"WIN"
Alice opened her eyes to see Endicott bending over her. "It is time to
pull out," said the man tersely.
The girl threw off the blanket and stared into the whirl of opaque
dust. "The storm is still raging," she murmured. "Oh, Winthrop, do
you know that I dreamed it was all over--that we were riding between
high, cool mountains beside a flashing stream. And trout were leaping
in the rapids, and I got off and drank and drank of the clear, cold
water, and, why, do you know, I feel actually refreshed! The horrible
burning thirst has gone. That proves the control mind has over
matter--if we could just concentrate and think hard enough, I don't
believe we would ever need to be thirsty, or hungry, or tired, or cold,
do you?"
The man smiled grimly, and shook his head: "No. If we could think hard
_enough_ to accomplish a thing, why, manifestly that thing would be
accomplished. Great word--enough--the trouble is, when you use it, you
never say anything."
Alice laughed: "You're making fun of me. I don't care, you know what I
mean, anyway. Why, what's the matter with that horse?"
"He died--got weaker and weaker, and at last he just rolled over dead.
And that is why we have to hurry and make a try for the water-hole,
before the others play out."
Endicott noticed that the Texan was nowhere in sight. He pressed his
lips firmly: "It's better that way, I guess," he thought.
"But, that's your horse! And where are the others--Tex, and Bat, and
the pack-horse?"
"They pulled out to hunt for the water-hole--each in a different
direction. You and I are to keep together and drift with the wind as
we have been doing."
"And they gave us the best of it," she breathed. Endicott winced, and
the girl noticed. She laid her hand gently upon his arm. "No,
Winthrop, I didn't mean that. There was a time, perhaps, when I might
have thought--but, that was before I knew you. I have learned a lot in
the past few days, Winthrop--enough to know that no matter what
happens, you have played a man's part--with the rest of them. Come,
I'm ready."
Endicott tied the scarf about her face and assisted her to mount, then,
throwing her bridle reins over the horn of his saddle as the Texan had
done, he headed down the coulee. For three hours the horses drifted
with the storm, following along coulees, crossing low ridges, and long
level stretches where the sweep of the wind seemed at times as though
it would tear them from the saddles. Endicott's horse stumbled
frequently, and each time the recovery seemed more and more of an
effort. Then suddenly the wind died--ceased to blow as abruptly as it
had started. The man could scarcely believe his senses as he listened
in vain for the roar of it--the steady, sullen roar, that had rung in
his ears, it seemed, since the beginning of time. Thick dust filled
the air but when he turned his face toward the west no sand particles
stung his skin. Through a rift he caught sight of a low butte--a butte
that was not nearby. Alice tore the scarf from her face. "It has
stopped!" she cried, excitedly. "The storm is over!"
"Thank God!" breathed Endicott, "the dust is beginning to settle." He
dismounted and swung the girl to the ground. "We may as well wait here
as anywhere until the air clears sufficiently for us to get our
bearings. We certainly must have passed the water-hole, and we would
only be going farther and farther away if we pushed on."
The dust settled rapidly. Splashes of sunshine showed here and there
upon the basin and ridge, and it grew lighter. The atmosphere took on
the appearance of a thin grey fog that momentarily grew thinner.
Endicott walked to the top of a low mound and gazed eagerly about him.
Distant objects were beginning to appear--bare rock-ridges, and
low-lying hills, and deep coulees. In vain the man's eyes followed the
ridges for one that terminated in a huge broken rock, with its nearby
soda hill. No such ridge appeared, and no high, round hill. Suddenly
his gaze became rivetted upon the southern horizon. What was that
stretching away, long, and dark, and winding? Surely--surely it
was--trees! Again and again he tried to focus his gaze upon that long
dark line, but always his lids drew over his stinging eyeballs, and
with a half-sobbed curse, he dashed the water from his eyes. At last
he saw it--the green of distant timber. "The Missouri--five
miles--maybe more. Oh God, if the horses hold out!" Running,
stumbling, he made his way to the girl's side. "It's the river!" he
cried. "The Missouri!"
"Look at the horses!" she exclaimed. "They see it, too!" The animals
stood with ears cocked forward, and dirt-caked nostrils distended,
gazing into the south. Endicott sprang to his slicker, and producing
the flask, saturated his handkerchief with the thick red liquid. He
tried to sponge out the mouths and noses of the horses but they drew
back, trembling and snorting in terror.
"Why, it's blood!" cried the girl, her eyes dilated with horror. "From
the horse that died," explained Endicott, as he tossed the rag to the
ground.
"But, the water--surely there was water in the flask last night!"
Then, of a sudden, she understood. "You--you fed it to me in my
sleep," she faltered. "You were afraid I would refuse, and that was my
dream!"
"Mind over matter," reminded Endicott, with a distortion of his
bleeding lips that passed for a grin. Again he fumbled in his slicker
and withdrew the untouched can of tomatoes. He cut its cover as he had
seen Tex do and extended it to the girl. "Drink some of this, and if
the horses hold out we will reach the river in a couple of hours."
"I believe it's growing a little cooler since that awful wind went
down," she said, as she passed the can back to Endicott. "Let's push
on, the horses seem to know there is water ahead. Oh, I hope they can
make it!"
"We can go on a-foot if they can't," reassured the man. "It is not
far."
The horses pushed on with renewed life. They stumbled weakly, but the
hopeless, lack-lustre look was gone from their eyes and at frequent
intervals they stretched their quivering nostrils toward the long green
line in the distance. So slow was their laboured pace that at the end
of a half-hour Endicott dismounted and walked, hobbling clumsily over
the hot rocks and through ankle-deep drifts of dust in his high-heeled
boots. A buzzard rose from the coulee ahead with silent flapping of
wings, to be joined a moment later by two more of his evil ilk, and the
three wheeled in wide circles above the spot from which they had been
frightened. A bend in the coulee revealed a stagnant poison spring. A
dead horse lay beside it with his head buried to the ears in the slimy
water. Alice glanced at the broken chain of the hobbles that still
encircled the horse's feet.
"It's the pack-horse!" she cried. "They have only one horse between
them!"
"Yes, he got away in the night." Endicott nodded. "Bat is hunting
water, and Tex is waiting." He carried water in his hat and dashed it
over the heads of the horses, and sponged out their mouths and noses as
Tex and Bat had done. The drooping animals revived wonderfully under
the treatment and, with the long green line of scrub timber now plainly
in sight, evinced an eagerness for the trail that, since the departure
from Antelope Butte, had been entirely wanting. As the man assisted
the girl to mount, he saw that she was crying.
"They'll come out, all right," he assured her. "As soon as we hit the
river and I can get a fresh horse, I'm going back."
"Going back!"
"Going back, of course--with water. You do not expect me to leave
them?"
"No, I don't expect you to leave them! Oh, Winthrop, I--" her voice
choked up and the sentence was never finished.
"Buck up, little girl, an hour will put us at the river," he swung into
the saddle and headed southward, glad of a respite from the galling,
scalding torture of walking in high-heeled boots.
Had Endicott combed Montana throughout its length and breadth he could
have found no more evil, disreputable character than Long Bill Kearney.
Despised by honest citizens and the renegades of the bad lands, alike,
he nevertheless served these latter by furnishing them whiskey and
supplies at exorbitant prices. Also, he bootlegged systematically to
the Port Belknap Indians, which fact, while a matter of common
knowledge, the Government had never been able to prove. So Long Bill,
making a living ostensibly by maintaining a flat-boat ferry and a few
head of mangy cattle, continued to ply his despicable trade. Even
passing cowboys avoided him and Long Bill was left pretty much to his
own evil devices.
It was the cabin of this scum of the outland that Endicott and Alice
approached after pushing up the river for a mile or more from the point
where they had reached it by means of a deep coulee that wound
tortuously through the breaks. Long Bill stood in his doorway and eyed
the pair sullenly as they drew rein and climbed stiffly from the
saddles. Alice glanced with disgust into the sallow face with its
unkempt, straggling beard, and involuntarily recoiled as her eyes met
the leer with which he regarded her as Endicott addressed him:
"We've been fighting the dust storm for two days, and we've got to have
grub and some real water, quick."
The man regarded him with slow insolence: "The hell ye hev," he
drawled; "Timber City's only seven mile, ef ye was acrost the river. I
hain't runnin' no hotel, an' grub-liners hain't welcome."
"God, man! You don't mean----"
"I mean, ef ye got five dollars on ye I'll ferry ye acrost to where ye
c'n ride to Timber City ef them old skates'll carry ye there, an' ef ye
hain't got the five, ye c'n swim acrost, or shove on up the river, or
go back where ye come from."
Endicott took one swift step forward, his right fist shot into the
man's stomach, and as he doubled forward with a grunt of pain,
Endicott's left crashed against the point of his jaw with a force that
sent him spinning like a top as he crumpled to the hard-trodden earth
of the door-yard.
"Good!" cried Alice. "It was beautifully done. He didn't even have a
chance to shoot," she pointed to the two 45's that hung, one at either
hip.
"I guess we'll just relieve him of those," said Endicott, and, jerking
the revolvers from their holsters, walked to his saddle and uncoiled
the rope. Alice lent eager assistance, and a few moments later the
inhospitable one lay trussed hand and foot. "Now, we'll go in and find
something to eat," said Endicott, as he made fast the final hitch.
The cabin was well stocked with provisions and, to the surprise of the
two, was reasonably clean. While Alice busied herself in the cabin,
Endicott unsaddled the horses and turned them into a small field where
the vegetation grew rank and high and green beside a series of
irrigation ditches. Passing the horse corral he saw that three or four
saddle-horses dozed in the shade of its pole fence, and continued on to
the river bank where he inspected minutely the ferry.
"I guess we can manage to cross the river," he told Alice, when he
returned to the cabin; "I will breathe easier when I see you safe in
Timber City, wherever that is. I am coming back after Tex. But first
I must see you safe."
The girl crossed to his side and as the man glanced into her face he
saw that her eyes were shining with a new light--a light he had dreamed
could shine from those eyes, but never dared hope to see. "No, Win,"
she answered softly, and despite the mighty pounding of his heart the
man realized it was the first time she had used that name. "You are
not going back alone. I am going too." Endicott made a gesture of
protest but she gave no heed. "From now on my place is with you. Oh,
Win, can't you see! I--I guess I have always loved you--only I didn't
know It. I wanted romance--wanted a red-blood man--a man who could do
things, and----"
"Oh, if I could come to you clean-handed!" he interrupted,
passionately; "if I could offer you a hand unstained by the blood of a
fellow creature!"
She laid a hand gently upon his shoulder and looked straight into his
eyes: "Don't, Win," she said; "don't always hark back to _that_. Let
us forget."
"I wish to God I could forget!" he answered, bitterly. "I know the act
was justified. I believe it was unavoidable. But--it is my New
England conscience, I suppose."
Alice smiled: "Don't let your conscience bother you, because it is a
New England conscience. They call you 'the pilgrim' out here. It is
the name they called your early Massachusetts forebears--and if history
is to be credited, they never allowed their consciences to stand in the
way of taking human life."
"But, they thought they were right."
"And you _know_ you were right!"
"I know--I know! It isn't the ethics--only the fact."
"Don't brood over it. Don't think of it, dear. Or, if you must, think
of it only as a grim duty performed--a duty that proved, as nothing
else could have proved, that you are every inch a man."
Endicott drew her close against his pounding heart. "It proved that
the waters of the Erie Canal, if given the chance, can dash as madly
unrestrained as can the waters of the Grand Canyon."
She pressed her fingers to his lips: "Don't make fun of me. I was a
fool."
"I'm not making fun--I didn't know it myself, until--" the sentence was
drowned in a series of yells and curses and vile epithets that brought
both to the door to stare down at the trussed-up one who writhed on the
ground in a very paroxysm of rage.
"Conscience hurting you, or is it your jaw?" asked Endicott, as he
grinned into the rage-distorted features.
"Git them hosses outa that alfalfy! You ---- ---- ---- ---- ----!
I'll hev th' law on ye! I'll shoot ye! I'll drag yer guts out!" So
great was the man's fury that a thin white foam flecked his
hate-distorted lips, and his voice rose to a high-pitched whine.
Endicott glanced toward the two horses that stood, belly-deep, in the
lush vegetation.
"They like it," he said, calmly. "It's the first feed they have had in
two days." The man's little pig eyes glared red, and his voice choked
in an inarticulate snarl.
Alice turned away in disgust. "Let him alone," she said, "and we will
have dinner. I'm simply famished. Nothing ever looked so good to me
in the world as that ham and potatoes and corn and peas." During the
course of the meal, Endicott tried to dissuade the girl from her
purpose of accompanying him on his search for Tex and the half-breed.
But she would have it no other way, and finally, perforce, he consented.
Leaving her to pack up some food, Endicott filled the water-bag that
hung on the wall and, proceeding to the corral, saddled three of the
horses. Through the open window of the cabin he could see the girl
busily engaged in transferring provisions to a sack. He watched her as
she passed and repassed the window intent upon her task. Never had she
seemed so lovable, so unutterably desirable--and she loved him! With
her own lips she had told him of her love, and with her own lips had
placed the seal of love upon his own. Happiness, like no happiness he
had ever known should be his. And yet--hovering over him like a
pall--black, ominous, depressing--was the thing that momentarily
threatened to descend and engulf him, to destroy this new-found
happiness, haunt him with its diabolical presence, and crush his
life--and hers.
With an effort he roused himself--squared himself there in the corral
for the final battle with himself. "It is now or never," he gritted
through clenched teeth. "Now, and alone. She won't face the situation
squarely. It is woman's way, calmy to ignore the issue, to push it
aside as the ill of a future day."
She had said that he was right, and ethically, he knew that he was
right--but the fact of the deed remained. His hand had sped a soul to
its God.
Why?
To save the woman he loved. No jury on earth would hold him guilty.
He would surrender himself and stand trial. Then came the memory of
what Tex had told him of the machinations of local politics. He had no
wish to contribute his life as campaign material for a county election.
The other course was to run--to remain, as he now was, a fugitive, if
not from justice, at least from the hand of the law. This course would
mean that both must live always within the menace of the
shadow--unless, to save her from this life of haunting fear, he
renounced her.
His eyes sought the forbidding sweep of the bad lands, strayed to the
sluggish waters of the Missouri, and beyond, where the black buttes of
the Judith Range reared their massive shapes in the distance. Suddenly
a mighty urge welled up within him. He would not renounce her! She
was his! This was life--the life that, to him, had been as a sealed
book--the fighting life of the boundless open places. It was the
coward's part to run. He had played a man's part, and he would
continue to play a man's part to the end. He would fight. Would
identify himself with this West--become part of it. Never would he
return to the life of the city, which would be to a life of fear. The
world should know that he was right. If local politics sought to crush
him--to use him as a puppet for their puny machinations, he would smash
their crude machine and rebuild the politics of this new land upon
principles as clean and rugged as the land itself. It should be his
work!
With the light of a new determination in his eyes, he caught up the
bridle-reins of the horses and pushed open the gate of the corral. As
he led the animals out he was once more greeted with a volley of oaths
and curses: "Put them back! Ye hoss-thief! I'll have ye hung! Them's
mine, I tell ye!"
"You'll get them back," assured Endicott. "I am only borrowing them to
go and hunt for a couple of friends of mine back there in the bad
lands."
"Back in the bad lands! What do ye know about the bad lands? Ye'll
git lost, an' then what'll happen to me? I'll die like a coyote in a
trap! I'll starve here where no one comes along fer it's sometimes a
week--mebbe two!"
"It will be a long time between meals if anything should happen to us,
but it will do you good to lie here and think it over. We'll be back
sometime." Endicott made the sack of provisions fast to the saddle of
the lead-horse, and assisted Alice to mount.
"I'll kill ye fer this!" wailed the man; "I'll--I'll--" but the two
rode away with the futile threats ringing in their ears.