GORDON RIDES INTO THE COUNTRY
Gordon rode aimlessly out of the little town with its twinkling lights.
He did not care where he went or what direction he pursued. He wanted to
ride off a strange, enervating dejection that had laid hold of him the
moment his last testimony had gone in. It all seemed so pitifully
inadequate—without Williston,—now that it was all in. Why had he
undertaken it? It could only go for another defeat counted against him.
Though what was one defeat more or less when there had been so many? It
would be nothing new. Was he not pursuing merely the old beaten trail?
Why should the thought weigh so heavily now? Can a man never attain to
that higher—or lower, which is it?—altitude of strifeless, unregretful
hardness? Or was it, he asked himself in savage contempt of his
weakness, that, despite all his generous and iron clad resolutions, he
had secretly, unconsciously perhaps, cherished a sweet, shy, little
reservation in his inmost heart that maybe—if he won out—
“You poor fool,” he said, aloud, with bitter harshness.
Suppose he did. A brave specimen, he, if he had the shameful egoism to
ask a girl—a girl like Louise—a gentle, highbred, protected, cherished
girl like that—to share this new, bleak, rough life with him. But the
very sweetness of the thought of her doing it made him gasp there in the
darkness. How stifling the air was! He lifted his hat. It was hard to
breathe. It was like the still oppressiveness preceding an electrical
storm. His mare, unguided, had naturally chosen the main travelled trail
and kept it. She followed the mood of her master and walked leisurely
along while the man wrestled with himself.
If he really possessed the hardihood to ask Louise to do this for
him, she would laugh at him. Stay! That was a lie—a black lie. She
would not laugh—not Louise. She was not of that sort. Rather would
she grieve over the inevitable sadness of it. If she laughed, he could
bear it better—he had good, stubborn, self-respecting blood in him,—but
she would not laugh. And all the rest of his long life must be spent in
wishing—wishing—if it could have been! But he would never ask her to do
it. Not even if the impossible came to pass. It was a hard country on
women, a hard, treeless, sun-seared, unkindly country. Men could stand
it—fight for its future; but not women like Louise. It made men as well
as unmade them. And after all it did not prove to be the undoing of men
so much as it developed in them the perhaps hitherto hidden fact that
they were already wanting. These latent, constitutional weaknesses thus
laid bare, the bad must for a while prevail—bad is so much noisier than
good. But this big, new country with its infinite possibilities—give it
time—it would form men out of raw material and make over men mistakenly
made when that was possible, or else show the dividing line so clearly
that the goats might not herd with the sheep. Some day, it would be fit
for women—like Louise. Not now. Much labor and sorrow must be lived
through; there must be many mistakes, many experiments tried, there must
be much sacrifice and much refining, and many must fall and lose in the
race before its big destiny be worked out and it be fit for women—like
Louise. Down in the southern part of the State, and belonging to it, a
certain big barred building sheltered many women, when the sun of the
treeless prairies and the gazing into the lonesome distances surrounding
their homesteads seeped into their brains and stayed there so that they
knew not what they did. There were trees there and fountains and restful
blue-grass in season, and flowers, flowers, flowers—but these came too
late for most of the women.
Louise was not of that sort. The roughness and the loneliness would
simply wear her away and she would die—smiling to the last. What leering
fate had led her hither to show him what he had missed by choosing as he
had chosen to throw himself into the thankless task of preparing a new
country for—a future generation? This accomplished, she would flit
lightly away and never know the misery she had left behind or the flavor
and zest she had filched from the work of one man, at least, who had
entered upon it with lofty ambition, high hopes, and immutable purpose.
What then would he have wished? That she had not come at all?
He smiled. If Louise could have seen that smile, or the almost dewy
softness which stole into his eyes—the eyes that were too keen for
everyday living! That he loved her was the one thing in life worth
while. Then why rail at fate? If he had not chosen as he had, he should
never have known Louise. He must have gone through life without that
dear, exquisite, solemn sense of her—in his arms—those arms to which it
had been given to draw her back from a cruel death. That fulfilment was
his for all time. How sweet she was! He seemed to feel again the soft
pressure of her clinging arms,—remembering how his lips had brushed her
fair hair. If it had been Langford, now, who was guilty of so ridiculous
a sentimentalism—the bold, impetuous, young ranchman—he smiled at
himself whimsically. Then he pulled himself together. He did not think
the jury could believe the story Jesse Black would trump up, no matter
how plausible it was made to sound. He felt more like himself,—in better
condition to meet those few but staunch friends of his from whom he had
so summarily run away,—stronger to meet—Louise. Man-like, now that he
was himself again, he must know the time. He struck a match.
“Why, Lena, old girl, we’ve been taking our time, haven’t we? They are
likely through supper, but maybe I can wheedle a doughnut out of the
cook.”
The match burned out. Not until he had tossed it away did it come to him
that they were no longer on the main trail.
“Now, that’s funny, old girl,” he scolded. “What made you be so
unreasonable? Well, we started with our noses westward, so you must have
wandered into the old Lazy S branch trail. Though, to be sure, it has
been such a deuce of a while since we travelled it that I wonder at you,
Lena. Well, we’ll just jog back. What’s the matter now, silly?”
His mare had shied. He turned her nose resolutely, domineeringly, back
toward the spot objected to.
“I can’t see what you’re scared at, but we’ll just investigate and show
you how foolish a thing is feminine squeamishness.”
A shadowy form arose out of the darkness. It approached.
“Is that you, Dick?”
Gordon was not a superstitious man, yet he felt suddenly cold to the
crown of his head. It was not so dark as it might have been. There would
have been a moon had it not been cloudy. Dimly, he realized that the man
had arisen from the ruins of what must have been the old Williston
homestead. The outlines of the stone stoop were vaguely visible in the
half light. The solitary figure had been crouched there, brooding.
“I’m flesh and blood, Dick, never fear,” said the man in a mournful
voice. “I’m hungry enough to vouch for that. You needn’t be afraid. I’m
anything but a spirit.”
“Williston!” The astonished word burst from Gordon’s lips. “Williston!
Is it really you?”
“None other, my dear Gordon! Sorry I startled you. I saw your light and
heard your voice speaking to your horse, and as you were the very man I
was on the point of seeking, I just naturally came forward, forgetting
that my friends would very likely look upon me in the light of a ghost.”
“Williston! My dear fellow!” repeated Gordon again. “It is too good to
be true,” he cried, leaping from his mare and extending both hands
cordially. “Shake, old man! My, the feel of you is—bully. You are flesh
and blood all right. You always did have a good, honest shake for a
fellow. I don’t know, though. Seems to me you have been kind o’ running
to skin and bones since I last saw you. Grip’s good, but bony. You’re
thinner than ever, aren’t you?”
All this time he was shaking Williston’s hands heartily. He never
thought of asking him where he had been. For weary months he had longed
for this man to come back. He had come back. That was enough for the
present. He had always felt genuinely friendly toward the unfortunate
scholar and his daughter.
“That’s natural, isn’t it? Besides, they forgot my rations sometimes.”
“Who, Williston?” asked Gordon, the real significance of the man’s
return taking quick hold of him.
“I think you know, Gordon,” said the older man, quietly. “It is a long
story. I was coming to you. I will tell you everything. Shall I begin
now?”
“Are you in any danger of pursuit?” asked Gordon, suddenly bethinking
himself.
“I think not. I killed my jailer, the half-breed, Nightbird.”
“You did well. So did Mary.”
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you know that Mary shot and killed one of the desperadoes that
night? At least, we have every reason to think it was Mary. By the way,
you have not asked after her.”
The man’s head drooped. He did not answer for a long time. When he
raised his head, his face, though showing indistinctly, was hard and
drawn. He spoke with little emotion as a man who had sounded the gamut
of despair and was now far spent.
“What was the use? I saw her fall, Gordon. She stood with me to the end.
She was a brave little girl. She never once faltered. Dick,” he said,
his voice changing suddenly, and laying hot, feverish hands on the young
man’s shoulders, “we’ll hang them—you and I—we’ll hang them every
one,—the devils who look like men, but who strike at women. We’ll hang
them, I say—you and I. I’ve got the evidence.”
“Is it possible they didn’t tell you?” cried Gordon, aghast at the
amazing cruelty of it.
“Tell me anything? Not they. She was such a good girl, Dick. There never
was a better. She never complained. She never got her screens, poor
girl. I wish she could have had her screens before they murdered her.
Where did you lay her, Dick?”
“Mr. Williston,” said Dick, taking firm hold of the man’s burning hands
and speaking with soothing calmness, “forgive me for not telling you at
once. I thought you knew. I never dreamed that you might have been
thinking all the while that Mary was dead. She is alive and well and
with friends. She only fainted that night. Come, brace up! Why, man
alive, aren’t you glad? Well, then, don’t go to pieces like a child.
Come, brace up, I tell you!”
“You—you—wouldn’t lie to me, would you, Dick?”
“As God is my witness, Mary is alive and in Kemah this minute—unless an
earthquake has swallowed the hotel during my absence. I saw her less
than two hours ago.”
“Give me a minute, my dear fellow, will you? I—I—”
He walked blindly away a few steps and sat down once more on the ruins
of his homestead. Gordon waited. The man sat still—his head buried in
his hands. Gordon approached, leading his mare, and sat down beside him.
“Now tell me,” he said, with simple directness.
An hour later, the two men separated at the door of the Whites’ claim
shanty.
“Lie low here until I send for you,” was Gordon’s parting word.