A bullet tore through the sleeve of Mead's coat, passing but a few
inches from the head of the unconscious child. Another sang over his
left shoulder, scorching his coat. His face, flushed with running,
went white and grim with sudden passion, his lips closed in a narrow,
straight line, and the yellow flame blazed in his wide and brilliant
eyes. He shifted the child more to the left and turned sidewise toward
his assailant, shielding the little one with his body. Antone Colorow,
shouting curses and vile names, came dashing on, revolver in hand, to
try again at closer quarters. Mead kept on, running sidewise, his set
white face turned over his shoulder and his flashing eyes fixed on
Antone's revolver hand. They were within a score of paces of each
other when Mead suddenly jumped to one side and the bullet that was
meant for his head whistled harmlessly through the air. "Three!" he
thought, his eyes fixed steadily on Antone's right hand, as he still
advanced toward the angry man. For he had noticed that the Mexican
wore no cartridge belt. Again he sprang to one side as he saw Antone's
finger stiffen upon the trigger, and the ball rattled through the
bushes behind him. "Four!" he thought, veering toward the west. The
Mexican turned his horse to follow, and Mead, with eyes fixed on the
trigger, and noting, too, the slant of the barrel, knew that he had no
need to dodge the next bullet. It went wild and tore up the ground
some feet away. "Only one more!" he thought, as he halted with the sun
at his back and shining straight in the Mexican's face. A sudden,
quick leap and a loud yell startled Antone's horse, it jerked
backward, and the last bullet went singing harmlessly through the air.
Antone's voice shot up into a falsetto, and shrieking vile curses he
threw the empty revolver over his shoulder and leaped to the ground.
Mead's watchful eye caught the gleam of a steel blade in the sunlight.
He dropped his burden upon the ground, in the shade of a clump of
greasewood, and sprang to one side. He caught Antone's wrist, as the
knife made its downward turn, and held that hand high in the air for a
moment while he looked into the Mexican's eyes. They shone with the
angry glare of a wild beast.
"Antone," he said, "I have found the lost child. It is still alive,
and it may live if I can get it to the doctor at once. Will you let me
go and finish this quarrel afterward?"
The Mexican's only answer was a volley of curses. This man had broken
his wrists and made useless that boasted skill with the lasso which
had been the one pride of his life. For weeks and months anger and
hatred and the determination to have revenge had blazed in his heart,
and at sight of his enemy everything else went from his mind. He too
had been ranging the hills since early morning searching for the boy,
but so fierce was his rage that he could have jumped upon the little
form and trampled its life out, if by so doing he could have killed
Mead with a double death.
Antone's wrists were stiff and his arms had not recovered their full
strength, so that Mead had no difficulty in holding the dagger aloft.
He waited a moment to see if some glimmer of human feeling would not
strike through the man's rage. Suddenly Antone began kicking his
shins, and Mead understood that the sooner the struggle began the
sooner it would be ended. He strove warily, with the coolness of a
masterful determination, with a quick eye, a quick hand, and a quick
brain. The Mexican fought with the insensate rage of an angered beast.
They struggled first for the possession of the knife. Antone succeeded
in releasing his wrist and sprang backward out of Mead's reach. With a
lunge straight at his enemy's heart he came forward again, but Mead
sprang quickly to one side and the Mexican barely saved himself from
sprawling headlong on the ground. He faced about, his features
distorted with anger, and, as he dashed forward, Mead caught his wrist
again. There was a short, sharp struggle, and Mead sent the knife
whirling down the hillside.
Then they closed in a hand to hand struggle. Antone bent his head and
sent his teeth deep into Mead's arm. Into the flesh they sank and met
and with a slipping sound tore the solid muscle from its bed. Then
there flamed in Emerson Mead's heart that wild, white rage that
mettles the nerves and steels the muscles of him who suffers that
indignity. He felt the strength of a giant in his arms as he gripped
the Mexican by both shoulders. In another minute Antone Colorow was
flat upon the ground and Emerson Mead was sitting on his chest.
"You hound!" Mead exclaimed, "I ought to kill you, and by the living
God, I would if I could do it decently! But I'm no Greaser, to use
lariats and knives and boot-heels, and so you get off this time, you
beast! If I had a rope," he went on, "I'd tie you here!"
With his right hand he grasped Antone's two wrists while he thrust his
left into his pockets in search of something with which he could bind
the fallen man. From the side pocket of his coat he drew a shiny,
snaky black thing, and a satisfied "ah!" broke from his lips as he saw
the Chinaman's queue, which Nick Ellhorn had forgotten, and which he
had put into that pocket two weeks before.
As he held it in his hands Marguerite Delarue came running over the
hill. Her sunbonnet hung by its strings around her neck, her hair had
come down and was streaming over her shoulders, her dress hung in rags
and tatters, and she was panting and almost breathless. She had
hurried on behind Mead as rapidly as she could walk, until she heard
the first pistol shot. Then, fearful of trouble, she had run as fast
as possible, stopping at nothing, her anxiety giving speed to her feet
and endurance to her muscles.
The look of savage triumph on Mead's face made her shrink back for an
instant, awed and frightened. But her comprehension quickly took in
what had happened and her heart rose in sympathetic exultation.
"You are just in time," said Mead, "and I'm mighty glad. I'll have to
ask you to sit on this man's chest and hold him down while I tie him
fast to that mesquite."
Marguerite sat down on the Mexican's breast while Mead tied his wrists
tightly together and then began fastening them to the stocky stem of
the bush beside which he had fallen. Antone struggled and tried to
throw her off, and Mead said:
"I think, Miss Delarue, you'd better put your thumbs on his windpipe
and press a little, just to keep him from fighting too hard. We've got
no time to waste on him."
Marguerite gasped and hesitated, but her eye fell on little Paul's
unconscious figure, and she did as he asked her.
"There," said Mead. "Now get up and jump quickly away."
The prostrate Mexican struggled and rolled about, but he could not
rise. Marguerite ran to the child and with her ear to his breast she
called to Mead.
"His heart is beating! He is still alive!"
Mead caught Antone's horse, and with Marguerite behind him and the
child on one arm started off on the gallop. A long, straggling line of
searchers stretched across the mesa, the nearest at least four miles
away. As Mead came nearer he dropped the bridle on the horse's neck
and waved his hat and shouted again and again. At last he attracted
the attention of the nearest ones, and two or three came running
toward him. "Water! Water!" he called, at the top of his voice. They
understood, and one ran back to the nearest horseman, who galloped off
to a group of people still farther away.
Almost instantly the great throng, like a huge organism, animated by
one thought, started off across the mesa toward the galloping horse,
every atom in it moved by the single purpose to reach at once the
new-found babe. Two horses in front of the hastening multitude ran at
their topmost speed and distanced all the others. One carried Pierre
Delarue and the other Doctor Long, and behind them came horsemen,
carts, carriages and people on foot, all rushing to the one point.
The physician administered such restoratives as he had with him and
brought the boy back to consciousness. Then, in the shade of a canopy
phaeton, he carried the child home in his arms, while Marguerite and
her father and Emerson Mead followed in another carriage, and all the
crowd came pouring along after them.
But there were four men who stayed behind. Joe Davis and John Daniels
and two others, all in perfect accord and friendliness, went back to
find Antone Colorow. They had listened to Mead's hastily told story of
how Antone had attacked and delayed him. Daniels and Davis had looked
at each other with a single significant glance and the one remark,
"We'd better attend to him!" And then they had taken the other two men
and started back.
They found Antone Colorow still struggling, rolling and kicking on the
ground. His lips were stained with the blood his own teeth had drawn,
and his red beard was flecked with foam. They untied him, and he
sprang to his feet and would have darted away, intent on his one
purpose to kill the enemy who had escaped his vengeance, had not quick
hands seized him. They tied his arms behind him and set him astride
his own horse, and then, surrounding him, with their revolvers drawn,
they rode away to the southwest, leaving Las Plumas far to their
right. On to the river bottom they went, and into a _bosque_ where the
cottonwoods and the sycamores grew thickly and the willow underbrush
was dense.
Long afterward a river ranchman, hunting a lost cow, penetrated the
_bosque_ and started back in sudden fright from a dangling, decaying
body that hung from a sycamore limb.
Pierre Delarue insisted that Emerson Mead should come into his house
for some wine and wait until they should know the worst or the best
concerning little Paul. He sat alone in the room where first he had
seen Marguerite, his anxiety about the child driven quite out of his
mind by the thought that the long hours alone with her, out on the
hills, their hearts and minds united in a common purpose, had come to
an end, that she was soon to be another man's wife, and that he would
never see her again. After a time the door opened and she came toward
him, smiling gladly. The color had come back to her cheeks and her
eyes were bright, though there were still dark rings around them, and
her face told of the weariness her brain had not yet recognized. So
absorbed had she been in giving the physician assistance and carrying
out his directions that she had not thought of her appearance. Her
white dress, which yesterday had been fresh and dainty, was in tatters
and bedraggled strings, and her hair hung down her back in a
disheveled mass. But she came shining down upon Mead's dark thoughts,
fresh and beautiful and glorious beyond compare. He did not remember
rising, but presently he knew that he was on his feet and that she was
standing in front of him. He did not even hear her say, "Doctor Long
says my little Bye-Bye will live and that there will probably be no
serious results."
Then she saw that he was trembling from head to foot, shaking as do
the leaves of a cottonwood tree in a west wind, and she drew back in
alarm, looking at him anxiously.
"What is the--" she began, but the look in his eyes stopped her tongue
and held her gaze, while she felt her breath come hard and her heart
beat like a triphammer. For an instant there was silence. Then
Marguerite heard in a whisper so soft that it barely reached her ears,
"I love you! I love you!" It was the loosing of the floods, and at
once their arms were about each other. But in a second he remembered
that she was to be another man's wife, and the thought came over him
like the drawing down of the black cap over the head of a condemned
man. With a fierce girding of his will he put both his hands upon her
shoulders and drew back.
"I forgot! Forgive me!" The words came in a groan from his lips. "I
forgot you're going to be his wife!"
"Whose?" said Marguerite, stepping back. For the instant she had
forgotten there was any other man in the world.
"Why, Wellesly's!"
"Indeed, I am not!" That one second in Mead's embrace had settled
Marguerite's long-vexed problem, and she felt her mind grow full of
sudden wonder that it had ever troubled her. "He wanted me to marry
him, but I'm not going to do it!"
Again their arms were about each other, their lips met, and her head
was pillowed on his shoulder. Then he remembered the fate that was
hanging over him, and he said bitterly:
"I've no right to ask you to be my wife, for in another week I'll
probably be convicted of murder and sentenced to be hung, or sent to
the penitentiary for life."
From the yard came the sound of Pierre Delarue's voice speaking to the
crowd. She took Mead's hands in hers and swung a little away from him,
looking into his face.
"I know that you didn't kill Will Whittaker!"
"How do you know it?" he answered, looking at her in loving surprise.
"Because he was shot in the back!"
She felt herself swept into the sudden storm of a masterful embrace,
and with soft laughter yielded to his rapturous caresses. "And all
this time," came to her ear in a whisper, "I've cared about it only
because I thought you would believe me guilty even if I was cleared!
"But I've no proof of my innocence," he added presently, "and I can't
ask your father's consent, or allow your name to be mentioned with
mine in the town's gossip until my own is clear. I've no right even to
ask you for another kiss until--"
She closed his lips with the kiss he would not ask for, and said:
"I would just as lief go out there now and say to all that crowd that
I love you and know that you are innocent--"
"No, no!" he broke in upon her passionate protestation. "No one shall
couple your name with mine and pity you while they are doing it! The
penitentiary may be my fate, for the rest of my life, but its shadow
shall not touch yours. If I can clear myself of this charge I will
come and ask you to be my wife, and openly ask your father's consent.
If I can't--" He turned and looked out of the window, but instead of
the trees and flowers that were there, he saw a big, grim building
with a high stone wall all around it and armed guards on the bastions.
Outside they heard the crowd calling for him. She understood his
feeling, and taking his face between her palms she kissed his lips,
whispering, "We will wait," and hurried from the room.
The crowd massed itself around the house, squatting on the sidewalk,
perching on the fence, and filling the waiting vehicles, until Pierre
came out and announced that the physician said little Paul would
recover and would probably be none the worse for his experience.
Everybody shouted "hurrah!" and somebody yelled, "three cheers for
Frenchy!" The cheers were given, and Pierre stepped out on the
sidewalk and began thanking them all for the kindness and sympathy
they had shown and for their willing efforts to help him in his
trouble. Then he launched into rhetorical praises of the country, the
climate and the community, and from these turned to enthusiastic
commendation of the man who had restored to him his lost child.
"Among all the brave and noble men of this favored region," he
exclaimed, "there is none braver, nobler, greater-hearted, more
chivalrous, than he who has this day proved himself worthy of all our
praises--Emerson Mead!" The crowd cheered loudly and called for Mead.
Somebody shouted, "Three cheers for Emerson!" and the whole
assemblage, Pierre leading, waved their hats and cheered again and
again.
Then there arose a general cry for "Emerson Mead! Emerson Mead!"
"Where is Emerson!" "Bring him out, Frenchy!" and Delarue rushed back
into the house to find him. When Pierre entered the room which his
daughter had just left it occurred to him, vaguely, that Mead looked
unusually proud and happy, but as he himself, also, felt happy and
proud, and filled with a genial glow over the success of his burst of
oratory, it seemed quite proper that every one else should also be
elated. So he thought nothing of it and hurried Mead out to the
waiting crowd, where everybody, Democrats and Republicans alike,
gathered about him and shook hands and made terse, complimentary
remarks, until Jim Halliday presently took him away to his former
quarters.
The crowd trailed off down Main street, and Judge Harlin and Colonel
Whittaker stood treat together for the entire company, first at the
White Horse and then at the Palmleaf saloon. The whistle of the train
from the south, two hours late, broke in upon all this friendliness
with a harsh reminder. Men suddenly recalled the fact that the mail
from the north had come in long ago and had not brought the court
order for which they had been waiting. The issues which had set the
town at gun muzzles the day before again asserted themselves, and
gradually the two factions began to mass, each on its own side of the
street. In the midst of this the clerk of the court came out of the
post-office with the missing order, which had gone astray in the mails
and had just come in on the train from El Paso. Neither Joe Davis nor
John Daniels could be found, and it was an hour later when they rode
together into the town, coming back from the hanging of Antone
Colorow.
Daniels read the official paper through and handed it to Davis. "Well,
Joe," he said, "the court says you are sheriff now, and I reckon
there's no goin' back of that. I hope the office will bring you better
luck than it has me. Let's have a drink."