_ needs you." Holding the baby close with one arm, he extended the
other to his wife, but she drew back, choking.
"Not yet!" she managed to say through her tears. "Not until you know I'm
not all bad--only weak."
He took her hand and together they went out, walking slowly so as not to
awaken the child.